A Passage to India

 Posted by Tony Hutton

India's recent victory in Sydney was cause for great celebration throughout the Indian sub-continent last week and took my mind back to my first visit to watch cricket there in January 1995. It was really a very fortuitous occasion as my son, then working on the early days of televised cricket in India, required a courier to take a very expensive television camera lens from UK. With a small team of camera men he was covering the England A team match with India A at Eden Gardens, Calcutta (as it still was). Being very recently retired I was readily available and off I went with my valuable piece of equipment.

After a rather hair raising evening journey through the suburbs and crowded streets of the city I was deposited at the quiet, luxury oasis of the Oberoi Hotel which seemed to be a different world. The next day after a walk across the open land of the Maidan littered with seemingly endless cricket grounds, we arrived at the impressive huge Eden Gardens arena. It was almost deserted, with only a scattering of spectators. Obviously England A were not a major draw card for the local population.

The almost deserted Eden Gardens.

However we had an excellent viewpoint from the television gantry and were in situ for each day of the five day game. The first thing we noticed was the scoreboard which had a rather unique list of the England players' names. As you can see from the photograph it was a mixture of surnames and christian names which took a little working out.

Michael turned out to be Vaughan, Jason was Gallian, Dominic was Cork and finally Richard was Stemp. Having sorted that out we enjoyed the first day's play with England well on top initially by reducing India to 95-7.  The opening bowlers Cork and Glen Chapple did most of the damage with three wickets each, including two players starting their careers who we would see a lot of in years to come - Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly. However later in the day a fine innings from Chatterjee at number nine, who made 72 not out, brought a final all out total of 216.

Our vantage point from the scaffolding in the centre of the picture.

The following day England made a rather pedestrian 275-6 against some tight bowling with skipper Alan Wells top scoring on 93 being well supported by Lancashire's Jason Gallian with 77. The hot day was made more tolerable, indeed as were all the others, by the wonderful char wallah who kept us regularly supplied with cups of sweet, milky tea throughout the day. It turned out that he was a famous net bowler at the ground and proudly took a battered newspaper cutting from his pocket which listed all the famous players he had bowled out in the nets. These included Garry Sobers, Colin Cowdrey and many others. Sadly he had not been able to play in matches due to his lower caste.

                                            Not a spectator in sight.

                                 However the local police were taking no chances.

On day three England's innings rather subsided as 301-6 soon became 316 all out. However a lead of 100 seemed quite satisfactory. India then made a better fist of their second innings and not only cleared the first innings lead, but added a further hundred runs to end the day on 204-2. The hero of the day was opening bat Rathour, with a not out century while Dravid showed his class with 46 not out. During the intervals and after play finished we were able to wander around the Maidan to see endless games of cricket, often overlapping, being played with great enthusiasm. 

Looks like another char wallah on his way to one of the Maidan grounds.

Cricket on the Maidan.

Dominic Cork made the breakthrough England need on Day four by dismissing both overnight batsmen, but on 300-4 India had a lead of 200 and looked capable of setting England a daunting target. The three English spinners toiled away all day, Stemp bowling 42 overs and Min Patel 33. Salisbury only bowled 14 overs but they all managed two wickets each and eventually managed to bowl India out for 353. England now needed 254 to win and ended the fourth day on 80-2 with Nick Knight on 39 not out. 

On the final morning England were soon in trouble both Knight and nightwatchman Patel were soon out with the total on 82-4. However a match winning partnership between skipper Wells and Glamorgan's David Hemp swung the game back England's way. Wells was out just before the end after a well made 65 and Hemp had got to 97 with just two runs to win. He needed to hit a four to get his century but the ball stopped tantalisingly short of the boundary. The batsmen managed to run three and everyone including Hemp thought he had got to his century. England had won by five wickets.

However the drama continued. During his after match interview David Hemp had the great disappointment of being told that the match had ended when the second run had been taken, so the third run did not count and he had ended on 99 not out !

So a memorable five days at the wonderful Eden Gardens.