India's First Test Win In England

 

Today is the 50th anniversary of India's first test win in England. Ray Illingworth's team was seemingly invincible, and had played 26 tests without a defeat coming into the match at the Oval.  It was a record which was later broken by the West Indies under Clive Lloyd in the 1980s.

The English unbeaten run was ended famously by India on 24th August 1971. Led by Ajit Wadekar, the Indian team won  the third match of the series. They thus  won the three-test series 1-0 and created history.

England scored 355 in their first innings, with Bedi, Chandrasekhar and Venkataraghvan taking 2 wickets each. Solkar picked up 3 scalps, including Alan Knott for 90. In reply, India were tottering at 125-5 before Solkar and Engineer helped them put up a score of 284. Wadekar scored 48, Sardesai 54, Solkar 44 and Engineer 59 in that innings. Abid Ali and Venkataraghvan chipped in with 28 and 24 respectively. 

The game turned on its head on the fourth day, when Chandrasekhar demolished  the English side, claiming 6-38. England were dismissed for 101. India were left with a fourth innings target of 173. Illingworth and his men fought and fought, but India finally overhauled the target after batting for 117.3 overs! Wadekar scored 45, Sardesai 40, Vishwanath 33 and Engineer an unbeaten 28 in that second innings. 

The stadium, and the whole of India,  erupted in joy at the end of the match. Wadekar's team received a hero's welcome on their return home.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dr Kalam

Dr APJ Abdul Kalam was born on 15th October 1931. Today is his 89th birth anniversary. He served as president of India from 2002 to 2007. He was one of India's most outstanding scientists, being trained in physics and aerospace engineering. Kalam started his career by designing a small helicopter for the Indian Army. Kalam worked in the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) where he was the project director of India’s first indigenous Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III) which successfully deployed the Rohini satellite in near earth’s orbit in July 1980. He was also an administrator at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Kalam was intimately involved in India's civilian space programme and military missile development efforts. He thus came to be known as the Missile Man of India for his work on the development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology. Kalam was an avid author, and has written many books, such as Wings of Fire, Ignited M
Read more

Plassey and the Indian banker:

Image
JAGAT SETH The battle of Plassey was fought on 23 rd June 1757. It is one of the most significant battles in Indian history, as it led to the eclipse of Muslim power in India and the establishment of the British Empire in the subcontinent. One of the most famous Indian bankers of all time is Jagat Seth, who conspired against Siraj-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Bengal, in the Battle of Plassey. That gave the East India Company its first decisive victory in India and eventually helped establish its rule over the entire subcontinent. Various travellers of that time wrote about Jagat Seth's enormous wealth (one traveller described him as "the greatest banker in the known world"). The name Jagat Seth itself means banker to the world. The house of Jagat Seth came to achieve a reputation akin to that of the Rothschilds. According to some sources, the British economy in the 1720s was less than Jagat Seth’s' wealth. He had assets worth approximately 1000 billion pounds or more
Read more

The Martians of Budapest

Image
Isaac Asimov once said, "There is a rumor in America that there are two intelligent races on earth: Humans and Hungarians”. “The Martians of Budapest”, sometimes simply “The Martians” is a colloquial term used to describe a group of prominent Hungarian physicists and mathematicians who emigrated to the United States following the Great Purge of 1933. The term refers to — what appeared, from the perspective of Americans —to be a group of men with superhuman intellects, arriving from an obscure country and  speaking an incomprehensible foreign language.   Scientists typically thought to belong to the group include refugees from the University of Göttingen, early associates of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) and members of The Manhattan Project, including: John von Neumann, Paul Erdős, Eugene Wigner, Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller,  Theodore von Kármán, Paul Halmos, George Polya, John Kemeny and John Hersányi. John von Neumann (1903–1957):  The polymath genius generally considered
Read more