Seventy years of international cricket is neither a very longtime nor a very short period but it is a duration for which someintrospection can, and should, be made. On June 25, when Indiancricket completed seven decades in the international arena,reflections predictably were mixed. During this period, Indiancricket had seen it all – the ups and downs, the heady triumphsand the disastrous defeats, the glorious and seamy aspects of thegame.Interestingly enough, the Indian team is right now in Englandwhere it all started on a summer day in 1932. CK Nayudu led hismen down the pavilion steps at Lord’s to take on the might ofEngland. The opposing captain was the redoubtable Douglas Jardineand, though, the thought of Bodyline had not yet entered hismind, he remained a shrewd and ruthlessly efficient leader. Hewas not going to take the babes of international cricket lightlyand it is good that he didn’t.For, within an hour, England were 19 for three. In NevilleCardus’ immortal prose, the sombre, yet thrilling, mood has beencaptured. Though India lost the inaugural Test match by 158 runs,they earned a lot of respect with Nayudu, Mohammad Nissar andAmar Singh coming in for special praise.Soon players like Lala Amarnath, Vijay Merchant, Mushtaq Ali andVijay Hazare attracted worldwide attention and by the end of the1946 tour of England, the great West Indian all-rounder LearieConstantine was predicting that “the time is not distant whenIndia will not only beat England on English soil but willchallenge and beat Australia, the West Indies and allcountries."Actually, that day was quite distant. Various factors on and offthe field, led to Indian cricket enduring the unendurable in thefifties, surely the decade when the game touched its nadir inIndia. The astonishing aspect was that greats like Vinoo Mankad,Polly Umrigar, Pankaj Roy, Dattu Phadkar, Vijay Manjrekar,Subhash Gupte and Ghulam Ahmed still graced the Indian side butthe team itself made little headway while making the headlinesfor all the wrong reasons.On one unmemorable occasion at Leeds in 1952, India contrived tolose their first four wickets without a run on the board, anunwanted record that still stands, half a century later. A monthlater at Manchester, India were bowled out for 58 and 82 in oneday, another unwanted record that stands to this day. Not verylong afterwards, at the Oval, India lost their first five wicketswith only six runs scored. In 1959, India were beaten by the WestIndies at Calcutta by an innings and 336 runs, then the secondhighest losing margin in Test history.Sure, Mankad and Roy shared a first wicket partnership of 413runs against New Zealand in 1956, a world record that stillstands as Indian cricket’s proudest statistical achievement. Butthis was an exception.Recovery, however, was round the corner. The sixties marked anupswing in the country’s cricketing fortunes thanks principallyto the leadership of Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, the key figure inIndian cricket during the decade in more ways than one. Under hisstewardship, there was greater solidity in the batting, vastimprovement in the fielding and with the emergence of the spinquartet, a bowling attack that terrorised batsmen the world overin much the same manner that the fastest of bowlers did.Defeats were still suffered – seven in a row at one stage during1967-68 – but by the end of the decade, Indian cricket seemedpoised for better things.However, not even the most optimistic Indian cricket followercould have envisaged what was to follow. By any yardstick, theIndia Rubber Year of 1971 was a watershed in the cricketingfortunes of the country.
The discovery of Sunil Gavaskar and the twin triumphs in WestIndies and England followed by another victory over England athome in 1972-73, created an euphoric mood never seen before.Throughout the decade, with Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath asthe batting kingpins and the spin quartet at the peak of theirpowers, the Indian team could challenge the best, win matchesoutside the country and perform feats that were straight out offiction like scoring 406 for four to beat the West Indies atPort of Spain in 1976. Sure, they were aberrations like thenotorious `Summer of 42′ at Lord’s in 1974 but these were theexceptions rather than the rule.In keeping with the momentum, could we then hope for betterthings in the eighties? Why not? For, even as time finally caughtup with the spin quartet, a tall, strong lad from Haryanaappeared on the scene.Indian cricket and fast bowling seemed to be two worlds apart butthen Kapil Dev was a class apart. He became the pivotal figure ofthe eighties as captain and all-rounder. The World Cup triumph in1983, surely something out of `Boys Own’ magazine, followed bythe victory in the World Championship of Cricket in Australia twoyears later meant that the popularity of the limited overs gamereached an all-time high.Batsmen like Mohinder Amarnath, Dilip Vengsarkar and MohammadAzharuddin proved to be worthy successors to Gavaskar andViswanath and the Indian flag was kept flying high symbolised bythe 1986 Test triumph in England, some reverses notwithstanding.What would the nineties bring? Sachin Tendulkar for one. Finally,an Indian was the best batsman in the world. Indian cricketrevolved around him, on and off the field. Anil Kumble took overthe spinning mantle and emulated Jim Laker by taking all tenwickets against Pakistan at the Kotla in 1999 while Tendulkarcould count on support from the likes of Navjot Sidhu, SouravGanguly, Rahul Dravid and Venkatsai Laxman.Despite the occasional setbacks, Indian cricket continued toattract worldwide attention and in the new millennium, as a hostof newcomers make their presence felt, it is difficult not tovisualise the first decade of the 21st century as possibly thegreatest period in Indian cricket history.