Cricket History - India's First Test Win In England In 1971
India created history by winning their first ever Test match and series in England on the 1971 tour.
Bhagwat Chandrasekhar was bowling to John Edrich. One of his teammates asked him to bowl the Mill Reef, his famous faster delivery. Chandra did, and Edrich was bowled even before his bat came down. He got Keith Fletcher with the next ball, and it was lunch.
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It was Ganesh Chaturthi, and the Indian fans had rented Bella, a baby elephant, from the Chessington Zoo. She walked around The Oval at lunch. And when play resumed, England were bowled out for 101. Chandra finished with 6/38, one of the most famous spells by an Indian.
However, the most famous England wicket fell at the other end, off Srinivas Venkataraghavan. The photograph of Eknath Solkar, having caught Alan Knott at short leg and lying fully stretched on the ground, has attained iconic status.
India still needed 174. At stumps they were 76/2, but they lost Ajit Wadekar before another run was scored next morning. However, Dilip Sardesai, Gundappa Viswanath, and Farokh Engineer pushed India to a four-wicket win.
Wadekar was asleep in the dressing-room when Abid Ali scored the winning runs. England manager Ken Barrington had to wake him up to congratulate him!
Back home, there were unprecedented celebrations. People walked out on to the streets and got on to moving buses to congratulate strangers. Some of them had memories of the British Raj in India. For them, a team of Indians beating England at their game in their country was a tremendous achievement.
It was a moment no less significant than the 1948 Olympic Games, when India beat England 4-0 in the final to win the gold medal at London a year after Independence.
There was no television coverage of the match in India, but children garlanded the radio sets. Cash prizes were announced. At Nehru Stadium, Indore, they constructed an enormous concrete bat with names of the Indian cricketers on the tours of West Indies and England.
