If India's 1971 series win over England was a shock to the cricket world, it certainly wasn't for Sir Garfield Sobers, whose team lost to India before their English conquest.

Garry Sobers predicted India's '71 win in England

If India's 1971 series win over England was a shock to the cricket world, it certainly wasn't for Sir Garfield Sobers, whose team lost to India before their English conquest.

Sobers revealed yesterday that he told the Indians before they left West Indian shores that they would do well against Ray Illingworth's Englishmen.

The 73-year-old West Indies great will be chief guest at a function in Mumbai to felicitate members of the 1971 victorious Indian teams today.

At Bandra Kurla Complex yesterday, Sobers regaled the press with anecdotes and spoke fluently despite having a late night after arriving from Barbados via London. "I left two days ago to come here," he stressed.

Sobers' confidence in Ajit Wadekar's 1971 team stemmed from the fact that the outfit had some class senior and junior players. Seniors like Dilip Sardesai and Wadekar showed the way and rookie Sunil Gavaskar scored a record 774 runs in his debut series, so Sobers was confident India would do well. India won the third and final Test at the Oval for their first series win in Old Blighty.

He singled out Gavaskar as the best batsman he saw. The little Indian scored 13 hundreds against the West Indies.

He admitted not remembering everything, but gave the feeling that the 1971 defeat still rankled.

There was no ego in his talk though. He never shied away from giving credit to Wadekar's Indians.

Only when he was asked a question about the quality of his bowling attack, he laid down the facts. "We were in a rebuilding stage. We had lost Wes Hall; we lost Charlie Griffith. It was not our best attack," he said.

His willingness tou00a0 admit a fault showed up again when he said he should have realised on the 1966-67 tour of India that the Indians would not be pushovers the next time both teams met.

"We won in 1967 (the series) but it wasn't easy. India were building a team for the future.

"They had Ajit, Hanumant Singh, the Nawab of Pataudi, Bedi, Prasanna, Venkat and Chandra. Farokh Engineer must not be forgotten. He scored a hundred in the last Test and it took a toll on us. I should have realised that we were going to have some problems," said Sobers.