50 years ago: When Wadekar’s 1971 cricket heroes rocked England at The Oval

London-based Chandresh Patel, who watched Wadekar’s men conquer Illingworth’s team at The Oval 50 years ago, talks about what changed for India in England on August 24, 1971

Fifty years ago on this day, an 18-year-old student, Chandresh Patel, met his elder brother Jitu at London’s Oval tube station and headed to the Kennington Oval, where England and India resumed their 1971 battle in the third and final Test of the series. 

They sat in the lower level of a guest stand to the right of the pavilion. Ajit Wadekar (45) and Dilip Sardesai (13) walked out to bat in mild sunshine with the scoreboard reading 76-2, chasing 173 for victory. Wadekar plays out an over from England skipper Ray Illingworth. Derek Underwood bowls the next over to Sardesai, who guides the ball to short third man. They set off for a risky single and Wadekar doesn’t make his ground, succumbing to Basil D’Oliveira’s throw to wicketkeeper Alan Knott.

Tense moment

India lose their third wicket with no addition to the overnight score. Chandresh is tense. For the club cricket all-rounder, a run out is a bad omen. The 48-run stand for the fourth wicket between Sardesai and Gundappa Viswanath calms Chandresh’s nerves, but Sardesai is caught behind brilliantly by Knott off Underwood for 40. Ten runs later, Eknath Solkar departs, dismissed by the same bowler. India 134-5 and Chandresh refuses to sit on the seat which he remembers paying no more than one pound for. “I was pacing up and down; the stands were not packed. Jitu wasn’t impressed. ‘Can you please sit down,’ he urged, promising me a curry meal in the evening if I listened to him. I didn’t think India were going to make it,” recalled Uganda-born Chandresh, whose grandparents were Indian.

England’s John Edrich is bowled by India’s hero Bhagwat Chandrasekhar for a duck on Day Four of the third Test at the Oval

All along he had wondered when would Farokh Engineer come out to bat. And when the dashing wicketkeeper-batsman did, he provided hope. With Viswanath, he put on 36 invaluable runs before the little batting star was snapped up by Knott off Brian Luckhurst’s left-arm spin.

Wadekar goes off to sleep

Wadekar we learnt later, was sleeping in the dressing room only to be woken up by former England batsman Ken Barrington when the four-wicket victory was achieved through a square cut by new man S Abid Ali with Engineer at the other end. 

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when Abid Ali’s cut shot reached the boundary. Am I dreaming, I asked myself. I was filled with joy. I didn’t rush on to the turf like the others. I enjoyed the moment from the stands. We stayed there for around half an hour and left. The scenes were memorable. West Indian spectators congratulated us for India’s victory. ‘Your guys beat them maan…you guys beat them,” said Chandresh, who had hazy memories of Day Four.

Chandresh Patel

“I remember rushing to the ground once I heard BS Chandrasekhar (6-38) was troubling the English batsmen. They rate Shane Warne’s delivery which bamboozled Mike Gatting in 1993 as the ball of the century. But my ball of the century was Chandra rattling John Edrich’s stumps for a duck. S Venkataraghavan made a difficult chance look easy when he got Luckhurst and Ashok Mankad took a fine running catch to dismiss Underwood,” said Chandresh.

But there was nothing to match the euphoria of the following day. “As I said, I was filled with pride. We had beaten a team which had won the 1970-71 Ashes and beat a strong Pakistan side earlier in the summer.

‘India surprised the world’

“England were led by a shrewd captain—Illingworth—but India surprised the world. The Oval victory proved to those doubting Englishmen that the win in the West Indies was no fluke,” remarked Chandresh from London, where he is a sports goods retailer.

The 1971 win was not the only India high point Chandresh witnessed. The 1983 World Cup win and the 1986 Test series triumph against England constituted his ‘I-was-there’ moments as well. Three cricketers who were part of these three significant triumphs—Sunil Gavaskar, Viswanath and Kiran More are Chandresh’s close friends; Anshuman Gaekwad as well.

Jitu’s 2008 demise means Chandresh cannot celebrate the golden jubilee of India’s epic 1971 win with his elder brother. But he can raise a toast to Wadekar & Co with his younger sibling Dipam, who apart from being a master stringer of tennis racquets, is chairman of the Middlesex Premier Cricket League. In Chandresh’s own words, 1971 was when, “they stopped laughing at us [India] in England.”

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