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

Fifty years ago on this day an 18yearold student Chandresh Patel met his elder brother Jitu at Londonrsquos 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 seriesThey 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 762 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 doesnrsquot make his ground succumbing to Basil DrsquoOliveirarsquos throw to wicketkeeper Alan KnottTense momentIndia lose their third wicket with no addition to the overnight score Chandresh is tense For the club cricket allrounder a run out is a bad omen The 48run stand for the fourth wicket between Sardesai and Gundappa Viswanath calms Chandreshrsquos 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 1345 and Chandresh refuses to sit on the seat which he remembers paying no more than one pound for ldquoI was pacing up and down the stands were not packed Jitu wasnrsquot impressed lsquoCan you please sit downrsquo he urged promising me a curry meal in the evening if I listened to him I didnrsquot think India were going to make itrdquo recalled Ugandaborn Chandresh whose grandparents were IndianEnglandrsquos John Edrich is bowled by Indiarsquos hero Bhagwat Chandrasekhar for a duck on Day Four of the third Test at the OvalAll along he had wondered when would Farokh Engineer come out to bat And when the dashing wicketkeeperbatsman did he provided hope With Viswanath he put on 36 invaluable runs before the little batting star was snapped up by Knott off Brian Luckhurstrsquos leftarm spinWadekar goes off to sleepWadekar we learnt later was sleeping in the dressing room only to be woken up by former England batsman Ken Barrington when the fourwicket victory was achieved through a square cut by new man S Abid Ali with Engineer at the other endldquoI couldnrsquot believe my eyes when Abid Alirsquos cut shot reached the boundary Am I dreaming I asked myself I was filled with joy I didnrsquot 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 Indiarsquos victory lsquoYour guys beat them maanhellipyou guys beat themrdquo said Chandresh who had hazy memories of Day FourChandresh PatelldquoI remember rushing to the ground once I heard BS Chandrasekhar 638 was troubling the English batsmen They rate Shane Warnersquos delivery which bamboozled Mike Gatting in 1993 as the ball of the century But my ball of the century was Chandra rattling John Edrichrsquos 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 Underwoodrdquo said ChandreshBut there was nothing to match the euphoria of the following day ldquoAs I said I was filled with pride We had beaten a team which had won the 197071 Ashes and beat a strong Pakistan side earlier in the summerlsquoIndia surprised the worldrsquoldquoEngland were led by a shrewd captainmdashIllingworthmdashbut India surprised the world The Oval victory proved to those doubting Englishmen that the win in the West Indies was no flukerdquo remarked Chandresh from London where he is a sports goods retailerThe 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 lsquoIwastherersquo moments as well Three cricketers who were part of these three significant triumphsmdashSunil Gavaskar Viswanath and Kiran More are Chandreshrsquos close friends Anshuman Gaekwad as wellJitursquos 2008 demise means Chandresh cannot celebrate the golden jubilee of Indiarsquos epic 1971 win with his elder brother But he can raise a toast to Wadekar amp 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 Chandreshrsquos own words 1971 was when ldquothey stopped laughing at us India in EnglandrdquoAlso Read From gloom to glory