Sport Today

this reminds me of the india-england series in the early seventies in india. this was the madras test and pataudi was the indian captain. england was batting in the last innings (?) and needed not too many runs to win. thay still had eight wickets in hand, i guess and were sailing pretty easy. then bedi and prasanna struck suddenly and grabbed three wickets between them. again, after this collapse, english batsmen recovered ground with the help of knott and some other guy. my memory is not very clear about

the details, but the test match has remained as a thrilling one because of just one thing. after bowling his first couple of spells, prasanna had torn the skin off his spinning finger and could not bowl because of the pain. but when the pother bowlers could not break this crucial partnership, pataudi had to do something soon. he went down to deep third man where you could always find prasanna ( if he is not the captain :-)) and had a few words with the greatest off-spinner ever ( not my words, but sir garf

i
eld sobers') and hey presto! there was prasanna at the bowling crease at the famed chepauk stadium's wallajah road end! he delivered the first ball and it spun viciously, beating the batsman comprehensively. there was a midwicket conference between the batsmen. then, they walk up to the umpire and tell him that prasanna should not bowl with the plaster on his finger. well, the captain and the bowler are in a dilemma. but prasanna takes off the plaster and says he'll bowl!
he did and how he did!! england had the second collapse and prasanna won the match for india through sheer brilliant bowling. not the scary type, mind you. just the lovely looping, flighted deliveries in that smooth action of his that endeared him to all. he ended up with five wickets for around fifty runs (he did not bowl for the major part of the innings). that was really greta bowling and an example of the captain's faith in his strike bowler and the bowler's loyalty to his captain and team. no wonder t

h
en that wadekar's entry meant prasanna's gradual downfall because wadekar had more faith in venkat and just did not think that prasanna was good enough for him. both bedi and prasanna got shabby treatment from col.adhikari and wadekar during the 71 tour of england. infact, when john arlott spoke to prasanna before the start of one of the matches, he asked him how his ankle was. prasanna asked him "what ankle?" because prasanna did not know that an imaginary ankle problem was supposed to be the reason for d

r
opping him from that test!!
sorry for digressing. but there is also another great performance by chandra which gave us our first victory against england in england. maybe somebody can give a clear story of chandra's six for thirtysix? his best performance, i guess.
-murali iyer.