The club that Rohit joined

By deciding to bat first in bowler-friendly conditions against the New Zealanders in the opening Test at Bangalore, Sharma joined a host of illustrious skippers who faltered with their toss decisions

The recent India versus NZ  Bangalore Test will be remembered for multiple reasons: India getting bowled out for 46, five ducks in India’s first innings, the devastating bowling of NZ  pacers Matt Henry and Will O’Rourke, Sarfaraz Khan’s maiden ton, Rishabh Pant missing his century by one run, the splendid batting efforts of Dean Conway, Rachin Ravindra and Tim Southee, the rain, and of course, the toss which Rohit Sharma won but chose to bat.

Rohit will figure prominently in the list of captains to have missed an opportunity to allow his bowlers to make full use of the helpful conditions in the hope of tormenting the New Zealand batting line-up.

That said, we don’t always come to know what the general thinking of the team is and in this case, we may never know the ‘inside’ story. There is also the fear of batting in the fourth innings, but Rohit was man enough to admit that he misread the strip.

It is safe to assume that there are dressing room debates on what teams should do if they win the toss no matter how astute the captain is. England’s Nasser Hussain once chose to field in bowler-friendly conditions at Brisbane, where the 2003-04 Ashes opened.

England ended up losing the Test by 384 runs and lost three more on the bounce before a consolation win in Sydney.

In 1986-87, Australia captain Allan Border was heavily criticised for not batting first against England in the opening Test of the Ashes series at Brisbane. Ian Botham blasted his way to a 174-ball 138 which included 13 fours and four sixes. Half centuries from Bill Athey, skipper Mike Gatting and David Gower also helped England amass 456. In the end, England had to score just 75 for victory. 

Among the critics was Australian cricket legend Keith Miller, who said in the Sun Herald: “If you win the toss, you’ve won a 150-run advantage. Yet, today you get captains who won’t bat first after winning the toss.”

Border went on to lose the series, but England couldn’t achieve any further Ashes series honours till 2005.

In Indian domestic cricket, Mohinder Amarnath copped some flak for “gifting” the Ranji Trophy to Bombay (now Mumbai) in the 1983-84 final when he asked Sunil Gavaskar & Co to bat first at the Wankhede Stadium. 

“It must go down as one of the more quixotic decisions in cricket. One could have bet one’s bottom dollar then and there that Bombay would triumph. It did,” wrote R Mohan in The Sportstar magazine.

Bombay piled up 625 with the help of Gavaskar’s unbeaten 206 at No. 5 and one-drop Dilip Vengsarkar’s 123 to which Delhi responded with 333. The match was decided on Bombay’s first innings lead.

How can one think of Vengsarkar the batsman and not talk about Lord’s. India opened the 1986 Test series against England there, the then headquarters of cricket. The late Raj Singh Dungarpur was on his second tour as manager of a touring Indian team in England. Discussions on what Kapil Dev should do if he beats David Gower at the toss on the morning of June 5 were held a couple of days before the start. Raj Singh in an interview told me that the toss was “discussed threadbare.” He was a regular at Lord’s, lived across the iconic ground and knew the people who mattered there. On one of his Test build-up visits, he met a groundsmen and asked him how many days the pitch was covered for. Three days, he said and agreed with Raj Singh, who said in response, “So the moisture content is quite high.”

Raj Singh carried this information to the team meeting and it was agreed that India would bowl first.

“I’ve been manager on several occasions and I have come the conclusion that the batsmen in the team want to field first and bowlers want to bat first so they have a big total to bowl at,” Raj Singh told me.

However, he recalled Kapil being unsure after he won the toss. According to Raj Singh the captain had not conveyed to Gower his preference immediately. He recalled: “Kapil came to the dressing room and asked what should we do. I reminded him that we had decided last night, so what has changed? My view was we put them in because we had top-class seamers—Kapil himself, Roger Binny, Chetan Sharma and if needed Mohinder Amarnath. I said the whole team as well thinks we should field. Kapil then went and conveyed the decision to Gower.”

With his team on the field and only a few reserve players in the dressing, the manager didn’t feel good when England were working their way to a lunch score of 81 for one. However, post lunch, England lost three wickets (Gower, Mike Gatting and Allan Lamb in the space of 11 Chetan deliveries. A total of 294 was not a score the hosts would have been delighted with and India replied with 341 which included a hundred from Vengsarkar. In the words of Wisden Cricket Monthly editor David Frith, Vengsarkar was “unobtrusively elegant, cool” for his third century in three Tests at Lord’s.

Frith said Vengsarkar was among “the crowded Hall of Indian Heroes for this particular match which seemed nicely balanced over the rest day.”

India’s other heroes in the country’s first ever Test win at Lord’s were Chetan who claimed 5-64 in England’s first innings, Kapil, whose 4-52 proved decisive as England were bowled out for 180 in their second innings. Maninder Singh, who claimed four in the Test and batted for over an hour for six with centurion Vengsarkar at the other end played his part too as did Kiran More who scored 25 in the same innings, Mohinder Amarnath got a first innings 69. And Mohammed Azharuddin, who former captain Bob Willis felt played “the best strokes” for his first innings 33.

Four years later, Azhar was at the centre of controversy when he decided to put England in at Lord’s in 1990. Skipper Graham Gooch feasted on the Indian bowling with a triple century as his side amassed 653-4. India’s margin of defeat was massive too—247 runs.

Invariably, a bad first-day-of-the-series decision leads to a series loss. That probably won’t happen to the formidable current Indian team, but then, what do they say about cricket’s uncertainties?

mid-day’s group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello 

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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper

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