Weekes, in particular, turned out to be the nemesis of the Indian bowlers
Partab Ramchand18-Jul-2005The first West Indian side that visited India in 1948-49 was
largely an unknown quantity. The Caribbean cricketers familiar to
Indians were Learie Constantine and George Headley. Constantine
had long since retired and Headley, almost 40 when he landed in
India, was in the evening of an illustrious career.
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Weekes, in particular, turned out to be the nemesis of the Indian bowlers. Before coming to India, he had already scored 141 in the final Test against England. He continued from where he left off and successive scores of 128, 194, 162 and 101 followed in the first three Tests against India to complete a feat of five hundreds in consecutive innings, a record that stands to this day. |
But the victorious series at home against England the previous
season had helped unearth the burgeoning talent of the three W’s
– Everton Weekes, Frank Worrell and Clyde Walcott. The three
greats were to be the main pillars of the West Indies batting for
the next decade and more, and two of them, Walcott and Weekes
came to India.Headley had a minimal role to play in the series. In the first
Test at New Delhi, he was out for two and did not play again. But
the contributions of the two W’s, opening batsmen Allan Rae and
Jeff Stollmeyer, middle-order batsmen Robert Christiani and allrounder Gerry Gomez saw to it that the West Indies not only
scored a packet of runs but also made them at a pretty nifty
rate.Weekes, in particular, turned out to be the nemesis of the Indian
bowlers. Before coming to India, he had already scored 141 in the
final Test against England. He continued from where he left off
and successive scores of 128, 194, 162 and 101 followed in the
first three Tests against India to complete a feat of five
hundreds in consecutive innings, a record that stands to this
day.He scored a century in each innings in the third Test at Calcutta
and seemed headed for a sixth hundred before he was rather
controversially run out for 90 in the next game at Madras. In the
final Test at Bombay, Weekes was restricted to scores of 56 and
48 and yet finished the series with 779 runs at an average of
111.28, still the highest aggregate by any batsman against India.Predictably, the other batsmen were in the shadow of Weekes’
outstanding performance but the West Indies batted in depth.
Walcott got two hundreds while Gomez, Christiani, Rae and
Stollmeyer all got one each.At New Delhi, the batsmen notched up four hundreds in the same
innings, a rare feat. The relentless run machine was responsible
for successive totals of 631, 629 for six declared, 366, 336 for
nine declared and 582. The Indian bowlers chalked up the kind of
figures they would see in their bad dreams and Vinoo Mankad had
the mortification of conceding 176 runs and 202 runs in
successive innings. The only two spells of lion-hearted bowling
were by CR Rangachari, who took five for 107 at New Delhi, and
Dattu Phadkar, who finished with seven for 159 at Madras.Rangachari in fact had reduced West Indies to 27 for three on the
first morning of the series but so great was the batting depth
that they recovered to score over 600.The strength of the West Indies revolved around their batting.
The bowling was pretty ordinary, something driven home by the
fact that not until the last innings of the series did a bowler
register a five-wicket haul. In Prior Jones, John Trim and Gomez
they had three honest purveyors of seam and swing and in addition
they had FJ Cameron, D Atkinson and skipper John Goddard to bowl
medium paced off-breaks. But they could make little headway
against the Indian batting in which Vijay Hazare and Rusi Modi
were outstanding.Hazare battled his way to 543 runs with two hundreds and Modi
set up an Indian record by scoring 560 runs with one century and
five fifties. In addition, Hemu Adhikari and Mushtaq Ali came up
with three-figure knocks.Indeed, in batting depth and bowling weakness the sides were
evenly matched and this resulted in four of the five Tests being
drawn. The West Indies notched up the lone and decisive victory
of the rubber at Madras where they had an unexpected bonus in the
form of a rest day. Matches were played without a rest day in the
series but January 30th being the first death anniversary of
Mahatma Gandhi, public opinion decreed that it be declared a
holiday.India were 225 for six in reply to West Indies’ 582 at the end of
the third day and when they resumed after a day’s break, the West
Indian seam trio of Jones, Gomez and Trim were fresh enough to
bowl out the Indians for 245 and 144, giving West Indies victory
by an innings and 193 runs.However, India fell just short of leveling the series in the
final Test at Bombay. The bowlers, for once, did well in
restricting West Indies to 286 and 267 and this left India with
395 minutes to get 361. The scores tell us that India finished
with 355 for eight but history has recorded that there were still
two minutes to go and one ball still to be bowled in Jones’
penultimate over when umpire Joshi, probably affected by the
tremendous tension and excitement all round the Brabourne
stadium, called over and lifted the bails signaling the end of
the match and the series.The West Indies had also resorted to negative tactics towards the
end of the game and the team left the field to booing and jeering
from the packed crowd. It certainly remains one of the most
exciting Test matches played in India, notwithstanding the
dramatically frustrating denouement.
