EDWIN SEERAJ
IN November 1969 a young Indian batsman — yet to celebrate his 21st birthday–made his Test debut at Kanpur against the visiting Australians.From all reports he was a neat, wristy player who relied heavily on timing and touch and possessed a wide array of shots on either side of the wicket.
He had made a double-century two years earlier in his first first-class match playing for Karnataka against Andhra and his consistency and class influenced the selectors to promote him into the Test arena.
He was looked upon as a quality batsman who would take India into the decade of the 1970s and beyond as the ageing stalwarts gradually made way for the younger stars.
Gundappa Ranganath Viswanath, playing in his first Test and batting at number four in the order after India had won the toss and elected to take first strike, strode to the wicket on the first day with India well placed at 167 for the loss of two wickets.
When he joined the opener Ashok Mankad, he must have harboured thoughts of duplicating his performance on his first-class debut and compile a century in his initial Test.
With just four runs added, Viswanath saw Mankad depart and with two new batsmen at the crease, the pressure was building on the Indians. At the same score, the debutant played tentatively at the right-arm fast-medium bowler Alan Conolly and was caught by Ian Redpath without bothering the scorers.
India were eventually bowled out for 320 to which the Australians replied with 348 principally through Paul Sheahan’s 114.
The Indian top order again gave the team a solid start and Viswanath made his entrance second time around at 94 for two.
The nervousness and tension of the first innings had gone and after a sedate start he went on to dominate the innings of 312 for seven wickets declared, ensuring that there was only time enough for the Aussies to battle for a draw.
In the process, he made amends for his first-innings failure, registering a truly stylish 137 off 354 deliveries, laced with 25 elegant boundaries. His was the seventh and final wicket to fall, leg before wicket to the off-spinner Ashley Mallet, triggering tumultuous applause and a standing ovation;the direct opposite of what occurred on his departure in the first innings.
From this platform, Viswanath steadily moved onwards to become one of India’s most glamorous batsmen of his time, culminating in a glittering career of 91Test matches-87 of them consecutively-accumulating 6080 runs and 14 classy centuries at the highly respectable average of 41.93 runs per innings.
Among his most notable batting exploits were an unbeaten 97 out of an all-out 190 at Madras in 1974-75 against a rampaging Andy Roberts (7 for 64)-the next best score being Ashok Mankad’s 19; knocks of 83 and 79 against New Zealand on a Christchurch greentop in 1975-76; a century in the Trinidad Test of 1976 which carried his team to a record victory; and his 124 out of 255 against Alvin Kallicharran’s West Indians at Madras in 1978-79.
The second and only other Test debutant to go from ‘zero to hero’ is the Pakistani Mohammed Wasim who played his first match, aged 19, against the touring New Zealanders in Lahore in November, 1996.
After New Zealand crumbled for 155, batting first on winning the toss, Wasim entered the fray with the Pakistanis precariously placed at 37 for four to join the seasoned campaigner, Salim Malik. He only spent three minutes at the crease and faced three deliveries as Simon Doull, the right-arm medium pacer who had taken three of the first four wickets, bowling Wasim to make Pakistan 37 for five.
However, the home team managed to recover and put together a score of 191, thus earning a handy 36-run lead. New Zealand fared far better in their second innings and were bowled out for 311 setting Pakistan a tricky victory target of 276.
Like in the first innings, Pakistan were in early trouble, and by the time Wasim made his appearance the situation had reached crisis level at 42 for five. He, nevertheless, buckled down to the task at hand and led a remarkable recovery which took his team to within 45 runs of victory when the last wicket fell.
In the process, he added 75 for the seventh wicket with the longstanding wicketkeeper Moin Khan and a further 76 for the eighth wicket in partnership with the tail-ender, Mustaq Ahmed.
But more significantly, Wasim reversed his failure in his first outing by fashioning a counter-attacking and mature unbeaten 109 made in 215 minutes, from 165 deliveries and studded with 17 cracking boundaries. Moin Khan’s 38 was the next best score in the innings.
Wasim only played a paltry 18 Tests mainly because of inconsistency and poor form which followed his debut performance. However, he did record another century-a huge 192 against Zimbabwe in 1998-but a below-par average of 30 runs per innings and a penchant to getting out to injudicious shots combined to cause his sidelining.
The South African, Andrew Hudson, is in a similar league with Viswanath and Wasim only that he went from ‘hero to zero’ instead.
He was one of ten South Africans having their first taste of Test cricket when they engaged the West Indies in the historic one-off match in Barbados in 1992 to mark his team’s re-entry to the highest form of international cricket after an absence of 23 years because of his country’s abominable and disgustingly intolerable apartheid policies.
Asked to bat first, the West Indies edged their way to an uneasy 262 and the South Africans immediately set out to compile a huge total and gain a substantial lead.
The opener, Hudson, was the man identified to hold the innings together and blunt the attack of the fast bowling quartet of Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Patrick Patterson and Kenneth Benjamin.
He played the role admirably, batting for nine hours, to be the seventh man out-bowled by Benjamin for a solid and disciplined 163 out of a total of 345 all out. Indeed he was the hero of the first innings.
Behind by 83, the West Indies just went past their first innings effort to be all out for 283. Set 201 for victory in more than ample time, on a pitch that was still relatively good for batting, South Africa had the distinct advantage as Hudson and his partner arrived in the middle early on the fourth afternoon.
Hudson was so confident that, unlike in the first innings, he now decided to take the first ball from Curtly Ambrose. He survived the first but then edged the second to Brian Lara at slip–gone for a duck–leaving the South Africans at nought for one.
The visitors lost another early wicket but closed the day’s play at 122 for two with the captain Kepler Wessels and Peter Kirsten well entrenched.
The situation changed dramatically on the final morning as Ambrose and Walsh combined to utterly destroy South Africa’s batting, claiming the remaining eight wickets for only 26 runs and in the process carrying the West Indies to a frighteningly famous victory.
Hudson had the consolation of being jointly named Man-of-the-Match and it was the commencement of a career that ended in 1998 with 35 Test appearances, over 2000 runs, three more hundreds and an average of 33.45 per innings.