India incredible win over Australia in Melbourne

By A.C.De Silva

Sunil Gavaskar - 70 for India in the second innings helped India to 324 in the second innings.

Greg Chappell scored 76 in Australia’s first innings total of 419.

Dennis Lillee - took 4 for 65 in India’s first innings score of 237 and also had another 4 wickets in India’s second innings total of 324 for match figures of 8 for 169 in the match.

CRICKET: The game of cricket is unpredictable at times and a stunning example to this statement is the result of the cricket Test played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground from February 7 to 11 where India, who were led by the Aussies on the first innings by 182 runs, turned tables and snatched a dramatic win by 59 runs in 1981.

This result will no doubt be one of the most unexpected results in the game of cricket that came out. Just Imagine the first innings. India batting first, were all out for 237 runs with Gundappa Visvanath being the top scorer with 114 runs with fine strokeplay enabled him to build a major innings slowly but surely.

It was a stupendous effort for a man so out of luck. He conquered with will power to prove that his previous failures lay in his stars and not in himself. He scored almost 50 per cent of India’s poor first innings total of 237 and only in the company of number ten, Yadav, did he get to the magic figure of 100 that eluded him successfully through 12 Test matches spread over 14 months before.

After India made 237 runs in their first innings, the Aussies rang up the handsome total of 419 in their first turn with a century by Alan Border (124) good knocks by Greg Chappell (76) and Walters (78) and Marsh chipped in with a useful 45.

Came the second innings of India and Sunil Gavaskar (70) and his opening partner S.P.S. Chauhan (85) batted with great temperament and made good runs and they were involved in a fine first wicket partnership of 165 runs that had the Aussies somewhat bothered.

However, the Aussies struck back with a vengeance after the Indian openers were dismissed and with Dennis Lillee who took 4 for 65 in India’s first innings total of 237, had the fire in him again and took 4 for 104 runs in the second innings and restricted the Indians to 324 runs in their second innings after that wonderful opening partnership between Gavaskar and Chauhan.

Doug Walters - made 78 in the first innings and top score of 18 not out in Australia’s second innings score of 83 all out.

Kapil Dev - 5 for 28 in Australia’s second innings and caused the downfall of the Aussies for 83 in the second innings.

Gundappa Viswanath scored 114 for India in their first innings total of 237.

Allan Border scored 124 in the Australian first innings total of 419.

Though it looked plain sailing for the Aussies, it didn’t turn out to be that way, though they had only 143 runs to make in their second innings to grab a win in this game.

The biggest blow struck on Australia was the dismissal of Greg Chappell in the very first delivery he faced - a short and low ball from Ghavri late on the fourth day and was bowled. At most times the Australian batsmen panic if Greg Chappell falls early and they did the same at this vital point.

When Greg Chappell was out early, the other batsmen just folded up and they never seemed to recover and folded up meekly for 83 runs in their second innings to hand victory to the Indians.

Australia’s reading of the cricket situation was somewhat immature. There was Doug Walters who in the middle for a quite sometime and made 18 not out while the others lost their wickets quickly. The second big blow to the Australians was the dismissals of Kim Hughes early on the final day when he was somewhere shaping well to tackle the situation. And so the Australian crashed for 83 all out with Kapil Dev getting five wickets for 28 runs with Ghavri and Doshi capturing two wickets each.