Dattajirao Krishnarao Gaekwad recollects ‘0 for 4’

Chennai:In a way the opening day of the fourth Test at Manchester had revitalised the memory of 85-year-old former Indian cricket captain Dattajirao Krishnarao Gaekwad. The sight of India losing four wickets without scoring a run (from 8/0 to 8/4) in a span of 13 balls in the first hour on Thursday rekindled Gaekwad’s bitter memories of the famous Indian batting collapse, none for four, against the pace of England’s Fred Trueman in the 1952 Leeds Test.

“On seeing India’s batting, my mind strolled back to the second innings of my debut Test. Trueman claimed three out of the four wickets Pankaj Roy, myself, Madhav Mantri and Vijay Manjrekar to fall with nothing on the board. Among them Mantri and Manjrekar were cleaned up by unplayable deliveries,” Gaekwad, who was dismissed by Sir Alec Bedser (second wicket to fall), told this newspaper. “When I saw the scoreboard reading 8/4, I thought a repeat of the Manchester Test in 1952 where we were bowled out for 58 and 82 was in store. Luckily it wasn’t an encore,” he said.

More than six decades have gone by and Gaekwad, father of former India cricketer and coach Anshuman Gaekwad, still remembers a fiery debutant pacer in Trueman trying to literally knock the Indians out. “In short, Trueman was fast and erratic. He would beat the bat on one occasion, bowl a bouncer next, slip one down the leg-side and finally hurl a full toss at you. As a batsman we were clueless as to what will be thrown at us with no restrictions on the bowlers those days,” he said.

Gaekwad, who led the Indian team to Old Blighty in 1959, said that Trueman was a completely different bowler later on in his career. “We saw him swinging the ball and there was a substantial decrease in his pace. It was this change which made him a great bowler,” added Gaekwad, who along with C.D. Gopinath, are the two survivors of the playing eleven from the

Leeds Test.

When asked about the differences in Trueman and James Anderson, the former Baroda batsman said: “Trueman had the advantage of uncovered pitches whereas Anderson has to bowl on a lot of placid tracks, such as the one at Nottingham. Anderson is definitely a skillful bowler in the modern era and that’s why he has been a successful one at that.”