Tie was greatest result possible after stirring duel

The five days of Tied Test II were most miserably humid days. Even out in the open of the Chepauk pavilion, we would be drenched in sweat even as we sat down at 9.30 am to watch the day’s play. Imagine then the plight of the players who had to battle it out in the middle in intensely depressing weather as tons of sweat poured off the body with the force of Cauvery water flowing out of the dams. This was the Test during which the famous ice bath may have been invented —  the one in which they dumped Dean Jones on the evening of the first day after the batsman’s heroic toil in the humidity of Chennai by the sea.

Only the day previous to the Test I had arranged for a contact of mine to supply the Australian team with 300 cans of assorted imported beer. However reputed the Kingfisher brand may have been even in those days, the Aussie tourists of 1986 pined for the real brew and the coach Bob Simpson had requested me to get a supply line going.

The bathroom in his suite was converted into the beer storage room with the cans thrown into the ice in the tub. The same technique may have saved the life of the battling Jones too. Imagine making a double hundred in such draining weather when all he could think of was how to retch by the side of the pitch without incommoding the other 14 men on the field with him.

Simpson thought Bisleri water had changed the face of India for the tourists as he had known the travails of drinking water on previous tours in 1964 and 1969. The ice bath would have been a new experience in rehydrating techniques.

Jones who made 210, then the highest score by an Australian in India (bettering Graham Yallop’s 167) in 503 minutes, 330 balls with 27x4, 2x6 was marvellously fluent despite his physical problems and after spending the night in the Apollo Hospital. That he came back to resume batting on the second morning was one of those miracles of sport in those days. For the Indians, caned by Jones for a good part of two days, batting second was a challenge.

Skipper Kapil Dev’s brilliant century in what could be rated his finest Test innings in terms of fluency and stroke making virtuosity enabled India to get past the fright of being asked to follow on after being reduced to 245 for 7 and Australia’s 574 seeming Himalayan at that point. It was the resourceful Chetan Sharma, Kapil’s forlorn partner in trying to bowl quick in such weather conditions, who stayed in with his skipper to get India up to 330.

The match was to be lit up by the declaration that Border and Simpson had decided upon, setting India 348 in those times when a minimum of 87 overs had to be bowled on the final day.

The bright one-day kind of start provided by Srikkanth, Gavaskar and Mohnider Amarnath meant India were in the hunt. An amazing contribution of the skipper Kapil Dev to this Test was his decision to go for the target, come what may. Steve Waugh’s athletic running from wide long on to long off to catch Srikkanth’s lofted drive into the vacant straight field on the off side was an early turning point. As Greg Matthews and Ray Bright plugged away, the match see-sawed on the final afternoon. As excited commentators sitting right next to the left of the press box were discussing the possibilities, it was expert M.L. Jaisimha who first uttered the word ‘tie’ as a fourth possible result in the final hour. Prescient it proved as in the previous 1051 Tests there had only been the memorable Tied Test in Brisbane.

At 331 for six, it seemed a wrap for India but Kapil flayed at Matthews in a slog sweep-pull and top edged. The late batting order was depleted somewhat by wicket-keeper Kiran More who had ordered a rare steak of the eve of the Test to pull up in the first hour with ‘pitham’ as Chandu Borde, chairman of selectors was to explain to me, and he was retching so much he had to leave the field in the first hour and Chandu Pandit, chosen as middle-order batsman, kept wickets. More did not prosper in the second innings either and he didn’t trouble the scorers.

Absolutely any result was possible as Ravi Shastri, the WCC Champion of Champions of 1985 and acknowledged Test all-rounder then who completed 2,000 runs and 100 wickets in the Test, marshaled the finish. Off the fourth ball of the final over, Shastri decided to take the single to square leg to tie the scores rather than try anything heroic. And then the finish came at 5.18 pm with Greg Matthews appealing wildly for leg before even as Allan Border was gathering the ball at silly point wondering if he could have made the catch.

It was the next morning at the Airport as the cricket caravan, all with red eyes after a finish like that, was catching the flight to Hyderabad that Shastri came up to me and declared the result was the wrong one as Maninder had played the ball. “Look at the picture of the tie. I put up my hand to decline any thought of stealing a single. There would have been one ball left and Manni could have gone for it,” Shastri said. To have witnessed a Tied Test was somehow far more satisfying. What a finish!