A hundred and thirteen wickets

The Bombay card of February 1980 has one name in the bowling tables and the batting tables at once. Ian Botham: 22.5 overs, six for 58; 114 from 144 balls; 26 overs, seven for 48. England won by ten wickets with a day to spare, and the card lists no player of the match, because the award was not given.

Two hundred and forty-two

India chose to bat. Sunil Gavaskar made 49, Syed Kirmani 40 not out, and the rest went to Botham and Bob Taylor. The ledger of dismissals reads: caught Taylor bowled Botham, run out, caught Taylor bowled Stevenson, bowled Lever, caught Taylor bowled Botham, lbw Botham, caught Taylor bowled Botham, not out, caught Taylor bowled Stevenson, caught Taylor bowled Botham, caught Taylor bowled Botham. Seven catches for the keeper, six wickets for Botham, all out 242 on the first day.

Full scorecard: India v England, Golden Jubilee Test, Bombay, 15–19 February 1980 →

Two hundred and ninety-six

England were 58 for five. Graham Gooch 8, Wayne Larkins 0 first ball, Geoff Boycott 22, David Gower 16, Mike Brearley 5. Botham came in at six and Taylor at seven, and they put on 171. Botham made 114 with 17 fours and was leg before to Karsan Ghavri at 229. Taylor made 43 from 180 balls in 275 minutes, and was leg before to Kapil Dev at 262.

The card gives Taylor’s innings as one line. What it does not give is that he was given out earlier in it, protested, and stayed when Gundappa Viswanath, the Indian captain, took his side. Ghavri took five for 52. The lead was 54.

One hundred and forty-nine

Roger Binny leg before to Botham for 0 at 4. Dilip Vengsarkar leg before to John Lever at 22. Viswanath caught Taylor bowled Botham for 5 at 31, and Sandeep Patil leg before to Botham first ball, 31 for four. Gavaskar caught Taylor bowled Botham for 24 at 56. Kirmani caught Gooch bowled Botham for 0 at 58. Six down for 58, five of them Botham’s.

Kapil Dev made 45 not out. Yashpal Sharma 27, leg before to Botham. Shivlal Yadav caught Taylor bowled Botham for 15 at 148. Dilip Doshi caught and bowled Lever, 149 all out. Botham: 26 overs, seven maidens, 48 runs, seven wickets. Taylor: three more catches, ten in the match.

Ninety-eight for no wicket

England needed 96. Gooch made 49 not out and Boycott 43 not out, and it took 29.3 overs. India used seven bowlers, the last of them Viswanath, for three balls. The card’s close-of-play lines run: England 3 for no wicket, rest day, England 232 for six, India 148 for eight, end of match. Four days of cricket in five dates.

What made it unrepeatable

A hundred and ten wickets in a match by one player had not been done in a Test before. Taylor’s ten catches were a record for a wicketkeeper at the time. The two came in the same match, from the same two men, one bowling and one catching, and the card has them both.

The match itself was a one-off, played to mark fifty years of the Indian board, with no series line at all. The umpires were Jiban Ghosh and S. N. Hanumantha Rao, and it is Test number 874.

What the card holds

Thirteen wickets and 114 for one man. Ten catches for another, and a 43 that took 275 minutes beside the hundred. A first-innings collapse to 58 for five rescued by the sixth wicket. Two innings of 242 and 149 in which the same bowler took thirteen of the twenty. And an umpire’s decision that was made and then unmade, which the card does not show and the innings of 43 depends on.

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No. 10 in Unrepeatable, a series of 22.

NextSix off seventy-seven balls