Five absent hurt

The India second innings on the Kingston card of April 1976 has eleven names and six batting entries. Five of the eleven are marked absent hurt. The total is 97, the fall of wickets ends at five, and West Indies needed 13 to win the match and the series.

Three hundred and six for six, declared

India had been 175 for one at the end of the first day. Sunil Gavaskar made 66, Anshuman Gaekwad 81 in 450 minutes before he retired hurt at 237 for three, which the card notes. Brijesh Patel retired hurt at 273 for three, which the card also notes. Michael Holding took four for 82 in 28 overs. Extras were 45, of which 21 were no-balls and 12 were wides.

Bishan Bedi declared at 306 for six on the second day. The card marks the declaration and the two retirements, and shows Bedi and Bhagwath Chandrasekhar as did not bat. A declaration with two men retired hurt and two more unused is a declaration with a reason, and the card leaves the reason out.

Full scorecard: West Indies v India, 4th Test, Kingston, 21–25 April 1976 →

Three hundred and ninety-one

West Indies replied with 391. Roy Fredericks was run out for 82, Deryck Murray made 71, Viv Richards 64, Holding 55 from number eight. Chandrasekhar bowled 42 overs for five for 153, Srinivas Venkataraghavan 51.3 for two. The lead was 85.

Ninety-seven

Gavaskar was caught off Holding for 2 at 5. Dilip Vengsarkar and Mohinder Amarnath took the score to 68. Then Madan Lal, Amarnath and Venkataraghavan all went at 97: bowled Holding, stumped off Raphick Jumadeen for 60, bowled Holding for 0. Syed Kirmani was 0 not out. The innings was over, and the card says why in the only way a card can.

Gaekwad, absent hurt. Gundappa Viswanath, absent hurt. Patel, absent hurt. Bedi, absent hurt. Chandrasekhar, absent hurt. Five men, which is the most a card can carry before a side stops being one. The total of 97 stands as a completed innings, five wickets down, the other five unavailable.

Where the five were

What put them there is not on the card. Gaekwad had been hit behind the left ear by a bouncer and taken to hospital. Viswanath’s finger was broken by the ball he was caught off in the first innings, for 8. Patel had been hit in the face.

Bedi and Chandrasekhar had not batted in the first innings either. When the fifth wicket fell Bedi announced that the innings was over, and said that he and Chandrasekhar had been injured in the field and that five batters should be recorded as absent hurt. The card records them exactly that way.

Holding took seven wickets in the match. The 21 no-balls in the first innings are on the card too. Between them they describe an attack bowling short from close to the line, and a card can only show the marks it leaves.

Thirteen

West Indies needed 13 and got them in 1.5 overs, without loss, on the fourth day. Madan Lal bowled one over and Vengsarkar, a batter, the other five balls. West Indies won by ten wickets and the series 2-1, nine days after India had chased 406 at Port of Spain to level it.

The card’s bowling table for that last innings is two lines long, and one of the two names on it is a number three batter’s. It is the shortest way the card has of saying that the five specialist bowlers India brought to the match were, by its last afternoon, down to one.

What the card holds

A first innings declared with two batters retired hurt. A second innings closed with five absent. A target of 13 bowled at by a batter. Two notes, each saying where a man retired and nothing about why. And a series result, 2-1, that the card records as a plain fact under the name of the ground, which was Sabina Park, and would be the ground of another abandonment twenty-two years on.

••••••

No. 7 in Declared, a series of 15.

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