1952
Twelve for 108, and a first
Vinoo Mankad took eight for 55 and four for 53 at Madras in February 1952, and India beat England by an innings and eight runs. It was India’s first Test win, twenty years and twenty-five Tests after their first match. The card has a rest day in the wrong place, and a second document explains it.
The Madras card of February 1952 is Test number 348 and the fifth of five. England chose to bat and made 266. India replied with 457 for nine declared and bowled England out for 183. The result line reads India won by an innings and 8 runs, on the fourth day of five. Every Test before it, back to Lord’s in 1932, India had drawn or lost.
Eight for 55
Frank Lowson was bowled by Dattu Phadkar for 1 with the score 3. Then the wickets belong to one man. Tom Graveney 39, stumped Sen bowled Mankad. Dick Spooner 66 in 170 minutes, caught Phadkar bowled Vijay Hazare, the one wicket in the innings that was neither Phadkar’s nor Mankad’s. Allan Watkins 9, caught Gopinath bowled Mankad. Cyril Poole 15, bowled Mankad.
Jack Robertson made 77 in 270 minutes, caught and bowled Mankad at 244. Donald Carr, the England captain on this card, 40, stumped Sen bowled Mankad. Malcolm Hilton 0, stumped Sen bowled Mankad. Brian Statham 6, stumped Sen bowled Mankad. Fred Ridgway 0, leg before Mankad. Roy Tattersall 2 not out. England 266 all out.
Mankad’s line: 38.5 overs, 15 maidens, 55 runs, eight wickets. Khokhan Sen stumped four of them. Lala Amarnath bowled 27 overs for 56 without a wicket and Ghulam Ahmed 18 for 53 without one.
Full scorecard: India v England, 5th Test, Madras, 6–10 February 1952 →
The rest day on the Thursday
The card’s close-of-play list runs Wednesday 6 February, day one, England 224 for five; Thursday 7 February, rest day; then Friday, Saturday, Sunday. A rest day after the first day is not where a rest day goes. The tour page on Wikipedia gives the reason: the death of King George VI was announced during the afternoon of the first day, and the Thursday was set aside for it. The card records the gap and nothing about why.
Four hundred and fifty-seven
Mushtaq Ali made 22 and Pankaj Roy 111 in 230 minutes with fifteen fours. Hazare, the Indian captain, 20; Mankad 22; Amarnath 31. India were 206 for four at the close of the second day, Amarnath and Phadkar together. Phadkar made 61 with the innings’ only six, and Polly Umrigar 130 not out in 275 minutes. Chingleput Gopinath made 35 in 80 minutes and the seventh wicket fell at 413.
Hazare declared at 457 for nine on the third day, 191 ahead. Hilton bowled 40 overs for 100 and two wickets, Tattersall 39 for 94 and two, Carr 19 for 84 and two.
Four for 53
England were 12 without loss at the close of the third day and lost both openers by 15 on the fourth morning: Spooner leg before to Ramesh Divecha for 6, Lowson caught Mankad off Phadkar for 7. Ghulam Ahmed took the next three, Graveney 25, Robertson 56 and Poole 3, and then Carr, caught Mankad, for a fourth. Watkins made 48 and was caught and bowled by Mankad at 159.
Statham was caught by Gopinath off Mankad for 9, Ridgway bowled by Mankad for 0, Hilton stumped by Sen off Mankad for 15, the fifth stumping of the match off the same bowler. England 183 all out in 75.5 overs. Mankad 30.5 overs, four for 53. Ghulam Ahmed 26 overs, four for 77. Twelve for 108 in the match for Mankad, and an innings and eight runs.
Twenty-five Tests
The tour page puts the win at twenty years and twenty-five Tests after India’s first, at Lord’s in June 1932. The count by series comes out the same: one Test in 1932, three each in 1933-34, 1936 and 1946, five each in 1947-48 and 1948-49, and this was the fifth of 1951-52. The series line reads five-match series drawn 1-1, England having won at Kanpur. Later in 1952 India won a series for the first time, against Pakistan.
Mankad played 44 Tests, for 2,109 runs and 162 wickets. His Wikipedia page gives the first-innings figures here as eight for 52; the card says eight for 55, and the card is the document. The umpires were Balkrishna Mohoni and Mysore Vijayasarathi. Thirty-six years on, the same ground gave a debutant sixteen wickets.
What the card holds
Eight for 55 and four for 53 from one bowler, with five stumpings off him. A 111 and a 130 not out in a 457 for nine declared. A rest day on a Thursday that a second document has to explain. An innings win on the fourth day, the first India had, and a Test number, 348, that was their twenty-fifth.
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No. 21 in Unrepeatable, a series of 22.
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