India won the first Test with a day to spare in conditions suiting spin bowling

Partab Ramchand13-Dec-2002The Indian team in 1967-68 came to New Zealand after completingtheir tour of Australia. Eight years later, it was again a dualtour but on this occasion the Indians first visited New Zealandbefore going on to the West Indies.By this time New Zealand were no longer the weakest team amongthe cricketing nations. They had won a series in Pakistan, cometantalizingly close to repeating the feat in India, shared arubber in West Indies and registered their first victory overAustralia. The years preceding the series had seen New Zealandproduce world-class players in Glenn Turner, Richard Hadlee andKen Wadsworth while experienced hands like Richard Collinge,Dayle Hadlee, Bevan Congdon, Headley Howarth and Mark Burgesswere still around.It was thus always on the cards that the three-match Test seriesto be held in January-February 1976 would be closely contestedand it indeed was. India won the first Test at Auckland by eightwickets, the rain-affected second Test at Christchurch was drawnwhile New Zealand drew level by taking the final Test atWellington by an innings and 33 runs.The Indians were by no means a weak side. The spin quartet was attheir peak while the batting revolved around Sunil Gavaskar,Gundappa Viswanath, Brijesh Patel and the Amarnath brothersSurinder and Mohinder while a lot was expected from `new boy’Dilip Vengsarkar. Also for once, the Indians were not handicappedin the new-ball department. Mohinder Amarnath and Madan Lal notonly made sure that India would make early breakthroughs but thetwo did a lot of stock bowling too.The windy conditions encouraged seam bowling and in the secondTest there was the unusual sight of the two Indian openingbowlers sending down a total of 68.1 overs between them to takenine wickets while Bedi, Prasanna and Chandrasekhar sent down 64overs to capture just one wicket between them.But if the conditions helped Madan Lal and Mohinder then it wasobvious that New Zealand’s seam trio of Richard Collinge and theHadlee brothers Richard and Dayle would relish the conditionseven more. The pitches for the second and third Tests were seamoriented and in the cold, blistery conditions, Collinge (6 for63) and Dayle Hadlee (3 for 76) restricted the Indian firstinnings total to 270.In the final Test, Richard Hadlee was in his elements. Revelingin the windy conditions at the Basin Reserve, the future worldrecord holder had match figures of 11 for 58 to star in NewZealand’s first-ever victory by an innings. He was particularlydevastating in the second innings, taking seven for 23 as Indiacollapsed for 81, the lowest total in contests between the twocountries.Earlier, India won the first Test with a day to spare inconditions suiting spin bowling. Prasanna with figures of threefor 64 and eight for 76 was the star and in the process heovertook Vinoo Mankad’s long-standing record of 162 Test wickets- the highest tally by an Indian.Another stellar performance came from Surinder Amarnath whoemulated his father’s feat of scoring a hundred on Test debut.With Lala Amarnath having got a century in his first Test againstEngland at Bombay 42 years before, it made the duo the firstfather-son combination to achieve this feat in Test cricket. Theleft-handed Surinder who got 124, dominated a record secondwicket partnership of 204 runs with Gavaskar (116). Chandrasekhartoo played a notable role in the victory taking six for 94 in thefirst innings.Gavaskar stood in as captain for the regular tour captain BishanBedi who sustained a leg injury on the eve of the Test and heemulated Polly Umrigar by leading India to victory in his firstTest as captain.Thereafter however the tide turned against the tourists inconditions generally alien to them. New Zealand had the better ofthe drawn second Test and clearly outplayed India in the finalgame of the series. Viswanath came up with two fine knocks of 83and 79 at Christchurch while Patel contributed a fighting 81 atWellington. Syed Kirmani who made his Test debut in the seriesequaled the world record of six dismissals in an innings thenshared by Wally Grout, John Murray and Dennis Lindsay.But these were a few crumbs of comfort for the tourists towardsthe latter half of the tour when New Zealand had the better shareof the exchanges. Besides the bowling of Collinge and the Hadleebrothers, New Zealand were well served by the batting. Turner gotNew Zealand’s only century of the series in the second Test whileBurgess came up with a stroke-filled 95 in the third Test andveteran Bevan Congdon displayed his consistency with successivescores of 54, 54, 58 and 52.