India’s 1971 tour of England was the story of unprecedented success and reaching new highs. When they had a tour of the same country in 1974, the story was not so rosy. It was very cold and wet summer and hence the touring Indians, specially the spin quartet (Bishan Bedi, Chandrasekhar, Prasanna, and Venkat) did not find it comfortable and their batsmen were impacted by the swing off the pitch and in the air.
They won two of their 12 practice matches before the first test but could not compete much in the test match at Old Trafford as they were lost by 113 runs.
The second test at Lord’s started on 20th June. England batted first and scored a massive total of 629 runs as Dennis Amiss, Tony Greig and captain Mike Denness, all scored centuries. India played three spinners out of which Chandrasekhar was injured and could bowl only 10 overs. Bedi and Prasanna had to bowl combined 115.2 overs for 392 runs and eight wickets but did not get much support from others.
Coming to bat in their first innings, the Indian batsmen took a peculiar approach as they kept playing aggressively instead of looking to build an innings and go as close as to that mountain of runs set by England. As a result, the team scored runs at a good pace but kept losing wickets and were all-out for 302. It was a deficit of 327 runs and England forced them to follow on and they were 2 /0 at the end of day three.
The test match had a rest day on Sunday and when the players came back the next day, on 24th June 1974, a day of extreme failure was awaiting the Indians. With the rain on Sunday, the conditions changed dramatically and the pitch also became quite lively compared to the first three days.
The English fast bowlers Geoff Arnold and Chris Old took the full benefit of the condition suitable to them as India kept losing wickets. They were 14/ 4 with Arnold taking three of those four wickets. Sunil Gavaskar and Eknath Solkar added 11 runs and as the Indian fans in the crowd were hoping for a recovery, Gavaskar was out as Arnold’s 4th wicket with the team total of 25. After that, there was not much resistance. Old picked up the last four wickets and at 42/9 missed a chance of hat-trick as the injured Chandrasekhar did not come out to bat. Eknath Solkar remained unbeaten on 18. This 42 at Lord’s is India’s lowest test score till date and this moment is always remembered as the lowest point of that very difficult tour which they ended with a 3-0 series loss.
