When GR Vishwanath hit Sunil Gavaskar for a six, riots started, in Allahabad!

Gundappa Ranganath Vishwanath smoked a dolly from Sunil Manohar Gavaskar for a straight six over long on, at the Madan Mohan Malviya Stadium, Allahabad! Really? Oh yes, he did! I was there!! As were my father and sisters, along with thousands of others!

It was the Col. CK Nayudu Benefit Match in Allahabad, now Prayagraj, when this incident happened, probably, in 1975, if I remember correctly. As if on cue, many people rushed into the grounds from all sides, following that huge six from GR Vishwanath. The players scampered back to the safety of the pavilion. Before long, the crowds got into rioting with the police trying their best to calm down proceedings.

Courtesy: WikiBio.

I don’t know what happened thereafter, as my dad took us all back to the car, and home. We had tickets for the pavilion, actually, right next to it. I caught glimpses of BS Chandrasekhar and Karsan Ghavri, both Indian test cricketers. As for the game, I faintly remember Gopal Bose playing some sumptuous drives, as did Parthasarthy Sharma. Sudhir Naik probably opened with Gopal Bose. I don’t even remember the names of the two teams. I definitely cannot remember all the names of the players’ who participated. There were a galaxy of stars for the game!

I’ve searched the Internet! There is no description of this game, which is unfortunate. I was so young that it is impossible to remember names of players who participated in the game. However, I do remember Sunil Gavaskar getting married to Marshneil Mehrotra, a Kanpur girl. I also found a photo of their wedding from Sportsweek, a magazine published by Khalid Ansari. Sportsweek really was a fabulous magazine. I stopped receiving it when we shifted from Allahabad to Delhi. By the way, my birthplace also happens to be Kanpur. 😉

MMM Stadium, Allahabad was a ground where I played and watched some cricket, and later, watched football, at the Patu Memorial Football Tournament.

For me, I was so excited to watch Sunil Gavaskar in flesh and blood. He had a great start as an opening batsman in the West Indies, scoring 774 runs in the five-match Test series, including four hundreds. In the last test match at Port of Spain, he scored 124 and 220, becoming only the second player to achieve this feat after Doug Walters of Australia.

The next time I saw Sunil Gavaskar play was vs. England in New Delhi, 1984. India lost that game committing hara-kiri against Phil Edmonds and Pat Pocock. Kapil Dev was dropped for the next test for playing a silly shot in that game. However, GR Vishwanath had long disappeared. He probably found the going tough, while Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar, and Mohinder Amarnath, were going great guns.

India did not have any good bowlers, besides Kapil Dev. He only had Ghavri for support, for a short period. Madan Lal and Roger Binny were honest triers at best. BS Bedi, EAS Prasanna, and Chandrasekhar had long retired, and S. Venkataraghavan was probably in the last stages of his career. However, Kapil led India to triumph in the 60-over 1983 World Cup Cricket in England, along with Binny, Madan Lal, Amarnath, Gavaskar, Patil, Kirmani, Yashpal, Sandhu, Vengsarkar, Azad, Srikanth, and Shastri! It changed the face of Indian cricket forever!

Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, and the others mentioned, were among the batch of very good cricketers that emerged from India. Later, Sachin Tendulkar burst into the scene, and further moved the game forward with multiple batting records. Today, India has made rapid strides in world cricket with several very good cricket players, and many more are still emerging.