Sunil Gavaskar replaced Bishen Singh Bedi as skipper for the home series against Pakistan in 1979-80. Probably the first time in more than a decade, none of the members of the spin trio was in the team. Dileep Doshi came into the side. Gavaskar, the supreme tactician, plotted the downfall of Zaheer Abbas, by evolving a strategy to pin him down the leg side. On the off side, Zaheer was king. On the leg side, he looked pathetic and just a shadow of the batsman who scored at will against the Indians in Pakistan.

As soon as Zaheer would reach the wicket, the Indians would make a big scene of wideranging changes in the field. Fielders were moved round conspicuously from the off side to a leg side trap for Zaheer. Backward short-leg or leg slip and forward short-leg were placed close to the bat on the on side. The bowlers attacked his leg stump.

Doshi would bowl outside the leg stump, spinning the ball into Zaheer from wide outside the leg stump. Zaheer wasn't an effective sweeper or a driver of the ball against the turn on the on side. With Zaheer's range of strokeplay totally cut off on the off side, the Indians mounted pressure on Zaheer. The run flow stemmed, Zaheer played desperate shots to break the shackle but invariably fell to the pressure.

Asif Iqbal too didn't pose as big a challenge as skipper like his predecessor Mushtaq Mohammed. There were rumours of the bookies trying to fix matches. Did Zaheer and Asif fall a prey? They would deny it but speculation was rife when Asif Iqbal organised several rounds of cricket in Sharjah, where the Indians fared poorly. The influence of big money crept into the game in Sharjah, and perhaps cast a spell on several Asian cricketers. In later years, the Board of Control for Cricket in India thought it fit to keep away from cricket in Sharjah, perhaps an echo of the charges of match-fixing.

Zaheer Abbas made just 40 and 31 n.o in the first Test, and progressively his scores declined to 3 (b Kapil) and 50 in the second, 2 (b Binny) and 11 (b Kapil) in the third; 5 (Kapil) in the 4th; 0 (Kapil) and 15 (Kapil) while he did not play the last Test. What a fall for the master-batsman whose back the Indian bowlers rarely saw during the previous series in Pakistan. There was not a single century and there was only one 50 for the run machine.

India won the six-Test series in India 2-0, clinching the third Test in Mumbai by 131 runs and the fifth in Chennai (powered by skipper Gavaskar's brilliant 166), by 10 wickets. The series also saw the emergence of Kapil Dev as a front-ranking bowler for India.

By R Rangaraj

Back to Index