406 for 4: India's spinners set up a record chase at Port of Spain
West Indies set India 403 to win the third Test of the 1976 series at Queen's Park Oval. Sunil Gavaskar, Mohinder Amarnath and Gundappa Viswanath all made fifties or better, and India reached 406 for 4, a higher score than any side had chased before.
Richards and the spinners
West Indies batted first at Queen's Park Oval in the third Test of the 1976 series and were carried by a young Viv Richards, still building the reputation that would soon make him the most feared batter in the world. He made 177, adding 124 for the fourth wicket with his captain Clive Lloyd, who made 68, and 107 for the sixth with Bernard Julien, who made 47. India's two spinners, Bishan Bedi and Bhagwath Chandrasekhar, did most of the work once the recognised batting had finally gone, bowling long, patient spells on a pitch that offered them little help early on. Chandrasekhar alone finished with 6 for 120 and Bedi 4 for 73, and West Indies were all out for 359, a substantial total built almost entirely around one long innings.
India reply and fall behind
India's first innings was more modest. Gundappa Viswanath made 41 and Madan Lal 42 down the order, but Michael Holding, still only 22 and already recognised as one of the quickest bowlers in the world, took 6 for 65 and India were bowled out for 228, a deficit of 131. On a pitch that was still true for batting, it was a lead that left West Indies in complete control of the match, with two results, a win or a draw, still open to them and a loss looking close to impossible from where the game stood.
Kallicharran sets a target
West Indies batted again to press the advantage. Alvin Kallicharran made an unbeaten 103, batting with the same fluency he had shown throughout the tour, adding 81 for the fourth wicket with Clive Lloyd, who made 36, and 52 for the fifth with Deryck Murray, who made 25. Clive Lloyd declared with West Indies on 271 for 6, setting India a target of 403 to win, a total far beyond what any side had successfully chased in the history of Test cricket at that point. With India's batting still to be tested on a pitch that had begun to wear and turn, Lloyd had every reason to expect his side would either win or, at worst, draw the match comfortably.
Gavaskar and Amarnath build the base
Sunil Gavaskar and Anshuman Gaekwad put on 69 for the first wicket, batting through the early period against Holding and Julien without alarm, and after Gaekwad was out for 28, Gavaskar and Mohinder Amarnath added 108 for the second. Gavaskar reached his century, moving serenely through the middle of the innings against an attack that had bowled India out cheaply in the first innings, and was out for 102, caught with the score on 177, still 226 runs short. The platform he and Amarnath had built, though, left India ahead of the rate they needed and with wickets in hand to press on.
Viswanath's century
Gundappa Viswanath and Mohinder Amarnath then added 159 for the third wicket, the biggest stand of the innings, batting through the middle session with a fluency that made the huge target look increasingly gettable. Viswanath made 112, playing the kind of wristy, elegant innings that had made him a favourite with crowds across the world, before he was run out, and Amarnath, who had made 85 himself, was run out soon after with the total on 392, just 11 runs short of the target, two costly mix-ups in the space of a few overs that briefly threatened to make the finish unnecessarily tense. Brijesh Patel, unbeaten on 49, and Madan Lal saw India home from there without further alarm.
A target passed
India reached 406 for 4 to win by 6 wickets, a score higher than any team had previously made to win a Test batting last. Raphick Jumadeen bowled a marathon 41 overs of left-arm spin for figures of 2 for 70, the only West Indies bowler to take a wicket in the innings; the rest of the attack, Julien, Holding, Lloyd and Padmore among them, went wicketless across the rest of the chase. It was one of the most one-sided fourth innings ever seen from a side chasing more than 400, achieved with six wickets to spare and without India ever appearing to be under serious pressure once Gavaskar and Amarnath had set the platform. The result remains one of the great fourth-innings chases in the long history of Test cricket between the two countries.
A difficult series for India
The win at Port of Spain put India in a strong position in the series, but it did not last. West Indies responded in the next Test at Sabina Park in Kingston with a barrage of fast, short-pitched bowling from an attack that would soon become known for exactly this kind of pace battery, leaving several Indian batters injured, and India's tour of the Caribbean, which had begun so promisingly with this chase, ended in a heavy defeat there that swung the series firmly back in West Indies' favour well before its end. The Port of Spain Test, for that reason, is remembered as much for what it represented, a brief high point for India against the best team in the world, as for the scale of the chase itself, and as one of the last times in that decade India got the better of a West Indies side that was, within a few short years, to move towards total dominance of the world game. The full scorecard from Port of Spain, with every partnership and fall of wicket, is on this page. See how the two sides were built on the West Indies and India team pages, and in The Follow-On you can bat for India against a West Indies attack built around Michael Holding and Bernard Julien, and try to chase down a target of 403 yourself the way Gavaskar, Amarnath and Viswanath did at Queen's Park Oval.
Sources
- CricArcade Test archive: the full scorecard, fall of wickets and partnerships on this page
- ESPNcricinfo: West Indies v India, 3rd Test, Port of Spain, 1976, scorecard and report
- Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1977: India in the West Indies