This is better than ’71, says Wadekar

1971. An unfancied team led by Ajit Wadekar humbled the mighty West Indies on their home turf, winning at Port of Spain and drawing the othe...

1971. An unfancied team led by Ajit Wadekar humbled the mighty West Indies on their home turf, winning at Port of Spain and drawing the other matches to take the series 1-0. An overseas victory over a team led by Sobers and including Kanhai, Fredericks and Gibbs, that was seen as epochal in India’s cricket history.

Saurav Ganguly’s team took on, and humbled, the world champions 33 years later. Which victory stands out among the two?

‘‘Certainly, this win is more creditable. Against the Aussies in Australia is THE best performance. Of course, a win would have been much better,’’ says Wadekar himself. ‘‘Now, people have started to realise that we are a force to reckon, after we had their (Australians) backs to the wall. We could have, perhaps, won had it not been for Parthiv Patel’s dropped chance off Ricky Ponting.’’

Story continues below this ad

Then quickly adds, ‘‘Ifs and buts notwithstanding, the win has given us confidence given that not many gave us even half a chance.’’

About his own team’s win over the Windies, the modest former skipper said, ‘‘We were amateurs though we started the trend. This team is more aggressive and played as a unit. I had the best of spinners (Erapalli Prasanna, Srinivasan Venkatraghavan and Bishen Singh Bedi) and the wicketkeeping was good. Those days getting 400 plus scores were so difficult,’’ signed off Wadekar thus implying that the current team’s achievement had more substance considering the team balance and high level at which cricket is played currently.