At around 4 PM on September 19, 1983, Pakistan captain Zaheer Abbas along with his players walked off the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore, leaving Sunil Gavaskar stranded on 84 and his opening partner Anshuman Gaekwad in the middle.
Chaos followed – for close to half an hour, as players, umpires, and the organisers, the Karnataka State Cricket Association, confabulated. The core issue was the interpretation of the rules that were a little unclear about the 20 mandatory overs that had to be bowled in the last hour of a match and also when to end a match in view of an imminent draw.
Zaheer felt that since the minimum 77 overs for the day were bowled, there was no need to carry on. Umpires Madhav Gothoskar and Swaroop Kishen disagreed with him and told the Pakistanis that if they didn’t return to the field, they would award the Test to India. The threat worked, and Gavaskar duly completed his 28th Test century, 46 minutes after the scheduled 4 PM close, to be just one ton away from equalling Don Bradman’s 29.
Miracle in Manchester
That was a prominent instance of a fielding team trying to deny an opposing batsman a personal landmark that was within touching distance. Another instance happened on July 27, 2025, at Old Trafford, Manchester, where Ravinder Jadeja and Washington Sundar dug in their heels deep for a massive rearguard and priceless 203-run partnership for the fifth wicket that earned India an honourable draw. England retained the 2-1 lead heading into the fifth and final Test, which is to begin on July 31.
As India wiped out England’s 311-run deficit and surged 74 runs ahead, drama ensued. With six wickets in hand, England captain Ben Stokes wanted to “shake hands” and end the match, as he saw no scope for an England win. Was Stokes really trying to preserve his bowlers for the fifth Test, as he later said, beginning in three days? Or was he smartly trying to deflect attention from the inability of his bowlers, including himself, to penetrate the Indian defences?
“You want to get a Test hundred against Harry Brook?” asked Stokes in a tough tone after Jadeja, the senior batsman in the middle, declined the offer. In the melee in the middle, some frustrated England players who joined Stokes may have crossed the line. “Sundar and Jadeja received some verbal abuse from England fielders after India decided to continue batting so the duo could reach triple figures,” reported news agency AFP. If the Indians were indeed abused, why was no action taken?
When the handshake offer came, Jadeja was batting on 89 and Sundar was on 80 in India’s 386 for four — 74 runs ahead. Both left-handers went on to complete their well-deserved centuries; it was the fifth for Jadeja and the maiden one for Sundar. Earlier in the second innings, captain Shubman Gill had scored a record-breaking fourth century while KL Rahul missed his by a mere ten runs.
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India have now played 10 Tests at Old Trafford and are yet to win one since 1936, while England have won four and six have been drawn.
Remarkable fightback
The draw was as good as a win for India, considering the position Gill’s team was in at one juncture in the second innings, having conceded a big first-innings lead – zero for two wickets – and having lost Rishabh Pant to a fracture to his little toe in his right leg, the same one that had borne the brunt of the 2022 gruesome car accident. The brave Pant, however, returned to bat in the first innings and scored a brilliant 54 while substitute Dhruv Jurel did the wicketkeeping duty.
Yashasvi Jaiswal and Sai Sudarshan had departed to speedster Chris Woakes’s telling successive deliveries in the first over of the second innings. Gill denied Woakes the hat-trick and went on to hammer 103. Gill and KL Rahul then added 188 precious runs for the third wicket that laid the foundation of a stubborn and magnificent fightback that Jadeja and Sundar continued.
Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar took a swipe at the English players for trying to impose their will on the Indians. “The England players felt that, since there was no chance of a result, the Indians should have accepted the offer to conclude proceedings. They seemed to forget that two teams are playing out there, and if one decides to continue, the other simply has to accept it. They made sarcastic remarks about the batters…,” he wrote in his column in Sportstar magazine.
“If they [Jadeja and Sundar] wanted a hundred for their efforts, England should have denied them with proper bowlers rather than whining about them getting there against Harry Brook. A Test century isn’t easy and doesn’t come every match, so the batters were fully entitled to bat on…,” he argued.
Praise from opponents
Opinions may differ on continuing the match when a result looked unlikely, but even England stalwarts lauded the Indian fightback.
While describing it as a “moribund pitch” in his report published in The Times, former England captain Atherton wrote in praise of the Indians: “Gill batted 398 minutes in all, a tremendous effort given he had come in on a hat-trick with his team in disarray, none for two just before lunch on the fourth day. KL Rahul accompanied him for 318 minutes, and when these two in-form right-handers gave way, Sundar batted for 305 minutes for his maiden Test hundred, and Jadeja batted for 222 minutes to take India to safety.”
Nasser Hussain, another former England captain, concurred with Atherton. “England were forced to work exceptionally hard on a backbreaking pitch in Manchester, but when Jofra Archer and Liam Dawson needed to come to the fore, they didn’t quite do it. After lunch on the fifth day, Archer didn’t hit the top of off stump enough, and Dawson didn’t hit the rough enough,” he wrote in the Daily Mail.
“England huffed and they puffed, but they could not blow India’s house down in Manchester. Hell, they barely even blew their doors off,” wrote Lawrence Booth, chief cricket writer of Daily Mail and Editor of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. “A total of 143 overs in more than five sessions yielded a grand total of four wickets — two of them in the first five balls — allowing the tourists to leave Lancashire with a creditable draw…”
All four Tests of the series have been thrillers. England took a 1-0 lead in the first Test in Leeds, and India drew parity in the next one in Birmingham. But England surged ahead again with a narrow win at Lord’s, London, before the draw in Manchester. Now, it is all to play for at The Oval, London.
