India's 1000th ODI | Cricketers reminisce landmark 1st ODI of India in 1974 against England

Bengaluru, February 7: India played their historic 1000th ODI, the first nation to do so, at Ahmedabad on Sunday (February 6) against the West Indies, and etched a six-wicket win to lace the occasion.

India reached this special milestone after going through swirls of changes since playing their first ODI way back in 1974 against England at Leeds.

Syed Abid Ali, who played in that first ODI at Headingley, remembered the occasion clearly even after 48 years.

“There was a good bit of excitement going into that game. It was our first ODI and it was played over 55 overs, unlike 50 overs of today. Everyone wanted to get a feel of the new format and excited about being part of history,” said 80-year-old Abid Ali, who is now in USA.

“Actually, we played well despite playing the format for the first time, scored more than 250 (265 to be precise).

“There were good knocks by Brijesh Patel (82 off 78 balls) and our captain (Ajit) Wadekar (67 off 82 balls). There were some doubts on how to approach the game as it was the first time we played it, but most of them got used to it pretty quickly,” he said.

Pacer Chris Old was the standout bowler for England taking 3 wickets for 43 runs in a match in which pace bowlers had a good outing. India had a very young Madan Lal in their line-up.

He picked up a wicket of Mike Denness, who later became familiar to Indians as the match referee in the second Test between India and South Africa in 2001 at Port Elizabeth.

Denness had banned and fined six India cricketers — Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, captain Sourav Ganguly, Harbhajan Singh, Deep Dasgupta and Shib Sundar Das.

But before all that, the Scotsman was seen as a bright prospect for England in the middle-order. “I got Denness but John Edrich and Tony Greig and Keith Fletcher had good outing and England actually went past the target pretty alright.

“But it was a good experience for us, though none of us thought that ODIs will take the world by storm in the coming years,” said Madan Lal.

Was it tough for the players to play an altogether new format at the international level for the first time? Abid Ali did not felt so then.

“You we had some 60-over games those days in Hyderabad and Mysore and players like us who came from South like Brijesh, Vishy (GR Viswanath), Venkat (S Venkataraghavan) etc did not feel much about it. It was all about repeating the experience at an ODI. In fact, we played quite well in that match,” said Abid Ali.

Sudhir Naik, the opener from Mumbai, was too a part of the squad. He remembered the occasion. “Opening in that game had a touch of familiarity because (Sunil) Gavaskar was at other end and we knew each other well. But England bowlers did well with the new ball, and even hit me on the chest as there was a good bounce for Geoff Arnold,” said Naik.

“But the moment we started playing shots, Englishmen started spreading the field. They started with two slips and gully but once me and Sunil hit couple of boundaries, they changed the field and kept players in positions like deep third man, deep extra cover, fine leg etc. So, scoring boundaries became tough for us.

“The England cricketers had good experience of playing such matches in county cricket and they knew the finer points of limited-over matches and knew how to cut scoring opportunities for batsmen with defensive field settings and also many of us did not have experience of playing one-dayers and got to know the intricacies of the game much later ,” he said.

Farokh Engineer, the dashing wicketkeeper batsman, too was a part of the India side. “I think only three of the Indian players had played such matches earlier. I had good experience of playing in county cricket, while Bishan (Singh Bedi) and Venkat had already played for Northamptonshire and Derbyshire. But apart from that I don’t remember too many others having the experience of one-day cricket,” said Engineer.

“But Brijesh played blinder of an innings. I think he played pulls and hooks well in that innings because he had good experience of playing on matting wickets for his home state (Karnataka). He was a very aggressive batsman.

“However, on the whole the tour did not go well for us because prior to the ODI series, we had lost all the three Tests and it was also a very long tour as the players were really tired once the ODIs arrived.

“We lost all the five matches against England and barring a few tour games that we drew, there were not much moments to note for us. There was 42 all out in the second Test at Lord’s that was quite disappointing for all of us,” said Engineer.

India captain Ajit Wadekar resigned soon after that modest tour, but that slice of history of playing India’s first-ever ODI remains a point of comfort.