Vinoo Mankad deserves better than his infamy for cricket’s most controversial dismissal

Mankad’s disadvantage was that he lost some of his best years to the Second World War. He did not make his Test debut until 1946, on India’s tour of England, when he was 29 and he was not bad then, doing the double of a thousand runs and a hundred wickets in the first-class season, the first touring player to did it after Learie Constantine of West Indies in 1928, and never repeated since.

Before the war, when only 20, he had Revealed himself as a star all-rounder, when Lord Tennyson’s team toured India in 1937-8 and played five Tests against India but there were not given full Test status because so many England players declined to tour after contesting the Ashes in Australia the previous winter. Mankad was not only scoring an unbeaten century at number three in the Tests but India’s leading spinner.

Once Mankad started playing official Test cricket, he took to it so easily that he recorded the Test double of a thousand runs and a hundred wickets in only 23 Tests. It took a player as gifted as Ian Botham to surpass that.

The indefatigability let alone skill of Mankad as an all-rounder was outstanding. Full-time spinners have rarely opened a Test innings but Mankad did, and made the highest individual score for India of 231 in the course of the world record highest opening stand, 413 with Pankaj Roy in 1955-6 (both of their sons went on to represent India as batsmen). It was only against New Zealand, the weakest Test team, but the heat and humidity of Madras were real enough and Mankad’s record innings was not beaten until Sunil Gavaskar scored 236.

As a batsman he was dashing enough to move straight from Haslingdens league team to hit an England spinner for six over the sightscreen in the Lords Test of 1952. As a left-arm spinner, the Bangladeshi Shakib ul-Hasan has perhaps come closest in method . A lot of Test Cricketers were Mankaded one way or another, not only those who backed up too far.