The ‘quarrel’ among 2 great cricketers of Team India in which BCCI President called both of them to their home to reconcile

England win by 8 wickets

What happened: The first Test of the England series was lost. After lunch on the last day in the second Test match, England took India’s last 6 wickets for 28 runs and this overturned the dice. England got a very easy target to equalize the series and had to score only 125 runs in 59 minutes and 20 overs. In this way, the Test on the slow and turning pitch was in India’s grip and moving towards the draw, the negligent and irresponsible batting of the middle order came under England’s control. The only need was that in the second innings, batting responsibly and stayed at the crease, but there was a lot of uproar on it. Two batsmen were specially targeted. A big wicket was by Sandeep Patil and the score was 207-5 due to his dismissal. The spinners did not allow him to play openly for 40 overs, causing them to come under pressure and caught a ball of Edmonds in the same splash and caught them on mid-wicket in an attempt to bridge. In such a situation, veteran Kapil Dev (60 runs off 97 balls in the first innings) should have been on wicket because now every hope of saving the Test for India was fixed on him but after putting a 6, he also lost his wicket on the misshit.

India’s last 4 wickets fell in just 21 runs and England got an easy win. The England team which did not register a single win in their last 13 Tests and the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Smt. Indira Gandhi at the beginning of the tour, the riots across India and the killing of the British Deputy High Commissioner on the eve of the series also remained psychological pressure, they felt that India felt that India served them in the victory plate to equalize the series.

What happened after this: After this, the post -mortem of the team’s performance in the Indian camp was to be done and together to find ‘Bali Ka goat’. Sandeep Patil (despite scoring 30 and 41 runs in Tests) and Kapil Dev (despite scoring 42, 60 and 7 runs in the first two Tests) and accused them of playing irresponsible shots, which was completely dismissed. The real story begins from here. Sandeep Patil and Kapil Dev were excluded for the next Test. The biggest explosion was to exclude Kapil Dev for the next Test in Kolkata. Getting out of the Test team, in a way, was punished for playing shots due to negligence in the last Test. There was a big noise on this and it was generally believed that Gavaskar was decided to get Kapil out of the Test team and this generally thought that there is a rift between the two and the relationship is bad.

Who got punishment: Since no cash was imposed on anyone, there was no official punishment officially, but it took many years to recover the mutual differences between these two cricketers. This was the only Test that Kapil Dev did not play in his entire Test career and for this reason he missed out on making a new record of playing the most Test. Prior to this Kolkata Test, he played 66 consecutive Tests and played 65 consecutive Test matches after this Kolkata Test.

Not playing a test, not only caused a silent crack between the two, the worst thing was that this also opened the box of old controversial stories related to Gavaskar and many interesting stories started appearing in the media. Both Gavaskar and Kapil were the star cricketers at the time and as far as India’s captaincy is concerned, they were playing a musical chair in a way. Sometimes even even felt that the captains are changing in waste, but the biggest disadvantage was that these wrong changes kept the relationship between two big cricketers of India. Even Kapil was alleged to have declared the innings in Madras in 1983 when Gavaskar was at 236* and it seemed that any Indian batsman would make a record of 300 first.

Although Kapil and Sunil Gavaskar have never been good friends, due to that Delhi Test, the confrontation between the two made the headlines. Everyone’s sympathy was with Kapil. During the Test at Eden Gardens, the audience also opposed the dropping of Kapil and raised slogans of ‘Kapil no Test’. Even threw rotten vegetables and fruits at Gavaskar. Gavaskar was so angry with this behavior that he ever vowed to never play in Kolkata and he never played there after that.

For years, there was a discussion about the decision of Chandu Borde’s selection committee to be excluded from the Test team and got to hear various things. Finally, for the first time in March 2021, Sunil Gavaskar himself talked about this and claimed that Kapil had no role in excluding the team and it was a fully selection committee decision. He said- ‘I was a part of the selection committee as the captain of Team India but without vote rights. I am not so stupid to exclude my alone match winner player. ‘ Gavaskar even said that in future he will also tell the name of the selector who not only wanted to get Kapil out of the team, he also wanted to stop his match fees.

Now Kapil Dev has also changed his thinking and deny any differences with Gavaskar. Despite this change in thinking, this decision to get Kapil out of the team remains one of the biggest secret of Indian cricket. Then, due to mutual opposition between the two, the situation was that the BCCI also felt that the mutual relationship between these two cricketers was spoiling the atmosphere within the team. BCCI Chief NKP Salve called both of them to their homes for reconciliation between the two. There is no doubt that the media also played a roll in increasing their misunderstandings, which was always looking for a sensational story, but the praise for these two is that the two played under each other’s captaincy, performed their best and made a relationship with time.