Fazal Mahmood engineers Pakistan’s first ever Test match victory

October 26, 1952. Pakistan achieved their first ever victory in Test cricket in just their second Test match by defeating India by an innings. Arunabha Sengupta looks back at the Test, made memorable by Fazal Mahmood’s 12-wicket haul.

The promise of revenge

“Beware of Fazal Mahmood on a matting wicket,” the warning was whispered regularly in the cricketing circuits of the 1950s and early 1960s.

However, when the Pakistan team of 1952-53, smarting from the loss of their inaugural Test match at Delhi, travelled to Lucknow for the second Test, they were greeted by jute matting. Fazal had never played on such a surface before.

Yet, the lion-hearted fast bowler produced one of the most devastating spells ever seen in Pakistan cricket. Was it really the matting that suited him? Or was he spurred by the taunts that had been thrown at him at Delhi? “Beta, we will take back Kashmir in the same way,” some spectators had shouted as India had won the Test by an innings. And young Fazal had snapped back, “If I do not avenge my defeat at Lucknow, my name is not Fazal Mahmood.”

It was probably a combination of the two.

The lead-up to the second Test had been accompanied by mixed tidings for the Pakistan team, but heavily loaded with positives. The injury Khan Mohammad had picked up in the first Test proved to be serious. The tour selection committee comprising of captain Abdul Hafeez Kardar, Fazal and Anwar Hussain had asked the board to send Ashgar Ali. However, the man who crossed the border to join the team was Khalid Ibadulla.

Ibadulla was a decent enough cricketer who later played for Warwickshire, but the Pakistan team management were eager to have Ashgar. A petition went around in Pakistan, supported by 5,000 signatures, urging the selectors to send Ashgar to India. However, it was Ibadulla who was sent, and the disgruntled team management did not award him a Test cap in the series.

At the same time, there was good news that trickled towards them from the Indian camp. Vinoo Mankad, who had been unplayable in Delhi, dropped out of the second Test. So did Hemu Adhikari, whose 81 not out in the first innings had been a thorn in the Pakistan side. Finally, even the premier batsman of the team, Vijay Hazare, decided to sit out. Were the Indians overconfident? Perhaps. They were soon ruing the approach.

Lucknow was the ideal venue for the Pakistanis to roar back in the series. It had for long been the centre of Muslim culture in India. The young team perhaps felt the closer to home than they would ever do in India.

Jitters on jute

Lala Amarnath won the toss and India batted. Fazal, who had experience on coir matting, took a while to adjust to the wicket.

In his memoirs written in Urdu, the paceman recounted, “When I went on to bowl, it felt extremely difficult as there was jute matting on the wicket instead of coir matting. I had no prior experience of playing on such a wicket and I had no inkling of differences between the two. As a result when I bowled my first ball, it did not hasten through quickly, nor did it swing. After pitching, it went through very straight and slowly. Pankaj Roy stopped it very easily. I was surprised and bowled several balls at Roy. I did not give him a chance to score, but he stopped all the balls easily.”

It was Maqsood Ahmed who struck the first blows by removing Datta Gaekwad and Gul Mohammad. India slumped to 17 for 2, but with the depth in their batting they were not too worried .After all, they had recovered from a similar disastrous start to win the first Test comprehensively. But, there was a difference this time. A determined Fazal changed his tactics.

“My length and direction was absolutely right, but it did not matter. I bowled three overs like this, but after I had failed to impress continuously, I thought I should do something different. I decided I should make use of the seam. In the fourth over, when Vijay Manjrekar came to face me, I started to hit the seam. The ball moved and went cruising towards Manjrekar, showing him the way towards the pavilion. I bowled the same way to the rest of them and they had no answer.”

Manjrekar was bowled. Gogumal Kishenchand and Roy were trapped leg before by Fazal, while Mahmood Hussain accounted for Polly Umrigar and Lala Amarnath. When Ghulam Ahmed, the man who had scored 50 from No 11 at Delhi, snicked Fazal to wicketkeeper Hanif Mohammad just before tea, Indians were all out for 106. Fazal finished with figures of 24.1-8-52-5. The highest score was Roy’s 30.

Later Kardar remembered, “Fazal bowled with demoniac grace. He was a man inspired to crush the Indian batsmen.”

The Nazar vigil

The captain seized this opportunity, urging his batsmen to be patient and deliver. And the ideal response came from Nazar Mohammad.

Hanif and Nazar batted out the day. They carried their stand to 63 before Ghulam Ahmed sent the young Little Master back for 34 on the second morning.

After that, Nazar carried on in his painstaking but effective manner, grinding India out of the game. Waqar Hasan scored 23, Maqsood Ahmed 41, Fazal followed up his bowling heroics with 29, Zulfiqar Ahmed pitched in with 34. And Nazar batted added valuable runs with all of them, batting all through Day Two. The degree of his resolve was reflected when at the end of the second day his score stood at 87 not out, having added 66 in the five and a half hours.

The next morning, Nazar took his score along to 124, in the process carrying his bat. When Gul Mohammad’s little used left arm medium pace bowled Amir Elahi to end the innings, Pakistan had amassed 331. Nazar had batted for eight-and-a-half hours.

By the slow waters of the Goomti river

Immediately Mahmood Hussain struck, removing Roy for just 2. And Fazal breathed fire as he ran through the Indian batting once again.

Lala Amarnath, dropped at six by Zulfiqar Ahmed at square leg, batted with spirit to remain unbeaten on 61. But the rest of the batting crumbled. Fazal captured 7 for 42 as the home team was all out for 182 early on the fourth morning.”

Pakistan had achieved their maiden Test victory in just their second Test match. Australians had won the first ever Test match and England the second. No other country had got off their blocks faster.

The spectators vented their wrath on the Indians. Fazal’s colourful account described the reactions as follows: “After the match the crowd behaved so badly that it still scares me. They attacked the camp of the Indian players and set it on fire. They even broke the windows of the bus that was taking them back to the hotel and even pelted stones on the players. The players saved their lives by a hair’s breadth.”

Kardar’s remembrance of the match reads more serene and poetic, “Before we left Lucknow I went out for a last look at the Monkey Bridge and the cricket ground lying beyond it, where Pakistan had gained her first Test victory. The empty stands which envelope the ground and the resting place of Sarojini Naidu, the great Indian social worker, could not hide the slow moving waters of the Goomti river, on whose banks Pakistan’s cricketers had managed to lower the Indian colours within six months of our Cricket Board’s recognition by the Imperial Cricket Conference. I can never forget Lucknow and the ground by the Goomti river.”

As hundreds of elated Pakistan fans crossed the border to be present for the next Test in Brabourne Stadium, Bombay, Mankad, Hazare and Adhikari came back into the team. Experience had the last say. Hazare scored a hundred and Mankad captured eight wickets in the Indian win. The hosts hung on to the 2-1 lead to clinch the series.

But history had been scripted at Lucknow, beside the slow moving waters of the Goomti river.

Brief scores:

India 106 (Fazal Mahmood 5 for 52) and 182 (Lala Amarnath 61*, Fazal Mahmood 7 for 42) lost to Pakistan 331 (Nazar Mohammad 124*, Maqsood Ahmed 41) by an innings and 43 runs.

(Arunabha Sengupta is a cricket historian and Chief Cricket Writer at CricketCountry. He writes about the history and the romance of the game, punctuated often by opinions about modern day cricket, while his post-graduate degree in statistics peeps through in occasional analytical pieces. The author of three novels, he can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/senantix)