On this day: Reliving Sunil Gavaskar's snoozefest of a knock
7th June 1975 is a day Sunil Gavaskar will not want to remember. On this day, the home of cricket hosted the first match of the Prudential World Cup, featuring hosts England and India.
However, despite all the hype and excitement surrounding the game, it turned out to be a fairly one-sided affair, with the England team clearly dominating the visiting side.
While the game was meant to celebrate the intense competition between the teams and the inaugural World Cup, it proved to be one of the most forgettable days for Indian cricket fans.
There were 60 overs per innings in the first World Cup, as was the norm then. England won the toss and elected to bat first.
John Jameson and Dennis Amiss opened the innings for England. The duo stitched a crucial 54-run stand for the first wicket before Jameson was dismissed for 22 runs.
Coming in at number three, Keith Fletcher played the anchor's role. The right-handed Amiss was the aggressor in this partnership as he guided the England team to a massive total.
Along with Fletcher, he forged a crucial 176-run partnership for the second wicket to lay a solid foundation at the back end of the innings.
Amiss was well supported by the middle order consisting of Mike Denness and Chris Old and the home team posted a commanding 334 runs for the loss of four wickets in the first innings.
En-route to this massive total, Amiss recorded a well compiled 137 runs off 147 balls, studded with 18 boundaries, to put the home team in command.
When Lord's fell asleep thanks to Sunil Gavaskar's bizarre innings
Chasing 335 was never going to be easy for the Indian side. However, what baffled most people was the lack of interest shown by Sunil Gavaskar to even make a match of it.
Sunil Gavaskar is regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the game. However, this wasn't his day.
Opening the batting with Eknath Solkar, Sunil Gavaskar failed to ever get going but also refused to get out and scored an unbeaten 36 off 174 balls with a solitary four.
The bizarre Indian chase got frustrating for the spectators gathered at the home of cricket.
While most people thought the ploy was to see off the new ball for the Indian opener, Sunil Gavaskar and Solkar . That notion, however, was dispelled as the innings progressed and what ensued was one of the most frustrating innings ever in the history of the game.
India finished with 132 for the loss of three wickets in their quota of sixty overs, having scored at an unbelievable run rate of 2.20.
Gundappa Viswanath was the top scorer for the Indian side with 37 runs off 59 balls; an innings that was studded with five boundaries.
From being down and dusted to scripting a new chapter
Though why India (and Gavaskar) went at that bizarre pace is tough to comprehend, the cricket fraternity unequivocally regards this as one of the laziest innings of all time.
This was, however, just a blip in Sunil Gavaskar's stellar career. The right-handed batsman amassed over 10000 runs in the longest format of the game and was a mainstay in many of India's most famous wins away from home.
Sunil Gavaskar was the first player to score 10000 runs in the Test match arena and scored 34 hundreds in the longest format of the game.