Date-stamped : 19 May96 - 14:15 Memories of India`s Tour of England : 1946 It is exactly 50 years since the first postwar tour of England by an Indian cricket team. I was a ten year old boy in Bombay and had just started taking serious interest in cricket. Although still a beginner in the study of English language, I avidly listened to test commen- tary from BBC Radio. Unlike now, in those days the tour was a leisurly one, lasting seveal months and containing lots of other matches be- sides test matches (needless to say, one day matches were far in to the future). The India team was captained by the Nawab of (Iftikhar Ali Khan) Pataudi but the star member of the team was of course Vi- jay Merchant. The team had a gallaxy of other great players like Vijay Hazare, Vinoo Mankad, Lala Amarnath, A.H. Kardar (who was later to be the first captain of Pakistan Test team), Rusi Mody (who passed away recently and indeed his demise is what has inspired this author to write this piece), Hemu Adhi- kari and the redoubtable Mushtaq Ali. Many of these players were in their late twenties or early thirties and still had yet to play in a test. This was because the Second world war had stopped test matches for over 7 years. In the very first match of the tour, Vinoo Mankad showed the Englishmen what a great bowler he was. His bowling analysis was 20 overs, 8 maidens, 26 runs and 4 wickets. He went on to achieve a double (100 wickets and 1000 runs) in the tour . After that he never looked back. The first test at Lord`s was a disaster for India. India batted first and collapsed. Only Rusi Mody put up a brave fight going on to make an unbeaten 57 and taking India to a face saving 200. But the match was lost what with only one English batsman (Hardstaff) making 205 runs. I remembered this performance of Rusi Mody in 1974 when again our team collapsed at the Lord`s. There was no Rusi Mody then and we folded up for 42. The third and last test was memorable for Vijay Merchant`s classic knock of 128. I believe it was in this innings that he was run out by Compton by kicking the ball in to the wickets. Merchant was sporting enough to praise Compton for his quick thinking - he had saved crucial time by not bending down to pick up the ball and throw it to the wicket. India lost two tests and drew the third - thanks to the weather. But there were some fine individual achievements. Mer- chant making over 2000 runs, Hazare over 1000 runs and so on. The biggest advantage was that good players like Hazare and Mankad honed their skills and used them later to the great advantage of India. Contributed by Arun.Vaidya (amv@math.tifr.res.in)