"There are no fast bowlers in India," 15-year-old Kapil was told when he complained about the short rations at lunch at a training camp at Brabourne Stadium in 1974. The judgment was hurtful, but not unfounded. In the last Test India had played at home, for example, the new ball had been taken by Eknath Solkar (two overs) and Sunil Gavaskar (one over), then surrendered to the slow-bowling wiles of Bedi, Chandra and Prasanna. It had not, however, been ever thus. Peer back to pre-war, pre-partition India, and the country's opening attack was probably superior to Australia's. The likes of Tim Wall and Ernie McCormick had nothing to teach Mohammed Nissar and Amar Singh, except that Nissar's best years were swallowed by World War II, while Amar succumbed to pneumonia aged 30.
A "feeling of loss" pervaded Indian cricket in their wake, according to its historian Mihir Bose, which intensified over the next 40 years whenever the country's batsmen crossed paths with bowling of real pace. Ray Lindwall and Keith Miller made them suffer in Australia, Fred Trueman lorded it over them in England, and Charlie Griffiths nearly killed Nari Contractor in Barbados. Most ignominiously Clive Lloyd's pacemen set about Bedi's batsmen like sadistic thugs in a dark alley at Sabina Park in April 1976.
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