India will remember Mike Denness as the man who inflected the worst ever humiliation on its cricketers during the tour of England in 1974. We were resoundingly thrashed in all the three Tests of which Lords stands out for the 42 all out scorecard, an all-time low in Indian cricket.
Denness was the skipper and, like the rest of the English side, had a field day with two tons against a weak bowling line-up. It was a stunning comeback for a team which had gone down 1-2 on an India tour just over a year ago. Tony Lewis was then the captain but it was the other Tony (Greig) who endeared himself to the crowds here.
Nobody really took any notice of Denness even though he stood up against our spinners at Chepauk with a tenacious 76. It was only after the 3-0 triumph did his name become familiar in Indian households as the man who spearheaded the assault of 1974.
It was also around this period when my generation, which was just entering its teens, began its bonding with cricket. The West Indies under Clive Lloyd were scheduled to tour India towards the end of the year. As our cricketers, who had just returned from the traumatic tour of England, were preparing themselves for the new challenge, Denness was taking his victorious men to Australia for a six-Test series.
Talk about changing fortunes! While India staged an incredible comeback against the West Indies to level the series in Madras (before eventually losing in Bombay), the Aussies were taking England to the cleaners. And Denness suddenly hit the headlines again when he opted to sit out of the Sydney Test due to poor form.
Funnily enough, after all these years, this incident is something that I still remember in an otherwise one-sided series four decades ago. Is it perhaps because it was an act of rare honesty for a captain of a side to admit that he was not quite leading by example? Denness had had a rough series till then. In fact, after this break, he knocked up 51 at Adelaide and, in the absence of Aussie speedsters Thomson and Lillee, a huge 188 in the last Test at Melbourne.
Yet, the gesture of stepping down at Sydney reflected the attitude of someone who courageously conceded that he was not good enough to be part of a side. Today’s managers would term it chickening out of a tricky situation but only a decent and sensitive human being can understand what it takes to do something like this.
Denness continued his good form against a much easier-to-handle New Zealand where he had another tall hundred, 181, to his name. The Prudential World Cup that followed saw England make it to the semi-finals before it was knocked out of the tourney by Australia and its new bowling sensation, Gary Gilmour.
Denness bade adieu to Test cricket when his nemesis made him pay for an error in judgment in putting them into bat first at Edgbaston in 1975. England lost by an innings to the powerful Aussies and Denness called it quits. It was of little relevance that he had led his side honourably against the West Indies, Pakistan and India just a year earlier. The losses against Australia sealed his fate, a lot like what happened to India’s otherwise triumphant skipper Ajit Wadekar after the disastrous showing of 1974.
Denness was back to rub India the wrong way decades later as match referee when he penalised Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Virendra Sehwag in a Test against South Africa.
The country got reacquainted with Denness – but this time, not in a good way.His death on Friday brings the curtains down on a brief Test career where, as skipper, he started off promisingly but was finally done in by an all-powerful Australia.