XtraTime Web Desk: The late Chuni Goswami’s excellence in football was well known to everyone. He was a brilliant all round cricketer as well. It is an irony that the tremendously fit Chuni Goswami did not pursue his career in cricket after leading Bengal in the Ranji Trophy final against Bombay in 1971-72. No one could forget his exploits with the ball against the touring West Indies side in 1966 at Indore. He and Subroto Guha plotted the historic innings defeat of Gary Sobers’ West Indies side. Goswami took eight wickets in that match.
It was a practice in those days to organise a few warm up matches for the touring sides. Normally the Ranji Trophy winners or the zonal sides played the warm up match against the touring teams. In 1966, a team comprising of Central and East zones took on the mighty West Indians. Remember West Indies during those days were just indomitable. The headlines in one of the leading newspaper read – ‘Weakest opposition to face the mighty West Indies.’
Since both East and Central zones were the weakest in the country so the board decided to make a team comprising of the best players from both zones. Hanumant Singh was chosen the captain of that combine team. There were six cricketers from East Zone which included Daljit Singh, Ramesh Saxena, Ambar Roy, Subrata Guha, Debu Mukherjee and a young Chuni Goswami. By then Chuini has made quite a name for himself as a footballer.
The match was organized during the time of Christmas, so the visiting West Indies side was quite upset to travel to Indore. The party loving Caribbean cricketers preferred to stay in Kolkata, as it was quite a buzzing then specially during the time of New Years. So the mood in the Caribbean camp was not pleasant. To make matters worse the hotel that was booked for the visitors was not luxurious as they would have preferred. No wonder that did not go down well with Gary Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Clive Lloyd, Dereck Murray, Wes Hall, Charlie Grifith who were all big names in the world of cricket. They were so upset with the facilities at the hotel that most of them did not even bother to exchange pleasantries with their opponents.
A green turf welcomed both teams at the Holkar stadium. West Indies preferred to rest Gary Sobers and Conrad Hunte. The combined zonal team only had Subrata Guha in their ranks who was nowhere near to the Windies pace trio of Wes Hall, Charlie Grifith and Lester King who used to send shivers down the spine of opponent batsmen.
West Indies won the toss and decided to bat first on a green surface as if to show their arrogance. Hanumant Singh decided to open the bowling with Subrata Guha and Chuni Goswami. The decision left many wondering but Hanumant knew that Chuni (both Hanumant and Chuni worked in State Bank of India) had a good in swinger and can bowl an odd leg cutter which can trouble the opponent batsmen. The double G – Guha and Goswami displayed exemplary skill of swing bowling to rattle the power packed Windies batting line-up for just 136 runs, much to the surprise of a packed stadium that had come to see the likes of Kanhai, Sobers and Lloyd. The great West Indian batting line up had no answers to Chuni Goswami’s immaculate swing bowling on that day. Chuni had figures of 47/5.
The combined XI posted a decent 283/9 declared. Chuni and Subrata also played a part with the bat adding crucial 44 runs between them. The visitors went in to bat in the second innings with a deficit of 147 runs. But they struggled once again to counter the swing of Guha and Goswami. Subrata ended up getting seven wickets in the innings while Chuni picked three as they bundled the Caribbean batting line up for a paltry score of 103 all out to win the match by an innings and 44 runs.
West Indies, seeing their ego taking a beating bounced back in the next test match against India that followed. The hosts were bashed by an innings in that test match. None of the Indian batsman could score more than 40 runs; such was the impact of the Caribbean fast bowling.
Chuni Goswami’s all round performance against the touring West Indies side has found a place in the history of Indian cricket. Subimal ‘Chuni’ Goswami was an all rounder in the truest sense.