Who was the first Indian to score a double-century in an away Test?
(22 April 2002)

Dilip Sardesai’s was probably the most controversial name in the Indian squad for the 1971 tour of the West Indies. At that stage, he seemed over the hill as a batsman, struggling even to score runs in the domestic circuit. But Ajit Wadekar, appointed to succeed the Nawab of Pataudi Junior as Indian captain in another controversial move, insisted on having his experienced Mumbai colleague in what was to prove a path-breaking tour for the Indians. In a recent interview, Wadekar recounted his meeting with the then chairman of selectors Vijay Merchant, which later led to Sardesai's inclusion in the squad.

"You did the trick for me by your casting vote (it was Merchant’s vote that tilted the captaincy scales in Wadekar’s favour)," Wadekar reminded Merchant, adding, "I want you to do the trick again. I told him, ‘I want Dilip Sardesai in the team. He would be an asset to the team. I want some experience and I have played with him’."

Sardesai was to justify his captain’s faith in him in the very first Test of that tour. In his very first Test innings after being recalled, the man who was soon to be famously known as Sarde Maan in the West Indies, made 212 at the Sabina Park ground in Kingston, Jamaica, to pilot his team, tottering at 75 for five at one stage, to a healthy 387. The double-ton, which was the first by an Indian in an away Test, was to help the tourists to enforce the follow-on against the West Indies in the West Indies for the first time. Sardesai went on to score 642 runs in that five-Test series, including two other centuries, to be one of the main architects of India’s first and until now only series win the Caribbean.