Remembering that Spinner who debuted at Chepauk in Sept 1979

Unlikely you may identify this Indian spinner who took more than hundred Test wickets.  Remember Dec 6, 1980 – on that day - Intelsat V F-2, then named Intelsat 502, was successfully launched but back home we followed on radio the 3^rd match of  Benson & Hedges World Series Cup  !!

 

September 1979 was a month of significant events, including the Pioneer 11 spacecraft's visit to Saturn, the launch of the ESPN network, and a nuclear flash detection by a US satellite. Domestically, it was a time of political instability in India, with unrest and extremist violence in several states. 

Not sure whether to call a bespectacled spinner who made debut at ripe 32 lucky – in someways yes, considering the dominance of the famous quartet – Bishan Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar and Srinivasan Venkatraghaven, though Venkat himself suffered.  It was an era when the great left arm spinners – Padmakar Shivalkar, Rajender Goel, Rajinder Singh Hans, B Vijayakrishna, S Vasudevan were unable to break into the National Team.   After him, so many left arm spinners have played for India - Dhiraj Parsanna,  Dilip Doshi, Raghuram Bhat, Maninder Singh, Ravi Shastri, WV Raman, Venkatapathi Raju, Sunil Joshi, Nilesh Kulkarni, Rahul Sanghvi, Murali Karthik, Pragyan Ojha, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadhav and quite a few more in Ranji circuit .. ... 

Looking back, this  bespectacled man debuted in the 1st Test of against Australia at this same venue,  Chepauk.  It was Test no. 855 played in Sept 1979.  Kim Hughes and Sunil Gavaskar were the Captains. Playing first Australia made 390, thanks to centuries by Alan Border [162] and Kim Hughes [100].  From 2 for 75, they had a 222 run partnership.  Kapil Dev bowled well taking 2 wickets; it was the debutant Dilip Doshi who stole the show taking 6 for 103 off his 43 overs.  India replied soundly making 425 ~ surprisingly no centuries but 50s by Gavaskar, Kirmani who came in as nightwatchman, Vengsarkar, Yashpal Sharma and 83 by Kapil Dev.  John Higgs, a leg spinner took 7 wickets.   Australians started their 2nd innings towards the end of the 4th day and ended up making 212/7 with half centuries by Hilditch and Border.  Venkatraghavan took 3 and Doshi got 2 wickets.  The match ended in a tame draw…… that was a 6 match series.   In the next test another good spinner, Shivlal Yadav debuted. 

Doshi is one of only four Test bowlers who  played their first Test after the age of thirty, yet went on to take more than 100 wickets, the other three being Clarrie Grimmett, Saeed Ajmal and Ryan Harris. ‘Spin Punch’ was his auto-biography. Doshi is probably one of the few cricketers who after retiring from the game chose an entirely different playing field.  He was the Managing Director of Entrack India, a firm that marketted Montblanc pens in India.  

 

Dilip Doshi, the former India left-arm spinner,  passed away on 23.6.2025 at  77, reportedly due to heart issues in London, where he was living for several decades.  The classical left arm spinner   took 114 Test wickets in 33 appearances, including six five-wicket hauls. He also picked up 22 wickets in 15 ODIs at an economy rate of 3.96. Doshi also played first-class cricket for Saurashtra, Bengal, Warwickshire and Nottinghamshire. 

In modern Cricket, Doshi may never be picked for ODI or T20I considering his batting skills and more so, his slow movement and lack of throwing arm. He would gently lob the ball – in fact sending it in an arc with bowling style and batsmen would steal another single for the throw.  Yet he made his debut on 6.12.1980 at Gabba against New Zealand in Tri-series.

 

Interestingly alongside Doshi, - 4 other Indians too debuted – Kirti Azad, Roger Binny, Sandeep Patil & Thirumalai Echampadi Srinivasan  India won that match by 66 runs.   

At Melbourne, Australia"s batsmen were stifled by a slow, uneven pitch on which the Indians, particularly Patil at medium pace and Doshi, bowled extremely well. Chasing 208, the Australians were given a promising start by Hughes and Dyson, who put on 60 from the first nineteen overs. India, on the other hand, having been put in, had begun disastrously. With half their overs used up they were 73 for five. But Man of the Match Patil, with a furious 64 off 67 balls, and Kirmani, with 48 not out from 53 balls, brought the innings to life.  

In domestic Cricket, Doshi made his first-class debut with Saurashtra, but played most of his Ranji Trophy cricket with Bengal. It was for Bengal that he achieved the remarkable figures of 6 wickets for 6 runs against Assam in 1974. He ended up with  318 wickets at an impressive average of 18.33. He also played first class cricket for Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire in the English midlands. Overall, his first class career had  898 wickets He was heavily influenced by West Indies legend Garfield Sobers at Nottinghamshire. Doshi made a quick and silent exit from international cricket in the 1980s as he did not agree with the way Indian cricket was being run at the time. Doshi also wrote a honest and compelling account of his cricketing days in a revealing autobiography Spin Punch. 

A story of a great spinner who got his chances very late yet proved his mettle.

 
Regards – S Sampathkumar
26.6.2025