Jardine took along a former England player

Jardine took along a former England player as well to do the umpiring, Bill Hitch of Surrey, and found an old Australian who had played many seasons for Middlesex to stand at the other end. In India’s inaugural home series, no native Indian was allowed to umpire. England won 2-0. Even after independence, the playing field was still not level. Until Kerry Packer’s World Series in the late 1970s, England’s cricketers were professionals while those of every other country – including India – were amateurs, playing weekend club matches and the odd first-class game. This imbalance accounts for six more of England’s dozen victories. India were overrun by professional spinners at Kanpur in 1951-52, Lancashire’s Roy Tattersall and Malcolm Hilton. Although the series ended 1-1, a jolly good tour was had as the England players were put up by British families ‘staying on’ and had a merrier social life than present players stuck in hotels Louis Vuitton Canada. County cricket was opened up in 1968, allowing overseas players to sign without any qualification period and become professionals, but Indians never fancied the daily grind as Pakistanis did. Bishan Bedi was happy to bowl all day for Northamptonshire, and Srinivas Venkatraghavan for Derbyshire, but that was about it: Kapil Dev tried a couple of half-hearted seasons and Sunil Gavaskar one for Somerset.