4. India v England, Chepauk, Chennai. February, 1993.
India won by an innings and 22 runs.
For the tour of India and Sri Lanka in 1993, England named their most controversial touring party since the D'Oliveira Affair a quarter of a century before. The disenchantment was remarkable; similar to the kind of daily bubbles of outrage that inflate and pop in the era of social media. But then, people got out their pens and wrote a letter to the newspapers. Because England had not selected David Gower.
After Gower lost to Allan Border's Australians in 1989, Graham Gooch took England to West Indies and won the legendary Sabina Park Test. Just as remarkably, England drew at home 2-2 with the West Indies in 1991. New Zealand were defeated home and away. India were beaten at home. Tucked in among these results, was an away Ashes loss infamous for David Gower sitting in the passenger seat of a Tiger Moth biplane, and cavalierly buzzing Gooch's match preparation. The roundhead wasn't impressed.
So Gower was left out the tour of India. It was a decision that can still stir up divisions to this day. But once the offended had decided the selectors had blundered in preferring the more focused and professional approach at the expense of a sublimely gifted dilettante, the impasse got a bit blurred, with the omission of Jack Russell and even Ian Salisbury also cited as indefensible (the latter travelled as a net bowler and actually played in the first two Tests anyway). MCC members tabled a motion of no confidence in the selectors.
The tour was a disaster. India were far from being the indomitable home side they are now, or even the one tilted at so memorably by Steve Waugh. The games were usually attritional, with a lot of draws. England had won in India on their previous tour; they were thought to have a chance. And really, the inferiority complex with which England now contemplate tours to India started here. There were to be no attritional draws. England were thrashed three out of three, the first whitewash ever suffered in India, by anyone.
The tour is now notorious for everything going wrong that possible could, from food poisoning, to red eye train journeys during an Indian Airways pilot strike, to the end of the captain's marriage. On the field, Richard Blakey was selected ahead of Russell for his superior batting and famously averaged 1.75 for the series (and his career). Whereas for India, a debuting Vinod Kambli joined his old schoolmate Sachin Tendulkar in the side; both scored over 300 runs in the three Tests and averaged over a hundred. Emburey and Tufnell were thought to be superior to the home spinners but took six wickets between them, outbowled by Graeme Hick who took eight.
Those home spinners were Venkatapathy Raju, Rajesh Chauhan, and, making his home debut (taking 21 wickets), Anil Kumble. In the first Test, on a spinners pitch in Kolkota, England picked four seamers (Jarvis, Lewis, Taylor and Malcolm, Salisbury was the spinner) and had to rely on Hick for wickets as Mohammad Azharuddin scored a near run a ball 182.
It is the Chennai Test that everyone remembers, when England were struck down by allegedly poisonous prawns and struggled to get eleven men on the pitch. Gooch was too ill to play and Alec Stewart captained, but other players suffered from diarrhoea on the field. Robin Smith opened in an attempt to hide away from the spinners, so Kumble opened the bowling and got him lbw for 17. India batted for two days, then spun England out at their leisure.
Rather sadly, at the conclusion of the tour, a 39 year old Gooch stood down from the captaincy and the gains he had made were lost, and then forgotten. And manager Ted Dexter promised an investigation into the air pollution of India's Test playing venues. And an end to stubble.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/63599.html
I always say that everybody's right.