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One wicket was all India needed!
Rajneesh Gupta flips the history books to find similar Test matches which hung by the skin of the teeth.
St John’s Test will always go down in the cricket history as one of the most memorable Test matches.
Chasing a fourth innings victory target of 392, all seemed lost for West Indies when they lost their ninth wicket with 19 balls still to be bowled in the match.
But the last wicket pair of Fidel Edwards and Corey Collymore somehow held fort and West Indies escaped with a draw.
This provided only the 15th instance in Test cricket when a match ended in draw with fielding side needing only one wicket to win.
The first such instance was seen in 1946, when Indian last-wicket pair of Sohoni and Hindlekar stayed together at Manchester for final 13 minutes to deny England a victory that would have given the hosts a 2-0 lead in the series.
India have since been involved in two more such instances including the one at St. John’s. Both times the opponents were West Indies and both times India were at the wrong end of the scale.
West Indies seem to be master in snatching a draw from the jaws of defeat. On no less than five occasions West Indies last pair has denied opposition a sure victory.
Fidel Edwards, by his effort at St. John’s, became the first player to survive such matches on two occasions.
He was also there at the crease with wicketkeeper Ridley Jacobs at Harare in 2003-04 saving West Indies from a disgraceful defeat against hosts Zimbabwe.
The accompanying table lists all instances of a Test ending in a draw with fielding side needing just one wicket to win.
The following table lists the matches drawn as the batting side just failed to achieve the fourth innings winning target. The first entry in this table is an intriguing one.
It was for the first time in Test history that two teams tied on the scores, but the match ended as a draw not as a tie since England had not lost all their wickets.
