Dilip Vengsarkar - Career

Career

Vengsarkar made his international cricket debut against New Zealand at Auckland in 1975–76 as an opening batsmen. India won this Test convincingly, but he did not have much success. Later on he usually batted in the No.3 or No.4 position.

He played a memorable innings in 1979 against Asif Iqbal's Pakistan team in the 2nd Test at Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi. Requiring 390 to win on the final day, he led India's chase getting the team very close to a victory. India ended up with 364 for 6, just 26 runs short of what would have been a remarkable win. With Yashpal Sharma, Kapil Dev and Roger Binny back to the pavilion after Tea break, Vengsarkar saw himself running out of partners and decided to play the last few overs for a draw. He remained unbeaten at 146.

During the 1978-79 Test Series in India against the West Indies, he was involved in a partnership of over 300 runs with Sunil Gavaskar at Calcutta, with both batsman scoring centuries.

He was a member of the 1983 World Champion's team. He had a productive run of scores between 1985 and 1987, where he scored centuries against Pakistan, Australia, England, West Indies and Sri Lanka, many of them in successive games. At this pinnacle of his career, he was rated as the best batsmen in the Coopers and Lybrand rating (a predecessor of the PWC ratings).

While the West Indies pacemen dominated the cricket world, Dilip Vengsarkar was one of the few batsmen who was successful against them, and scored 6 centuries against the likes of Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding and Andy Roberts.

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