Indian Cricket Team in England in 1959 - Other First-class Matches

Other First-class Matches

If fragile batting was one of the weaknesses of the touring side, then occasional individual batting successes were responsible for several of the team's six victories in other first-class matches. Double-centuries for Umrigar and Manjrekar were behind the wins against the two first-class university sides, and Umrigar made another double-century in the win against Northamptonshire (as well as one in the drawn match with Somerset). The Middlesex victory came against a side with many regulars absent, and only towards the end of the tour, in the wins against Glamorgan and Kent, did the side perform satisfactorily as a team.

Only three counties defeated the tourists and in one of those, the match against Gloucestershire at Cheltenham, the pitch deteriorated over the course of the three days (which made Roy's decision to put the county in rather strange). Representative matches against MCC and a full-strength international side assembled by T. N. Pearce for the Scarborough festival were also lost. And the Indians became the first touring side to lose against the Minor Counties representative side since the West Indian cricket team in England in 1928, largely as a result of a remarkable unbeaten 202 by Phil Sharpe that enabled the Minor Counties to reach a target of 334 with only four wickets lost.

In a hot and sunny summer with a lot of runs in all forms of cricket, 16 matches were drawn.