On Monday, October 23, 2023, Bishan Singh Bedi, a left-arm spinner who was regarded as one of the greatest of all time, passed away. Actor Angad Singh Bedi, his son, is his surviving child.
On September 25, 1946, in Amritsar, Bishan Bedi was born. He worked for Delhi and Punjab in Indian domestic cricket. A true master of his craft, Bedi made his India debut in the 1967 Test in Kolkata against the West Indies.
He proceeded to play 67 Test matches, taking 266 wickets at an economy of 2.14 and an average of 28.71, with a best of 7/98. In the 1960s and 1970s, he teamed up with leg-spinner Bhagwath Chandrasekhar and off-spinners Erapalli Prasanna and Srinivas Venkataraghavan to form a potent spin quartet for India.
12-8-6-1- Bishan Bedi’s Legacy In ODI Cricket
In addition to Tests, Bedi took seven wickets in ten One-Day Internationals. In the 1975 World Cup, he was a major factor in India’s historic victory over East Africa in the ODI format. His economical bowling stats of 12-8-6-1 are still regarded as a record.
In the fourth Test match of the 1976 series against the West Indies, he captained India for 22 Test matches and earned notoriety by declaring the end of the innings when the four-pronged pace assault injured five Indian players in Jamaica.
He became the first captain to give up an international cricket match in November 1978 in Sahiwal, Pakistan, when Sarfaraz Nawaz bowled four consecutive bouncers and the umpires failed to call any of them wide.
Afterward, he served as the coach of the Indian squad, which made headlines in 1990 when, following a subpar performance, he threatened to throw the entire team into the sea.
He also had quite controversial views about illegal bowling actions and continued to call Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan a chucker, long after the ICC cleared his action after bio-mechanical testing.
