(Cricket news) On this day in 1986, the Test match between India and Australia ended in a tie. This was only the 2nd time in the history of Test cricket that a match had ended in a tie. The occurrence has not been repeated since. The first tied match occurred between Australia and West Indies in 1960 at the Gabba.
In 1986 Australia toured India for 3 Tests and 6 ODIs. The tour got off to a fantastic start with a rare occurrence of a tied Test match first up.
The first Test match happened at the M. A. Chidambaram Stadium in Madras as it was known back then. Australian captain Allan Border won the toss and elected to bat first. Australia scored 574/7 declared thanks to a double century by Dean Jones and a ton each by Allan Border and David Boon. In the 2nd innings India could only manage 397 with skipper Kapil Dev scoring a century. Off spinner Greg Matthews took a fifer while Ravi Shastri, Mohammed Azharuddin and Krisnamachari Srikant scored fifties.
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With a lead of 177 runs, Australia walked out to bat for the 3rd innings. Allan Border declared after Australia was 170/5 leaving India to chase 348. Sunil Gavaskar scored 90 runs and other Indian batters contributed as well, but Australia kept picking wickets to keep themselves in the game Greg Matthews grabbed his 2nd fifer of the match and while his partner in crime Ray Bright also ended up picking 5 wickets.
The ending of the game was as dramatic as it could get. India were 344 for 9 before the last over of the day requiring 4 runs to win the match. Ravi Shastri was batting on 45, joined by the number 11 Maninder Singh with Matthews ready to bowl. After a dot ball, Shastri ran two off the 2nd delivery. He made the bold choice of running a single on the 3rd ball, leveling the score but that also meant Matthews had 3 balls to get Maninder Singh out and that is exactly what he did. The 5th ball trapped Maninder on the back leg and the umpire signalled out. The match ended in a dramatic fashion as a tie.
Apart from the two tied Tests, there have been two other instances when the match has ended when time expired with the scores level in the fourth innings, but with the batting side still having wickets in hand. These matches are considered to be draws, rather than ties. The first one happened in 1996 between Zimbabwe and England at Bulawayo. The 2nd one was in 2011 between India and West Indies in Mumbai.
