Derek Pringle looks back to two incredible modern-day Test cricket fightbacks when victory was secured after being forced to follow on.
Liverpool and Tottenham’sincredible comebacks against Barcelona and Ajax this week have got the world humming about the greatest sporting recoveries. One side down by three goals and without two strikers after the first leg of their Champions League semi-final (Liverpool), and the other, Spurs, needing three second-half goals in the cauldron of the Johan Cruyff Arena, has left many claiming these as the greatest fightbacks in the history of sport.
I’m not about to trawl the records to see how many teams have prevailed after being three down following the first leg of a tournament as big as the Champions League. But I am going to put forward a few cricketing examples where the ‘impossible’ has been achieved by winning a Test match after being asked to follow-on, of which there are just two since England beat Australia in Sydney in 1894.
Chief among them is the Ashes miracle at Headingley in 1981, when England beat Australia by 18 runs. Put like that it doesn’t sound at all spinetingling. Yet England followed-on 227 runs behind after being dismissed for 174 in their first innings after the Aussies had declared on 401-9 (the follow-on target in Tests can only be enforced if a team is at least 200 runs behind on first innings).
Worse was to come in that match when the home side slumped to 135-7 in their second innings, though many had written them off long before that parlous situation. For instance, Ladbrokes famously offered odds of 500-1 for an England win before the fourth day began, odds that would never have prevailed in the two-horse race at Anfield on Tuesday night which peaked at about 40-1 (for a 4-0 win in 90 minutes).
Infamously, two of the Australian team, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh, had a flutter at Headingley, something forbidden of today’s cricketers.
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