Men with bouncebackability

Travis Basevi and George Binoy22-Dec-2010

Australia did at the WACA last week as England had done at the Oval in 2009. Not win the Ashes, but bounce back from an innings defeat to win the next Test of the series. Australia's resurgence in Perth came after they were battered by an innings and 71 runs in Adelaide, while England had regained the Ashes in south London after losing by an innings and 80 runs in Leeds. Question: How many times has a team recovered from an innings defeat to win the next match of the series? Answer: Perth was the 36th occasion. Here's a list of all of them.

The first such occurrence was during England's tour of Australia in 1895-96. Australia had beaten England by an innings and 147 runs in less than two days of play during the timeless Test at the SCG. England lost 19 wickets on the third day of the Test and their two innings of 65 and 72 lasted a total of 68 overs. Australia had leveled the five-Test series at 2-2 ahead of the decider in Melbourne. In another timeless contest at the MCG, Australia built on a first-innings lead of 29 to set England 297 to win the series. The visitors were 28 for 1 at the end of the fourth day and lost their captain, Andrew Stoddart, to the first ball off the fifth. What came next was possibly the finest innings played by an England batsman in Australia. Jack Brown won England the Test, and the series. He reached his 50 in 28 minutes, which remained the quickest half-century for more than a century, and went on to make 140 off 145 balls, adding 210 for the third wicket with Albert Ward. By the time Brown was out, England needed only 59 to win and they did so by six wickets. It remained Brown's only Test hundred for he died of heart failure in 1904, at the age of 35.

By coincidence, the next four instances of a team winning a Test after losing the previous in the series by an innings also happened in Sydney and Melbourne. The first occurrence outside Australia was only in 1952, when Pakistan toured India for the first time. In the first Test in Delhi, Pakistan were dismissed for 150 and 152 - Vinoo Mankad took 13 for 131 - after India had made 372 batting first. In the next match in Lucknow, Fazal Mahmood helped Pakistan level the series by inflicting an innings defeat on India. He took 12 for 94, skittling India for 106 and 182 in response to Pakistan's 331. In the third Test in Bombay, it was India's turn to return the favour and recover after being thrashed by an innings. They failed to win by an innings but their ten-wicket victory earned a 2-1, which they would maintain to win the series. It was the only time both teams had bounced back to win Tests after suffering innings defeats in a series.

India were just beaten by an innings and 25 runs by South Africa in Centurion on Monday, and their prospects for Durban appear bleak, but they have previous when it comes to recovering from innings defeats. In 2008, South Africa toured India and routed the hosts by an innings and 90 runs in Ahmedabad. India were decimated for 76 in 20 overs in their first innings. In a desperate attempt to level the series in the final Test, the pitch in Kanpur was tailored to India's strengths and it looked like a fifth-day surface on the first. India's spinners secured an eight-wicket win. When South Africa visited again in 2010, they once again thrashed India by an innings in Nagpur and took a 1-0 lead in the two-Test series. The pitch at Eden Gardens wasn't as spin-friendly as the one in Kanpur had been, but four centuries from India's batsmen and a five-for from Harbhajan Singh defeated South Africa by an innings and 57 runs.

In between those tours, India toured Sri Lanka in 2008 and were beaten by an innings and 239 runs in the first Test at the SSC. No team had ever recovered from a defeat of such magnitude to win the next Test. In Galle, however, Virender Sehwag made an aggressive 201 out of India's first-innings total of 329. It laid the platform for them to beat Sri Lanka by 170 runs.

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