Hours before the start of the historic 1971 West Indies tour, Indian team had no kit to play In ‘1971: The Beginning of India’s Cricketing Greatness’, Boria Majumdar and Gautam Bhattacharya write about the twin tours that made the Indian team a force to reckon with. Text Size: A+ One thing, however, was clear from the very start of the tour—the Indians weren’t in the best space mentally when they landed at JFK Airport in New York on their way to Jamaica [in 1971]. While on the one hand, they were expected to do well against a relatively young and inexperienced West Indies side, on the other, they were being picked on for reasons that had little to do with their cricket. To compound problems, Sunil Gavaskar had been nursing a painful ‘whitlow’ in his finger as the team boarded the aircraft in Bombay and was in extreme duress by the time the flight touched down in New York. Gavaskar recounted, ‘Soon after we reached the hotel, the manager, Keki Tarapore, took me to the hospital to get the finger checked. In the course of the flight, the swelling had increased considerably and the finger had turned so bad that the nurse who was assisting the doctor actually turned her face away on seeing the pus. However, the operation was eventually a minor one, and within ten minutes, I felt better. All I needed to do, I was told, was rest, and I would be good to go in about a week or so.’