India vs England: Blast from the past

In this series, TOI looks at past tours of India to England...
1986
Dilip Vengsarkar made it three centuries in a row at Lord's, but this time it was sweeter as he helped India to a win in the first Test. Chetan Sharma was the star with the ball, taking a fifer in the first innings as India beat the hosts by five wickets. The bigger win, though, came in the second Test in Leeds, where under challenging seaming conditions, India outplayed England.Vengsarkar was the hero once again with a fifty in the first innings and a century in the second. Roger Binny, Madan Lal and Maninder Singh did the job with the ball as Kapil Dev's men completed a memorable series victory. The third Test in Birmingham was drawn. The tour saw Mohammad Azharuddin playing some eye-catchy knocks and making a reputation as a safe close-in catcher.
Result: India won 2-0.
1990
The series was memorable for the The Graham Gooch Test. If India had fond memories of their famous win at Lord’s four years earlier, the England captain crushed it run by run, scoring 333 & 123. Despite Mohammad Azharuddin’s hurricane 121 off 111, India went down by 247 runs. The Test also witnessed Kapil Dev, batting with the last man, hitting four sixes in a row off Eddie Hemmings to avoid follow-on in an unparalleled act of daredevilry. Another high-scoring game followed in Manchester, with six batsmen from each side scoring hundreds, the last among them a curly haired 17-year-old Sachin Tendulkar, who scored his first Test ton to take India to safety. The runs flowed in the third Test at the Oval too and England saved the match thanks to David Gower's century.
Result: England won 1-0.
1996
Mohammad Azharuddin was not the same force as he was with the bat, and his captaincy was also on the wane. Navjot Sidhu walked out of the tour due to his fractious relations with the Indian captain. The series, however, set in stone the foundation of India’s batting might for the next decade, with Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid making their debut and joining Sachin Tendulkar, who was already regarded as the best batsman in the side. England won the first Test in Birmingham as Tendulkar waged a lone battle, scoring a strokefilled 122 in the second innings. Ganguly scored a debut century in Lord's and Dravid missed out on one by five runs. In Nottingham, Tendulkar and Ganguly again hit tons but India’s bowling lacked venom as England took the series.
Result: England won 1-0