'Mankading': How India's first post Independence superstar cricketer still gets maligned

For more than five decades, he held the world record opening stand of 413 in Test matches with his partner Pankaj Roy. Even the 231 that he scored in that game against New Zealand in Chennai in January 1965 stood the test of time for nearly three decades as the highest individual Test score by an Indian before Sunil Gavaskar surpassed it in 1983. He was perhaps one of the first professionals among the amateurs in '40s and '50s when cricket couldn't be a source of sustenance.

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Going by the ICC manual, India all-rounder Deepti Sharma's run out of Charlie Dean in the third ODI was perfectly legal, but it still divided opinions with some backing it and Englishmen, such as Stuart Broad and James Anderson, expressing their annoyance.

'Vinoo', as the cricketing world knew him, was more than the sum-total of his parts, the 2109 runs and 162 wickets that he took in those 44 Tests. He was India's first 'Brylcream Man' for his well-oiled back-brushed hair and perhaps the first cricket superstar of the post Independence era. But for the past 75 years, one of India's greatest cricketers' name is repeatedly dragged whenever a batter wilfully tries to steal yards at non-striker's end and is legally run out. It's a lazy reference to Mankad dismissing Australian opener Bill Brown during India's first ever series Down Under in 1947-48. The International Cricket Council (ICC) in those days used to be known as the Imperial Cricket Conference. The name "Imperial" in ICC told the story.

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Premier off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin on Sunday said wickets ought to be credited to