Kingston, February 18, 1986.

England had already lost the Test series 0-5. They were on 47 for two in the first ODI, when captain Viv Richards asked Malcolm Marshall to deliver the ‘perfume ball’. That was the one that passed close enough to the batsman’s face for him to smell the leather.

The ace paceman delivered it to perfection. It lifted nastily and smashed into Mike Gatting’s nose as the stocky batsman attempted a hook. And to add insult to injury, the ball dropped on to the stumps, bowling him off his disarranged sniffer.

When the ball was returned to the bowler, a skeletal fragment of Mike Gatting was still embedded in it. Marshall found a piece of bone lodged in the leather.

As the batsman staggered back, Allan Lamb self-confessedly quivered in his shoes as he came in. The little fight that had been left in the English side left them.

As England kept being demolished again and again, Gatting was flown home for treatment. His face, puffy and swollen, did bear striking resemblance to a red-cheeked panda. At Heathrow, with sinister black-eyes and two rather large pieces of plaster taped across his nose, he was asked by a confused journalist, “Where exactly did he hit you?”

Text: Arunabha Sengupta
Illustration: Maha