Sharmila Tagore Seeks Clarification On The Name Of England-India Test Series

Sharmila Tagore, veteran actress and wife of legendary cricketer MAK Pataudi, has sought a clarification on the name of the ongoing England vs India Test series.

Sharmila will travel to England to present the trophy to the winning team after the five-match series. Instituted by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in 2007, the Pataudi Trophy was introduced to commemorate 75 years of Test cricket between India and England. The trophy is named after Iftikar Ali Khan Pataudi and his son MAK Pataudi.

However, this time around there is some confusion regarding the name of the trophy. Many are confused on whether the series is called the Pataudi Trophy or the Specsavers Test series — named after ECB’s sponsors. And Sharmila is also one of them.

But she is hopeful that there will be clarification on the matter soon.

“The Pataudi Trophy was instituted by the MCC quite a few years ago. But I am not sure whether it was cleared with the ECB or the BCCI at the time. The BCCI did make it clear that when England play in India it would be called the Anthony de Mello Trophy,” Sharmila told Sportstar.

Whenever India hosts England, the teams fight it out for the Anthony de Mello Trophy. On the other hand, the teams fight for the Pataudi Trophy when they take on each other in England.

Sharmila further recalled an incident in 2011 when her late husband, too, was left confused at The Oval.

“Tiger was invited by the ECB to present the Pataudi trophy at the Oval in London in 2011. I had accompanied him. At the official lunch they rehearsed how the trophy presentation would be conducted,” she recalled.

“However, when it was time to felicitate the winners, Mike Atherton, who was the presenter of the ceremony, did not announce the Pataudi trophy. He was reading out from the list he had been given which leads me to think perhaps the ECB had not cleared the matter with their sponsors and so it had been omitted as a result.

“The English team was taken away for photo opportunities and to celebrate and Tiger was left standing by the trophy. Andrew Strauss, the English captain at the time, noticed Tiger standing unsure of what to do and went over to him,” she added. “Tiger handed him the trophy but this exchange was neither photographed nor televised.”

Sharmila, however, said that in 2014 the trophy was called Pataudi Trophy. However, she went on to say that there was ambiguity over the name of the trophy.

“The ECB did include the Pataudi trophy in the presentation. But the official cup was called the Investec series after the sponsors. The fact that there are two trophies with two different names for one winning team creates a fair amount of ambiguity especially when only the sponsor trophy is covered by the media,” she said.