The late Dilip Doshi and Pakistan’s Javed Miandad had a famous on-field confrontation during a India vs Pakistan Test in Bengaluru in 1983. In the match, Miandad was constantly stepping out and only defending the ball when Doshi was bowling. And after each ball, he would poke the Indian bwoler and asked ‘Tera room number kya hai? (what is your room number?)”. When Doshi asked why he was asking the question over and over again, the Pakistani great said, “Tell me your room number. I wanna hit you for a 6 there.’
This tale is as old as time, with a lot of Indian greats narrating the incident, including Doshi back in 2020. “Basically you got to understand that Javed has this street fighting attitude, a truly great batsman, one of the best I’ve bowled to, I really respect him as an opponent. He’s a good friend as well, I love him off the field but once he got on the field, it was like a change of character,” Doshi had said in a conversation with Murali Karthik in 2020.
“When you restrict him from playing his shots, he would try to get you off your concentration was to create some sense of irritability and he was good at that, he has done with Kiran More, he did it with Dennis Lillee and he has done it many more times with me. So he would tell the close-in fielders something to pass on the message to me or walk across after the ball is bowled and he would say something,” Doshi added.
“That day what he was trying to do in Bangalore on my recall Test was trying to tell me ‘What’s your room number? I wanna hit the ball there.’ It became a legendary thing, many people have repeated that, with some added spices but it’s fine, it was all in good banter,” he had said.
“He struggled. He couldn’t hit me. He made 98 and got out,” Doshi had added.
