The official reason for leaving Gower out of the squad was that he was "too old", but with veterans Mike Gatting and John Emburey also making the trip, despite having only just returned from a ban for playing cricket in apartheid South Africa, this seemed rather spurious.
Buried beneath this furore was the additional omission of Jack Russell, considered by most to be England's best wicketkeeper, in favour of the largely unheralded Richard Blakey.
The top order failed miserably, slumping to 40/4 and 89/6, but the tail worked hard and Ian Salisbury came close to saving the follow-on after a three-hour stay at the crease for 28.
Sachin Tendulkar also went on to make a big century (165) on the second day and played some sublime strokes, including three boundaries in five balls from Malcolm to bring up his hundred, with further support from Amre (78) and Kapil Dev (66*), as India declared on 560/6, then their highest score against England.
Fielding at silly point off Ian Salisbury, Gatting was left groping at thin air after batsman Kiran More popped up a simple chance to him.
The story was similar in the second innings – Smith's 56 held together an otherwise flaky top order, which slumped to 99/6 before Chris Lewis took the attack back to the bowlers, finally delivering on the promise that many had seen for years.
Kumble picked up six wickets as he winkled most of the England batsmen out, while Kapil Dev set the tone by ripping out Stewart and Hick for ducks at the top of the order.
England's decision to go into the final Test of the series with just four specialist bowlers (Phillip DeFreitas, Lewis, Tufnell and John Emburey) looked justified when Gooch won the toss and elected to bat.
Once Hick and Lewis (49) (demoted to number eight) were together though, batting looked an awful lot easier, as they put on 93 for the next wicket, and only started to get bogged down once the ball began turning more sharply.
Kambli also received great support from another Bombay-based player, Amre (57), with whom he added 101, but eventually fell to Lewis for a magnificent 224, as India racked up a massive 591.