Mumbai: India's five Test series in England starting on June 20 will not be played for the Pataudi Trophy. The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has written to Saif Ali Khan, the actor son of former India captain, the late Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi about retiring the trophy.

The move to remove her husband's name though has hurt Sharmila Tagore.

"I haven't heard from them, but the ECB has sent a letter to Saif that they are retiring the trophy," Sharmila told HT. "If the BCCI wants to or does not want to remember Tiger's legacy, it is for them to decide."

The decision is yet to be made official. "We don't have any comment on the story at the moment," an ECB spokesperson said on Tuesday. BCCI officials were not available for comment.

India's Test series in England since 2007 has been played for the Pataudi Trophy, after the Marylebone Cricket Club, guardians of cricket's laws based at the Lord's ground, proposed the idea to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the first India-England Test played in 1932. The suggestion didn't come from BCCI or ECB. Tiger's father Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi played Tests for both England and India.

Tiger Pataudi played 46 Tests for India between 1961-75, 40 of them as captain, scoring 2,793 runs at an average of 34.91, remarkably extending his career despite losing vision in one eye following an accident. He passed away in September 2011.

The trophy has had an uneasy past. The Pataudi family was not happy that it didn't have the official stamp of the two boards. In November 2012, Sharmila wrote to the then BCCI president N Srinivasan, requesting that the trophy for the India-England Tests at home be named after her late husband. BCCI expressed inability, saying that the trophy for the home Tests was already named after Anthony De Mello, BCCI's first secretary.

Subsequently, BCCI set up the Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi Memorial Lecture in 2013. The inaugural lecture was delivered by former captain Sunil Gavaskar. Anil Kumble, VVS Laxman, Rahul Dravid, Farokh Engineer, Kevin Pietersen and Virender Sehwag have been the subsequent speakers. The last lecture was delivered by Sehwag in 2020.

The idea of giving a name to trophies adds historic flavour to bilateral rivalries between Test nations. India and Australia have fiercely contested for Test glory after their battles - both home and away - were named after Allan Border and Gavaskar.

West Indies and Australia battle for the Frank Worrell Trophy, the Warne-Muralitharan Trophy is played between Australia and Sri Lanka. Only recently it was decided that New Zealand-England series will be played for the Crowe-Thorpe Trophy.

India have played five Test series in England for the Pataudi Trophy - 2007, 2011, 2014, 2018 and 2021-22, the Covid-affected series that ended 2-2 after England won the postponed Test in Birmingham.

If the move to retire the Pataudi Trophy is made official, it remains to be seen if it will be renamed after the next generation of cricket greats. From time to time, there have been suggestions to consider the names of the two great all-rounders to have come from India and England - Kapil Dev and Ian Botham - for the honour.

There will be a fair amount of buzz around the upcoming India-England series, it being the one to kickstart the new round of the World Test Championship cycle.