Australians should probably take it as a back-handed compliment that so many people from around the cricket playing world derived so much joy from India’s triumph in one of the greatest of all Test series. But I don’t think many of them do.
They should probably remind themselves of the decades of world domination that they enjoyed and tell themselves that it was for that reason that every touring team which plays down under is regarded as firm underdogs – and that most of us are inclined to support the underdog.
Of course, it wasn’t just the success of the little guy over the big guy. It was also decency prevailing over crassness. Not all the time, naturally, but in the biggest moments of a series full of big moments, the tourists were calmer than their hosts – and good karma followed.
It has been conveniently forgotten that Tim Paine delivered a swingeing defence of David Warner just a day after the Port Elizabeth Test match which immediately preceded the team’s meltdown and ‘Sandpapergate’ at Newlands three years ago. It was all about ‘Davey’ and ‘a bit of banter’ and never ‘crossing the line.’
He did cross the line, repeatedly. But Timmy was simply toeing the party line and sticking up for his mate. One Test match later he was captain and has been given much credit for restoring the Australian team’s shattered reputation in the intervening years. To be fair, he has done and said many good things. But every now and then a flakiness in his behaviour was detected.
His chirping of Ravichandran Ashwin during the astonishing last day in Sydney crossed the line, if only because he ignored the unwritten ‘rule’ amongst players that you can be ‘gobby’ in between deliveries but you shut up when the bowler is running in. It’s the same principle that hunters use to justify killing animals in the wild. If they’re not tied down and free to run, they’ve got a fair chance.
Steve Smith was accused of scratching away Rishabh Pant’s batting guard on the crease during a drinks break in Sydney, which was patently absurd. Batsmen routinely take their guard again after a break and regularly check with the umpire that they are still on ‘middle-and-leg’. If Pant had been disorientated then he would have had nobody but himself to blame.
It was, however, a crass cheap-shot from the former captain who knows better than most that the crease belongs to the batsman when he is ‘in’. That small piece of the field is his – everywhere else belongs to the bowlers and fielders. Invading the batsman’s space was a dog urinating in another’s territory, a physical sledge rather than a verbal one. It failed, just as Paine’s words did.
Perhaps the most astonishing fact of India’s series win, even more than being bowled out for 36, was that they used 20 players to achieve it. In 140+ years of Test cricket, the most players previously used by a team to win a series was 16. History has proved that continuity has been critical to winning teams, yet each time a member of this one fell, another rose to take his place.
The IPL has played a huge role in finally putting Indian cricket where it should have been for decades. Forget the skills required to play T20 cricket as opposed to Test cricket, it has nothing to do with that. Instead it is the prestige and respect it has created amongst the country’s cricketers, the belief that they are the biggest and the best.
Playing with and against the best from the rest of the world, on their own turf, has demystified the aura which intimidated Indian teams of earlier decades. The annual infusion of confidence and belief into the country’s young players has been happening for over a decade and the results were so gloriously evident over the course of the last seven weeks.
It takes two teams to create a great Test match and the Aussies deserve their share of the credit for a series which will live long in the memory, even for those of us who had to miss chunks of it through the night.
The Australian bowling attack chopped and chopped away, felling trees like seasoned lumberjacks, but the logs sprouted shoots which grew unprecedentedly quickly.
“Wait ‘til we get you to the Gabba, hoo, hoo,” said Paine to Ashwin in reference to the fortress in Brisbane where the hosts had not lost since 1988. Unfortunately Paine’s prescience was not about the result, however, but – as he will be reminded for the rest of his life – an accurate reflection of himself when he called Ashwin a ‘dickhead’.
India have barely a fortnight to regroup before facing England in the first of four Tests starting in Ahmedabad on Feb 4. Australia leave for South Africa around Feb 22 for the first of three Tests starting from March 3. Long live Test cricket!
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Cricket needed this Indian series win, for more than just cricket, it has been a horrid season, pandemic has ruined so many games and series, and at the far end of a long year of lockdown, beer rationing, arrests for surfing, then 4 games of pure magic, from 36 all out to a series win, India might have won the series but everyone benefited, to have 2 games go down to the last hour, almost to the last ball, 10 days of cricket was pure bliss...
Cricket needs more of this, of games going to the wire, watching winviz swing from 98% Aus win to 1%, back to 90%...all in the space of hours, insane, it was such a great series and in a way sad it ended... I am sure that we can forgive the Indian team for their misjudgement and mild whinging about going to Gabba.. but in the end, they went, fought like Gods and did the impossible...
Sport loves a comeback, remember back in '95 the All Blacks sent the Japanese a message..127-0... Years later we, SA had to pay the price for that sms.. We got hammered by the Cherry-Blossoms in the land of Rugby..
That is why cricket is such a brilliant game, you just cannot know really until the last ball is bowled and Time Gentleman is called the result.. No one thought that an Indian series 2-1 would result.... Thanks to all the players, officials, broadcasters for putting up with the pandemic regs and rules, the isolation, thank you for bringing one of the best series in a long time, we all needed it!!!
Well, what a wonderful win and who knows Ashwin's prophetic statement "The Gabba will be your last test" may well come true. The Aussies think that all or the worlds sun shine right out of their proverbial, so it is with wonderful delight I watch them lose - anywhere - Home or Away. Perhaps one day, the arrogance will be "batted" out of them. So I continue to support ABA. (Anyone But Australia). Cheers to another great insight.