Rousing red carpet welcome for Team India
MUMBAI/NEW DELHI/HYDERABAD: Chants of ‘aala re aala Ajinkya aala’ headlined a red carpet welcome for Ajinkya Rahane on his triumphant return from Australia with some other teammates. but the mood was sombre in Hyderabad as one of his warriors, Mohammed Siraj, headed straight to his father’s grave.
The chants (meaning here comes our Ajinkya) were heard amid the beating of the traditional dhol tasha and showering of flower petals at Rahane’s residential complex.
Besides stand-in captain Rahane, also arriving in Mumbai were coach Ravi Shastri, star batsman Rohit Sharma, pacer Shardul Thakur and opener Prithvi Shaw, while Brisbane Test hero Rishabh Pant landed in the national capital early this morning.
Siraj, who decided to stay put in Australia with the team and miss his father’s last rites, drove straight from the airport in Hyderabad to the graveyard and paid his last respects to his father Mohammed Ghouse.
An injury-ravaged India beat Australia by three wickets in the series-deciding fourth Test in Brisbane on Tuesday to clinch the rubber 2-1 and retain the Border Gavaskar Trophy.
MUMBAI/NEW DELHI/HYDERABAD: Chants of ‘aala re aala Ajinkya aala’ headlined a red carpet welcome for Ajinkya Rahane on his triumphant return from Australia with some other teammates but the mood was sombre in Hyderabad as one of his warriors, Mohammed Siraj, headed straight to his father’s grave. The chants (meaning here comes our Ajinkya) were heard amid the beating of the traditional dhol and showering of flower petals at Rahane’s residential complex.
Besides stand-in captain Rahane, also arriving in Mumbai were coach Ravi Shastri, star batsman Rohit Sharma, pacer Shardul Thakur and opener Prithvi Shaw, while Brisbane Test hero Rishabh Pant landed in the national capital early this morning. Siraj, who decided to stay put in Australia with the team and miss his father’s last rites, drove straight from Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport to the graveyard and paid his last respects to his departed father Mohammed Ghouse. It was the end of a twomonth long wait for the speedster, who was India’s top performer with the ball during the trip. Siraj’s father, who was an auto driver, had died on November 20 due to a lung ailment. This was just a week after his son landed in Australia with the Indian team on his maiden tour.
He was given the option of returning home but he decided otherwise and broke down thinking about him when the national anthem was played before the Sydney Test.
He made his Test debut in the second match in Melbourne and finished the Border-Gavaskar series with 13 wickets.
Racial abuse
Siraj revealed that on-field umpires had offered his team the option of leaving the third Test midway after he was subjected to racial abuse by the crowd in Sydney. Siraj and his senior pace colleague Jasprit Bumrah faced racial abuse for two days at the Sydney Cricket Ground, forcing the Indian team management to lodge a complaint with match referee David Boon. Cricket Australia later offered an unreserved apology for the incidents.
Siraj, called a “brown monkey” by some spectators, had reported the matter to skipper Ajinkya Rahane, who brought it to the notice of on-field umpires Paul Reiffel and Paul Wilson during the match.
“I faced abuses in Australia. The case is going on, let’s see whether I get justice or not. My job was to report the incident to the captain,” the 26-year-old said. “The umpires offered us to leave the game but Rahane (bhai) said we won’t leave the game. We did no mistake, so we will play,” he recalled. He said the unruly crowd behaviour acted as a morale-booster for him during his debut Test series.
“The abuses which I faced in Australia made me mentally stronger. I didn’t let them affect my game,” Siraj said.
T Natarajan, who was originally picked as a net bowler but became the first Indian cricketer to make his international debut across all three formats during the same tour, landed in Bengaluru and then took off for his village in Tamil Nadu’s Salem.