Redrawing the boundaries of the cricketing world
The victory in Brisbane will change how young players and fans around the world view the game. India has proven that no foe is too formidable, no fight too impossible to win
The ripples of India’s utterly implausible Test series victory in Australia will transform and shape cricket in ways that will only become clear over the coming years, but the one change that I can confidently predict is this: Test cricket will become more unpredictable, competitive, exciting and chaotic.
Other teams will look at this series, especially the last Test at Brisbane, and redraw the strategic template for playing the longest format of the game. They will be more fearless about introducing new players into their squads. They will look for an agent of chaos, which is what Rishabh Pant is, to wield the bat somewhere down the order and launch into bowlers.
The biggest change will be in belief: the possibility that any team can beat any team regardless of experience, status or conditions has never felt more real.
This is not to say that Test cricket was drab or predictable before this (though the breakneck if superficial uncertainties of T20 cricket may have made it seem so in comparison, in recent years). Just think of the third Test in the 2019 Ashes series where Ben Stokes unleashed a furious innings of 135 not out, studded with eight sixes and 11 boundaries, to drag England to a win despite the side collapsing for just 67 runs in the first innings.
Just earlier that year, Sri Lanka’s Kusal Perera was involved in another solo act, a blistering 153 in a rapidly see-sawing match against the far more powerful South Africa in Durban. Perera chased down the last 78 runs for the win with the last wicket partnering him — another remarkable underdog triumph story.
So, one of the things that the Australia series win will do is add to the growing body of evidence that pushes hard against the perception that Test cricket is — it feels crazy to even say it now! — boring.
The Australia tour also resonates strongly with other transformative moments for Indian cricket. And given that cricket matters so disproportionately more to India than any other sport, any transformative moment for Indian cricket also changes the larger cricketing world.
The first such moment was the 1983 World Cup win. No one had much hope in that team; even the players from that squad have spoken about how they thought of the tournament as simply an opportunity for a nice paid holiday in England. Yet, led by a 24-year-old captain, Kapil Dev — a middleclass youngster from Chandigarh who was himself the symbol of cricket shedding its colonial, imperial past — India did the unthinkable and beat the most dominant team of the time.
The repercussions were almost immediate. The One-Day format became more and more popular and the very next World Cup moved out of England for the first time in the tournament’s short history and came to India and Pakistan. India had also been introduced to the colour TV in 1982, but it was with this win that potential for cricket as a broadcast sport (and the financial implications of that) first began to take seed. We are still enjoying the results.
The next big change came in 2007 — by now, the plot points should be familiar. A new format of cricket that everyone was still getting used to. An experimental side filled with untested players led by a captain with a flowing mane, MS Dhoni of Ranchi, again, a symbol for how the game was changing in India. Thrilling individual heroics, including one from a completely unknown player, Joginder Sharma, who literally won the Cup for India bowling the last over of the final against Pakistan. Again, the impact was immediate, the ripples as big as tidal waves — months after the triumph, the IPL was born and T20 became the format of a new generation.
India’s Brisbane XI may never take the field in a Test match again, in exactly that formation (they were, after all, brought together by an unprecedented series of injuries to first-choice players), but some years down the line, they will have the pleasure of looking back from whatever pitch they’re on and seeing that they started something even bigger and more important than that momentous win.