Fighting character to behold
THERE’s nothing quite like the look on a boxer’s face when he lands his best punch on his opponent’s jaw, only to see him smile and ask “is that all you’ve got mate?’’
Australia suddenly has this feeling of numb vulnerability after watching the kitchen sink it threw at India bounce off the tourists’ shields of steel and roll into the gutter.
This draw will stand as an eternal golden stud in the history of Indian cricket, a result which says more about the fight and character of the Indian game than most of its famous wins. If Melbourne was India’s finest offshore win, surely this was its finest draw.
Australia has drawn the unlosable Test. And it wasn’t even a close thing. The wish is that this stunning draw will make India fall in love with Test cricket all over again because if India loves Test cricket the game will never die.
Stunned by the force of India’s will, Australia was reduced to tasteless sledging at the end after Tim Paine dropped three catches for the day in what he called one of his worst performances.
That India holds the Border-Gavaskar Trophy means Australia must attack at full throttle at the Gabba to grab a win and regain the silverware.
The key will be not to snatch at it. Mitchell Starc’s radar is scrambling to the point where he is bowling far too many leg-side balls. The selectors will debate dropping him for James Pattinson or Michael Neser in Brisbane but both lack match hardness.
What does it say about the majesty of Test cricket that a batsman could score 23 runs off 161 balls yet it was the most suspenseful innings of the summer?
Hanuma Vihari, he of the torn hamstring and Test average in the early 30s, stood firm to make himself an instant hero. His strike rate was one of the slowest in Test history yet history will remember his innings kindly.
No matter what happens in the rest of his career, he’ll always have Sydney.
What a stunning performance. India had close to a full team unavailable for or injured in this match. KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant, Ravi Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umesh Yadav, Ishant Sharma and Mohammed Shami are gone or incapacitated.
Did we doubt India? Of course we did. Only the truest of believers thought the tourists could manage a draw.