Gems for milestones: MCG, Gabba, Lord’s
In a season of surreal Test cricket, India show character and confidence to leave an envious legacy
KOLKATA: When the dust settles on this year, after cricket moves on to glitzier white-ball spectacles in the Arabian desert, it may be nice to savour the legacy this India team and an extraordinary group of cricketers has left us in Test cricket. Thumping win at the Melbourne Cricket Ground? Check. Putting bodies on the line to grind out a draw at Sydney? Check. A storming of The Gabba that Australia had not allowed for 32 years, by a team without nine first-team players? Check. And now a scintillating comeback orchestrated at the home of cricket with a surgeon’s precision with the scalpel, reducing England to a heap of self-doubt.
Never has India surmounted such challenges consistently. Not that there has been shortage of talent even when India were blanked in Australia and England in the past. But this is about talent allied with confidence, about belief that has inspired a subcontinent team to shed the tag of “lions at home, lambs abroad”, and script new stories.
The bar is consistently set high, the tension whipped up in these games has not been for the faint-hearted. Give yourself only 60 overs, and less than two sessions, to get a result, even with a pace quartet on a Day 5 pitch? Even the mighty West Indies of yore would be impressed. The current India are pushing frontiers, throwing down challenges, their fast bowlers are setting upon the opposition like a pack. One got a whiff of this fast bowling conviction early in 2018 when South Africa were dismissed for 177 chasing 241 on a dangerously uneven Johannesburg pitch... it’s only got better. From the natural bounce of Ishant Sharma to Mohammed Shami’s seam-up beauties, Jasprit
Bumrah’s angled in posers to Mohammed Siraj’s scything pace, India offer no respite from a persistent trial by pace. Backing them all the way isn’t easy when a spinner of R Ashwin’s calibre has to be left out. India still went all out in terms of pace two Tests in a row. Nottingham was a near miss, Lord’s was a roaring success.
As much as Monday’s second Test win was a celebration of India’s bowling wealth, the batting too came through in a dire situation. With Shubman Gill injured and Mayank Agarwal suffering a concussion just before the first Test, India had to quickly settle on a partner the Rohit Sharma.
In comes KL Rahul, originally picked as a middle-order back-up. He has cemented a slot many once felt he would own without any break, after his firstinnings 84 at Trent Bridge and 126 at Lord’s. Equally engrossing is the story of Ajinkya Rahane, who stood out with a handsome century at the Mcg—after the Adelaide loss following a record batting low—and led his team to a series-levelling win, only to slip into a nine-innings rut away from home. He too came good with a fifty when it mattered. At 55/3, with a paltry lead of 28 and
Rahul, Sharma and Virat Kohli out, it could have been all over for India. Then India’s two most unassuming characters got together. One might say 45 off 206 balls is nothing to write home about.
Yet every team needs a Cheteshwar Pujara who can put his head down, blunt the bowling and slowly steer the team to safety. India wouldn’t have been in a winning position without the consolidating 100-run partnership between Rahane and Pujara.
The real revelation though has been India’s lower order batting. If the heist at The Gabba turned on Shardul Thakur’s and Washington Sundar’s seventhwicket stand of 123 in the first innings, at Lord’s it was Shami and Bumrah with an unbeaten 89-run stand for the ninth wicket.
For over eight months now, someone or other has turned up with the bat. And the results reflect that.
For example, on the 2020 New Zealand tour India batted for 68.1 overs and 81 overs in Wellington and 63 overs and 46 overs in Christchurch. Now the numbers post the debacle in Adelaide: 115.1 overs-15.5 overs (Melbourne-won), 100.4 overs131 overs (Sydney-drawn), 111.4 overs-97 overs (Brisbane-won), 92.1 overs-73 overs (WTC finallost), 84.5 overs-14 overs (Nottingham-drawn) and 126.1 overs109.3 overs (Lord’s-won).
India have since the Australia tour demonstrated repeatedly that they are a massively talented group where someone or other will always show up. Everyone has a role to play. Like with all great sporting moments, a siege mentality helps as well, an ‘us versus them’ attitude that binds the players tightly in adversity. The unending biobubbles have helped in a way, creating a world within a world for cricketers, to focus purely on the job at hand.
But what seems to fire India up are the mind games. Having got first-hand the match-winning response from Zaheer Khan after the jelly beans controversy at Trent Bridge in 2007, England should have known better. But by indulging in verbal jousts, England signed up for a fight they were not equipped to last. Bumrah and Shami didn’t take kindly to the constant needling while battling to extend India’s lead.
“We don’t mind some banter,” declared Lord’s Man-of-thematch Rahul. “You go after one of our guys and all 11 of us will come right back.”
India walked the talk. Clever to cash in on their pent-up adrenaline by making Bumrah and Shami open the bowling, Kohli then unleashed Ishant and Siraj for the final kill. Winning the mind games was the icing on a third Lord’s victory for India.