THE UNBREAKABLES
Defeated, depleted, and damaged, Team India rise from the ruins to fashion a miraculous turnaround in Australia
NEW DELHI: Just two months shy of what will be the 20th anniversary of a historic Test series turnaround against Australia by Sourav Ganguly’s India – engineered primarily by VVS Laxman and Harbhajan Singh in 2001 – Ajinkya Rahane’s India completed an equally great, if not greater, comeback in Brisbane on Tuesday. At least Laxman and Harbhajan were Test regulars by then; Rahane’s playing eleven for the fourth and final Test was missing as many as nine first-team players who began the series in Adelaide.
That mishmash of inexperience and youth – five of India’s 11 hadn’t played a Test before this four-match series began – has now set the new benchmark for miracles in Indian cricket. Yes, miracles. These are Ajinkya’s Unbreakables.
Possibly the greatest of the new heroes is Rishabh Pant, whose pre-series form and wicket-keeping skills were questioned to the point that he was dropped from the short-format squads, and didn’t make the 11 for the first Test in Adelaide. But when the odds were truly stacked against a wounded side by the third Test in Sydney, it was Pant’s 97 that raised hopes of chasing down a record 407 (and eventually led to an epic draw), before his second shot at the impossible came good on the final day in Brisbane.