Australia

Well, the past couple of days have been the most gratifying for Indian fans and players alike. To put things into perspective, this Indian Team has achieved what no other team from the subcontinent before could manage. India came tantalizingly close to winning the series once, in 2003/04, but Steve Waugh’s stern resistance in his last test match at the SCG meant India would have to come back again and try their luck in another series. In all, 71 years and several disappointing tours later, Team India registers its first-ever series win against Australia in Australia.

For the first time in so many years, India went into a Test series in Australia as favorites and understandably so. This was touted as our best chance to win against Australia Down Under. If the previous two away tours were anything to go by, India looked well poised to at least put up a good fight and challenge the Aussies in their backyard. As it turned out, we outplayed them completely in all the three departments in three out of four test matches. That Australia was without two of their best batsmen and it made things easier for us is an argument Aussies would love to put out, but the fact that they could not find suitable replacements all throughout the year reflects poorly on their bench strength.

Everyone had their eyes set on Prithvi Shaw and Virat Kohli for this series. Prithvi, sadly, had to bow out before the first test, having twisted his ankle during the only warm-up game. Throughout the series, on almost all instances (barring the third one), the openers made way for Pujara pretty early into the innings. The Indian No. 3, then, steadied the ship and more often than naught made sure the team was out of danger, rather, in a position of strength. The discipline and determination with which he has batted could be a lesson for a lot of youngsters in the art of batsmanship in the longest format of the game. He scored over 500 runs and was rightly adjudged the Man of the series for his stupendous performance with the bat. Others, including Kohli and Rahane, batted around him and helped India post decent totals on the board. Mayank made his debut in whites in the second half of the series and to be honest, he looked like he belonged there. He had to wait to get his chance in the sun, but when he did get one, he made sure that he made it count. Pant got starts throughout the series and he ended the tour on a high as he scored a quick-fire century in the first innings of the last test match.

The bowlers have been simply magnificent, to say the least, on this tour. We have consistently managed to get 20 wickets and that has been one of the major reasons for our improved performance in Tests since past 12-15 months. Bumrah, Shami, and Ishant have been lethal with both, the new ball and old. Jaddu, Ash, and Kuldeep have had a part to play as well but the early breakthroughs with the new ball and the sustained pressure from the quicks have been instrumental in India gaining the upper hand. The bowlers made sure that we were always there or thereabouts and never let the game drift away from us. They have had a great impact, especially in low scoring games, like the first one in Adelaide.

Test cricket, dear readers, is well alive and kicking. Contests like these reinforce its importance as the mother of all formats. Sure, the skillsets required to succeed in Tests may not be the most sought after or fashionable in the modern day and age, but it in the process of attaining those, we discover our true self and therein lies the beauty of this game.

This series win is a memorable one and the whole country is proud of our boys. There have been several great players from the previous touring teams who couldn’t realize this dream, but Kohli & Co. have managed to do something incredible here and they deserve every bit of success which they have achieved.

Here’s to more success and dominance overseas.

The week that went by has seen the world turning upside down for two of the modern-day greats. The ‘leadership group’, of which they were a part of in the Aussie camp took a questionable (read: silly) decision, that of tampering with the ball. If given a chance, Steven Smith and David Warner would definitely want to go back in time and undo their wrongdoings.

It was during the lunch break on Day 3 in the Cape Town Test, third of the series when the ‘leadership group’ colluded to roughen up one side of the ball with a foreign substance (which apparently is not allowed on the cricket field). Bancroft was roped in to execute the plan and he made a complete mess out of it. On the field, one is always under scrutiny and it is difficult (almost impossible) to escape from the cameraman’s lens’. Soon enough, there emerged visuals of Bancroft using a yellow piece of paper to scrape the surface of the ball with. The broadcasters played it on the giant screen and the cat was out of the bag.

At the press conference, later in the day, Smith and Bancroft finally spilled the beans on what they had planned on doing. And the news spread like wildfire. The cricketing world was hit with a controversy of this magnitude for the first time since the match-fixing saga which happened at the turn of the century. It’s not that ball tampering was unheard of previously and many players had been convicted of the same. However, this was different.

The Australians have always played their game hard which more often than naught has border lined on a rather bullish brand of cricket. So, when an Australian captain makes plans of cheating with the second-in-charge and asks a young lad, who is just a few tests old, to tamper with the ball, it definitely would cause a huge uproar. Not only did international media took it upon themselves to convict and sentence these players, it saw it as an opportunity to grill the Aussies so as to avenge their boorish conduct in the past.

These are fine players, very fine indeed. But as Mike Hussey aptly puts it in his article, ’character first, skill second.’ Of course, it is a sport and everyone plays to win. But at what cost? You must draw a line for yourself and try to not go beyond it. Desperate times call for desperate measures. A paradigm shift in their approach to the game and the culture within the dressing room is the need of the hour. It is okay sometimes to lose to a better opposition. There is no guarantee that you will win every game. But it is totally not acceptable to use unfair means and bypass the law to gain the upper hand.

Having said that, I believe it was a huge error in judgment and it was definitely not well thought of. The consequences outweigh what would have been gained. To see them break down while addressing the press was very sad. They have been good servants of the game and are role models to young kids growing up. It was evident from their interaction with the media that they are deeply rooted family men. Smith broke down talking about how it affects him seeing his mom and dad go through this and Warner too, was teary-eyed when he spoke about letting his wife and daughters down.

What’s done is done. It is something they will have to live with for the rest of their lives. I am afraid that even after all that they have achieved on the cricket field and will achieve after serving the suspension ban, they will still have this blot on their respective careers and wouldn’t find their names taken alongside the all-time greats to have played the game.

It is not just about the numbers and statistics, it is the spirit with which you played your game that accounts for far more than the hundreds you have scored. I hope every young and budding cricketer finds a lesson in this and plays this great game of cricket in the right spirit. As for Smith, Warner, and Bancroft, I hope they find the strength to go through this and I am sure they will come back all the wiser, with an answer to the question posed in the title.

BLEED BLUE

Rewriting History, Down Under!

To do, or not to do, that is the question!