Battle Conquered

 

 

 

 

 

What sports teach us about life? One may get invaluable lessons for one full life if one follows team India’s journey in Australia for a month. It all started on December 19, 2020. Australia ensured team India’s defeat in the Adelaide Test match after bowling them out for their lowest ever total in the test match. January 19, 2021. Fighting every odds and rising taller after every challenge, team India won the battle at Brisbane, an impregnable Australian fortress for 32 long years.

 

Should sports be taken seriously enough to be an indicator in the journey of the nation? The character shown by the shining stars of new India facing the most challenging of the situations encapsulates the meaning and significance of the incredible journey. The fact that the victory has come almost a week before the country gears up to celebrate its 72nd Republic Day makes it all the more special. The underlying messages have to be read properly. The reference to the context understood properly.

 

The entrenched world order always underestimates the power of Naya Bharat. They always say- India cannot do this. When the worst pandemic of the Century hit the world, the entrenched order predicted doom, gloom and deaths in lakhs in India. They argue even the economically powerful nations like the United States and the United Kingdom and the countries with the best health care facilities could not fight COVID-19. How can India, with so many limitations do this?

 

Similarly, when India faced a humiliating defeat in the first Test match on the Australian soil, nothing more than a humiliating whitewash was predicted. Nothing short of 0-4 loss was predicted. The fact that the best batsman and the team leader Virat Kohli was leaving the team strengthened the belief of the conventionalists.

 

The challenges indeed were galore. Ishant Sharma and Bhuvneswar Kumar, the two seasoned pacers were already not part of the squad. Rohit Sharma, Team India’s best bet in the white-ball cricket was down with an injury and in the best possible scenario could be part of the team for the last two test matches. Session by session after the Adelaide Test match, the injury list kept on increasing. Mohammad Shami, Umesh Yadav, KL Rahul, Hanuma Vihari, Ravindra Jadeja, Jasprit Bumarah and Ravichandran Ashwin, joined the list. By the time Brisbane’s decisive battle was to be fought, the team management’s biggest challenge was to find 11 fit warriors who would be taking on the opponent. But, this is ‘Naya Bharat’, the new India.

 

 

 

The new leadership group emerged. Ajinkya Rahane, the captain in charge and R Ashwin, Cheteswar Pujara, Jasprit Bumrah and later on Rohit Sharma, formed this core leadership group on the field. Ajinkya Rahane may not show on your face aggression and superstar demeanour like Virat Kohli. But his style of cool-headed aggression was tailor-made for the situation. Rahane’s aggressive leadership stamped in his nuanced field placements; bowling changes brought out with intent and batting order tweaked with purpose. The moment Ashwin was given the tenth over in the Melbourne test match and Rishabh Pant was promoted in the Sydney Test match, their body language changed. The leadership group had the umbrella protection of the battle-hardened Ravi Shastri led support staff. The core leadership group’s beauty let in warriors having a different skill set to be their own and channel their strength for the team’s cause. In the dressing room atmosphere like this, the entire dressing room gets involved with the larger cause and not let the momentum slip away even in the most challenging situations. This was crucial to India winning key moments for the rest of the series.

 

For many of those following cricket in Australia for years, Rahane’s fighting century in Melbourne was rated as one of the most effective innings played by the rival captain on their soil. R Ashwin has picked around 400 test wickets, and calibre spinners like him don’t come in international cricket. But this series was a clear indicator of what he could do even in adverse conditions outside the Indian sub-continent if he gets the full backing of the team leadership. With the ball, he laid traps for key opposition batters. With bat and Hanuma Vihari, he fought acute back pain and hostile Australian attack to save the Sydney test match for team India.

 

Jasprit Bumrah may have completed only four years in international cricket, but he’s already the pace battery leader. Whenever the team needs a wicket from him, he’s there to deliver. But the greatness of Bumrah goes beyond his skills. As one of the former Pakistan cricketers says: ‘Traditionally India’s strength has been batting, and they always lacked quality-paced bowlers like Pakistan. But now it seems, India has set up a factory producing world-class fast bowlers with regularity’. Whereas the great former Pakistan pace bowlers were hesitant to share their skills and pass it on to the coming generation, Bumrah and company are entirely different. Bumrah, as the leader of the pack, thrives in sharing his skills and experience with other bowlers like Mohammad Siraj, Navdeep Saini and T Natrajan. This healthy culture promoted by bowling coach Bharat Arun and spearheaded by Jasprit Bumrah will keep tremendous Indian pace bowling factory lively and up to date.

 

If the architects of the ‘New team’ India have been able to make history with two back to back test series wins on the Australian soil, it has been done on the solid foundations provided by Cheteshwar Pujara. Pujara is the new great wall of Indian cricket. He got hit again, again and again. His body got battered and bruised, but he never gave up. By the end of the series, many of the greats of the Australian cricket grudgingly accepted Pujara as one of the legends of the game. He’s a rare breed which is increasingly getting extinct in international cricket. Players like him need to be valued and treasured not only for the present and future health of the Indian cricket but also for test cricket’s overall health.

 

The original great wall of Indian cricket, Rahul Dravid, may not be with Australia’s team. But his presence was visible throughout the Indian dressing room. Dravid’s coaching and mentoring of junior cricket have kept the supply chain going. Two of his protégés, Shubhman Gill and Rishabh Pant have arrived and are the two potential superstars of cricket in the years to come. Rahul Dravid’s protégé Washington Sunder showed glimpses of his matured head and immense potential in his very first test appearance in the Brisbane Test. Dravid’s disciple Prithvi Shaw may have failed to live up to Australia’s current tour expectations. But it would be too early and a huge mistake to rule him out. For guru Dravid will be working on the chinks in his armour and Shaw version 2 may soon be unleashed.

 

Courtesy the world-class sporting product like Indian Premier League, the professional structure of the BCCI and the modern version of Guru-Shishya parampara modern version sustained by Ravi Shastri on the top and Rahul Dravid at the bottom, India can come up with two effective playing eleven at the international level. But, New India is aspirational and unwilling to settle for anything less than the best. They want India to be as formidable a team like the West Indies and Australia were once upon a time. Starting with 2021, they want this decade to be India’s decade in world cricket. The world is increasingly acknowledging this. Justin Langer, the Australian team coach and one of the great batsmen of his time said after the great Indian series win:-‘They have been outstanding, but we have learnt lessons from it. First, you can never take anything for granted. Second, never, ever underestimate the Indians. There are 1.5 billion Indians, and if you want to play in the first eleven, you have got to be tough. Don’t you.’ The power of this 1.5 plus billion was visible to the best of the cricketing world now. The way India approached its fight against pandemic COVID-19 is being talked about in the international circles. From surgical masks, sanitisers to ventilators, India was dependent on the outside world. Soon it became self-sufficient and even started exporting them. Lockdown was seen as people’s movement, and food and essential items were delivered to the poorest of the poor. India came out with its vaccine. India has rolled out the vaccination drive, which will be unprecedented in scale and scope in the annals of human history.