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TThere is nothing like the feeling here after a series of classic tests. There may be greater peaks of human joy or pleasure, but this is a high that fades into a particular satisfaction, the euphoria warmly fading within us like the point of light that lingers when an old television is turned off.
It’s because of the amount of time, effort, and energy invested, even for those of us who watch instead of play. We have lived that experience until the final reward and in the big competitions the reward is immense.
Australia and India have become used to this type of contest. The modern context begins in 2001, when champions Steve Waugh hit a record 16 wins in a row by wiping out India in Mumbai, then had four wickets down while still in Kolkata. Turning it around should have been impossible, but VVS Laxman did it and India won in the final days of the fifth day before taking the decisive third Test in a great deal of suspense.
The two boards expanded their competencies to four tests. In Australia in 2003-04, in India in 2004, Australia in 2007-08, India in 2017 and Australia in 2018-19, the series leaned one way and then the other and was defined by matches with grandstand finals.
The conclusion in Brisbane on Tuesday is in keeping with this tradition, with a couple of teams ready to scrap until the very end. It fits into the tradition of hard-to-believe stories, performances that come out of nowhere. At the same time, it also has its own history, one that does not repeat itself.
When India won Australia two years ago, it was the first time. None of the former greats had accomplished that. They had drawn and had come close, but that victory escaped them. The conditions were too strange, the competition too fierce. The result was based on the most professional and skilled team that India had sent to Australia. Virat Kohli’s intensity as captain captured the same qualities in his players. It had a five-man battery and a main trio that played every game.
This time it was the opposite. Injury after injury meant the players disappeared like potato chips in the pub. There was no continuity. Only batsmen Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane played all four Tests. The decider was based on net pitchers who had stayed on the road after a few white-ball games in November. All this came after being humiliated in the first test in Adelaide by being eliminated by 36 to lose from a strong position.
The quality of the missing ones is worth considering. Ishant Sharma, tall and fast and capable of throwing the ball in both directions, India’s attacking leader from the previous tour. Bhuvneshwar Kumar, a brilliant exponent of the bowling swing who can also hit like a proper number 8. Neither of them got on the plane.
Mohammed Shami, the team’s most relentlessly precise operator, broke his arm as the final insult of Adelaide’s collapse. Umesh Yadav, fast and with four experienced tours of Australia, pinged his calf in Melbourne. Jasprit Bumrah, the most exciting bowler in India, struggled in Sydney. Ravindra Jadeja was a major influence in Melbourne’s win and Sydney’s draw before hurting his thumb while batting. Ravichandran Ashwin was India’s top turf carrier in three events before hurting his back.
That is in addition to India’s top five fast bowlers and top two spinners – the latest pair with five centuries of testing between them. Add in the best hitter of all formats in the world, after Kohli went home to see his daughter born, and harmful starter KL Rahul, who went home with an arm injury, while Hanuma Vihari went home. he tore a hamstring while hitting to save the game in Sydney.
Finish off with the fast bowling all-rounder Hardik Pandya, who was sent home unable to bowl after dominating the previous series of a day with the bat, and you have a whole India XI of good players missing by the time Brisbane arrived. The five bowler attack for that match had four tests and 11 wickets between them. The four Australian bowlers had taken over 1,000.
This was the context in which India came to a place where the local team had not lost in 33 years. It was the context in which India defeated Australia in both innings at the Gabba, something that had happened in two other games in those decades. And it was the context in which the batting of the India operation decided to charge 328 in the fourth inning to win the game and the series.
There were 18 bigger race chases in 2,403 tests, but it doesn’t matter. Under the impetus of Kohli, India started after 364 in Adelaide in 2014 and fell very short. Under his understudy Rahane, India started after 407 a week ago in Sydney, and could well have won rather than tied if Vihari and Ashwin hadn’t been too injured to move between the grounds in the last two hours.
Brisbane’s victory came through another young operator. Rishabh Pant, the 23-year-old wicketkeeper who didn’t start this series on the wing due to his glove work, chose his moments of aggression and ran the chase with 89 not eliminated. In Sydney, he had made possible the idea of a victory by crushing 97. Both times he had brought down Australia.
Of the Indian hitters who did what Pant had done (hitting 89 or more in the fourth inning while winning or saving an try), the only ones with multiple instances were Sunil Gavaskar four times, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly twice. Pant has done it twice in a week.
But his audacity was based on the bloody mentality of his team. The way he hit after being crushed in the elbow in Sydney, making his grip difficult. The way Pujara took hit after hit in Brisbane to make sure Pant had solidity on the other end. The way Rahane took over a team at its lowest ebb and lifted it up. The way Vihari and Ashwin fought while injured in Sydney to keep the series alive. The months of isolation in a hotel, Mohammed Siraj missed his father’s funeral, T Natarajan missed the birth of his daughter, hoping to debut in India.
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They duly did. Like Navdeep Saini and Washington Sundar and Shubman Gill, and indeed Shardul Thakur after his debut three years ago lasted minutes. New players got into this situation and were unfazed. They made vital contributions beyond what was fair to expect.
For the third time in these recent Australian contests, after 2001 and 2017, India lost the first match but struggled to win the series. This is only a rare thing in test cricket. But having done it in these circumstances, under these limitations, is what distinguishes this result. It exists in a tradition, but the effort of these players also settles on its own.
