This has nothing to do with the main topics I write about in this blog but I can’t resist writing about our test series victory in Australia.
The reasons why this victory is special are threefold: firstly, it was an overseas win; next it was against a full-strength Australian team which is one of the powerhouses of the game and thirdly because it was achieved with an Indian side that was missing Virat Kohli (on paternity leave) and a lot of other senior players because of injury.
I can’t help harping back to when I was young. In the 1970s and 1980s overseas test victories were so rare and India was not able to compete in a worthwhile way in most of the overseas matches that Fred Truman – the legendary English fast bowler – described our side (in 1979) as a rag tag and bobtail outfit masquerading as a test team.
Our weaknesses in overseas conditions were both in bowling and batting. In the 1970s and early 80s most Indian batsmen had neither the technique nor the courage to face fast bowlers. They feared getting hit on the body and did not get into the line of the ball as a result. The only honourable exceptions at that time were Sunil Gavaskar and for a time Gundappa Vishwanath.
The new cricket ball has been compared to a rock by South African pacemen. Nobody likes to have rocks bowled to you at 90 mph. It requires courage to get in line with a full pitch delivery after having been hit on the body by a bouncer just a few balls before.
Our weaknesses were well known to all opposing teams and they exploited them to the full. When Sachin Tendulkar made his debut against Pakistan the Pakistani bowlers had their plans ready for him. They did not give him anything to drive. Almost all deliveries he faced were short of a length or bouncers. The Pakistanis said that the only drive he will be getting is from the hotel to the cricket stadium and then back from the stadium to the hotel.
It says a lot for the temperament and talent of Sachin that – even at age 16 – he not only survived this baptism of fire but also acquitted himself well. By the end of the tour the Pakistanis were full of praise for him.
Sachin is important in this saga for another reason. He was one of the first Indian players to have and also develop an attacking option to short pitch bowling. He used to be the only player in the team to play the hook and the pull shot against such deliveries. Later in the 2000s in South Africa, in the series that Virendra Sehwag made his debut, Tendulkar unleashed the upper cut. That is the shot played over the slip cordon to the vacant third man area for boundaries.
Now almost all top Indian batsmen have attacking options to short pitch deliveries. Credit for that change in attitude needs to be given to Tendulkar.
And lastly in the 70s and 80s the Indian team had no bowlers barring Kapil Dev who could give the opposing team a taste of their own medicine. Not having many fast bowlers meant that we could not compete well in overseas conditions because most pitches were having a covering of grass and suited the fast men and not spinners.
From those times to the present test series win in Australia is a great contrast and I am relishing the satisfaction.
The causes of this turnaround in out fortunes were the Indian world cup victory in 1983 and money coming into the game as a result of which youngsters were able to look at playing cricket as a career. I think it was Gavaskar who said that out of quantity will come quality. This has been proved right. And of course we cannot forget the contribution of the greats of those days like Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and Tendulkar.
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