Border-Gavaskar Trophy: Rekindling past glories, India's winning road takes a new turn

 

A popular refrain throughout the recently wrapped-up Test series between Australia and India was that the matches were a throwback to the past when India grittily pushed back against the might of their opponents. In a way, India’s performance throughout the four-match series did evoke memories of the days gone by but this evocativeness mostly had some notable dissimilarities.

The biggest of them was, perhaps, that this was one of the rarer occasions when both teams met each other an equal footing in terms of team strength. One could then point out that this evenness didn’t last long in the Indian side as the visitors lost about half-a-dozen players to injury by the time the fourth Test came rolling by.

Then, coupled with the fact that the series decider was to be played at the Gabba, in Brisbane, the one place where the Australians were still near-invincible, pressure, too, became an accompaniment to past remembrances from the perspective of those following the visitors’ track.

The Test caps signifying the debuts of T Natarajan and Washington Sundar in the longest form of the game seemed less like an adornment and more like a mill around the neck. The stressful environment wasn’t the most conducive way for these players to get started on the Test front. Or, so everyone thought.

In hindsight, after watching the match and how its results affected the culmination of the series, it’s become obvious that the players themselves didn’t think the situation was so dire as each went about showing his calibre across the five days of play without once getting overwhelmed or bogged down.

Then, this too was another divergence from the past.

For, despite the air of assurance the Australians carried about them, this team had more chinks in its armour – the Gabba legend notwithstanding – just as the Indian team showed that its coffers of heart and ‘intent’ were still replete. This repletion didn’t translate to audaciousness and brashness – unlike in the bygone days of good results when the Indian team wore its attitudinal smirk on its sleeve as if to demonstrate one-upmanship – but showed in its unflappability and positive demeanour.

Such display of confidence from the touring team – after enduring a humiliating defeat in the opening Test in Adelaide – not only struck a chord with those rooting for them and even the neutral observers but also forced the hosts to take a step back and evaluate their chances in the match.

At Gabba, as the Indian bowlers made the Australian batsmen blink and the Indian batsmen made their bowling contingent flinch, the cape of superiority donned by the home team started to come undone. Or, to put it emphatically, this cape came undone after its strings kept getting unravelled in the two tests in Melbourne and Sydney.

Not that the Australians didn’t try their hardest to prevent what has now come to be an eventuality from happening. They put their best – and worst – behaviour out on the middle and it did spark a reaction. But the traction it netted wasn’t as extensive as they would have wanted and it only dented their prospects, further. And, in doing so, separated the past and present even more distinctively.

This takeaway has been that the Australians’ mettle can be tested, found wanting and exploited upon. Not that it hadn’t been done before or that it won’t not be replicated ever again. But to do so in such convincing fashion, where in the discussion regarding the series, while roving about other topics – fitness concerns, racial attacks, and sledging – remained firmly on the Indian team’s score-line and the players’ efforts to make their contribution substantial, was quite out of the ordinary. 

Especially, since the Indians not only had to rebound from the slump the Australians had heaped upon them in Adelaide but also needed to maintain their poise across a stretch of the three Tests that were to follow. Despite knowing that a draw would suffice to help them retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, the Indian team entered the match in Brisbane with this attitude, focused only on winning while forcing the Australians to remain continually on the backfoot.

That’s why the result of the series decider at the Gabba is as much the whole story as it’s part of the whole Test itinerary. That, as much as a recent past it is after having written over the ones before, it is also a as a handy reference point for the present and future that will mark the pages of the cricketing calendar.