The Indian cricket team just did the seemingly unthinkable - beat Australia at it's ultimate stronghold, the 'Gabba! And did it in incredible fashion, chasing down 328 runs on Day 5 against the most potent quartet of bowlers in the world, including the top dog - Pat Cummins who is the #1 bowler by a fair distance.
In no particular order, here are some random thoughts that are floating through my head as I think about the match:
1) Speaking of colossal mismatches - nothing summarizes it better than this - at the start of the Test match, the Australians had collectively taken 1033 Test wickets while the Indians had a sum total of 13 (including 2 by Rohit Sharma who is not a bowler any more...though, ironically he did end up bowling in this match).
The famed Australian quartet took 17 wickets in this Test while the unfancied Indian bowlers took all 20 on offer.
2) Poor Tim Paine. For the last two years he has done his best to revamp the image of the Aussie team. All his hard work may have gone in vain because of his "conversation" with R Ashwin during the waning moments of the Sydney Test where he lost his cool. That may end up defining him as much as Kim Hughes is remembered for his teary press conference or Michael Clarke is for his "broken arm" sledge to Jimmy Anderson.
3) T20 cricket has changed the way we approach targets. When 140 plus runs were required in the last session, no one spoke in terms of time but only in terms of overs left. When 50 runs were required in 8 overs with only 5 wickets in hand, it was considered very achievable - a thought that would have resulted in shuttered doors even as recently as a decade ago (see below). It was a tight equation but 26 runs were plundered off the next two overs by Sundar and Pant and, suddenly, the match was gone from Australia's hands for all intents and purposes (except for minor blemishes from Sundar and Thakur that injected some excitement into the proceedings).
4) In 2011, the India cricket team had a golden chance to win a Test match in the West Indies. Chasing 180 to win, they were 94 for 3 when MS Dhoni agreed to a draw with the mandatory 15 overs (in the final hour) about to be bowled. The batsmen who were still not out or in the pavilion? Dravid, Laxman, Kohli, Dhoni and Harbhajan. As it was happening then, I was flabbergasted at how the Indian captain, fresh off a World Cup triumph, gave up the ghost of the chase so easily. I was thinking of that match as the last hour started in Brisbane.
At Brisbane, at the start of the mandatory 15 over final hour, India needed 69 runs to win
Batting: Pant (51) and Agarwal (9) with Sundar and Thakur after them
At Roseau, in 2011, at the start of the mandatory 15 over final hour, India needed 86 runs to win
Batting: Dravid (34) and Laxman (3) with Kohli, Dhoni, Harbhajan after them
The fear of failure weighed heavily on the 2011 team. Unencumbered by any such pressures, the 2021 team finally released some of the anguish of that failed chase of a decade ago.
5) Rishabh Pant was the first visiting batsman to record scores of 25+ in 10 consecutive innings in Australia (surpassing, among others, Viv Richards who had a streak of 8). He got 23 in the first inning at Brisbane, snapping that streak, but then added 89* in the second inning. His scores across all Tests in Australia read:
25, 28, 36, 30, 39, 33, 159*, 29, and 36, 97, 23, 89* in this series
6) The Indian 4th inning was a tale of two strategies. At one end Pujara scored 56 in 211 balls, typical of a team fighting for a draw and at the other end Gill, Rahane, and Pant scored a combined 202 in 306 balls, symbolizing a team going for the win. Chalk and cheese, black and white, night and day - the beauty of Test cricket is that it can simultaneously accommodate two entirely opposite batting styles. As Harsha Bhogle pointed out in his post-match review after the Sydney Test - Test cricket showed the value of two opposite approaches seeking the same common goal (even there he was referring to Pujara and Pant's approach to the task at hand right at the start of the video).
7a) At the end of day 4, Indians prayed for rain. And rain is what they got - a rain of runs!
7b) Actually, it DID rain. There were surreal scenes with about 20 overs to go when the ground was bathed in bright sunlight and yet the players were playing in a drizzle from a passing cloud. Maybe the gods felt the need to bless the batsmen as they dreamt the unthinkable.
8) Cummins set a record during the 2019 Ashes series for the most number of wickets in a 5 Test series without a five-for when he took 29 wickets with no five wicket hauls. In this 2020-21 series, Cummins once again led all bowlers with 21 wickets and no five-fors. I do not know if that is a record for a 4 Test series but it has to be up there if it isn't.
But it says something about Cummins: I do not recall him having a defining spell where he blasted away the opposition like Broad or Steyn or even Bumrah seem to have in our memory banks.
9) The man who spent the most time in the middle (after Pujara) seemed to be Nitin Patel, the physio. The number of times he ran onto the field to tend to an injured player almost warrants a sponsorship deal from someone!
10) Over the course of 8 innings (both teams combined), 123 wickets fell on helpful tracks but there were only three 5-for (Pfeiffer in honor of Dean Jones) hauls in the series - two by Josh Hazelwood and one by Mohammad Siraj.
(***PTS messaged me to point out that in the entire series, the number of centuries scored was in the same ratio - Australia had two centurions (Smith, Labuschcagne) while India had just one (Rahane).)
11) In 2018, when India finally breached the Aussie stranglehold we were told that the result would have been different if Steve Smith and David Warner had been there. (And, they did not have Marnus Labuschagne either at that point in time). In this series, they had all of them at various times. In fact, Australia won the Test where Steve Smith contributed only 1 run and lost (or drew) the matches where he scored centuries or fifties.
I am actually very happy that there were no broken Aussie players or missing players for any reason. There are no excuses left on that front to explain away the losses.
12) The Australian batting line-up was very brittle. Even Labuschagne received numerous lives in all his innings and it could have been much worse for Australia if India's fielding had been as disciplined as its batting or bowling. Even in the first Test at Adelaide, after posting 244, India had Australia reeling at 111 for 7 when Bumrah dropped an easy catch off Paine. The Aussie skipper then counter-attacked (with more luck and lives) and kept the lead down to just 54 runs. The rest is history (36 and all) but think about how the Test may have played out had we gotten them all out for, say, 125 and batted with a lead of 100 plus rather than having to come in the next morning on a fresh day at 9 for 1 and a lead of 63 runs.
13) After the events of the Sydney Test, where tremendous amount of energy was spent in achieving the draw, I was concerned that there would be a let down at Brisbane. I was convinced that if we lost the toss, the Australian batsmen would bat us out of the game. And they were close to doing so - at 200 for 3 (Editor's note: I had previously noted that it was 206 for 2, which was actually the score in the Sydney Test).**. From there onwards, the resilience and fight of the Indian team came to the fore. Getting Australia all out for 369 was a monumental feat. Had they reached 450 or even 400, it would have been devastating.
Actually, Rahane lost all three tosses in the Tests he captained, adding another layer of improbability to the stupendousness of the series win. Time after time, the odds were stacked against the team and they kept overcoming it. All along we had been told that the GOAT (Lyon) would be unleashed in the 4th inning on a wearing wicket while exploiting the footmarks made by Starc. Lyon was more bleat than roar.
14) Fame is fleeting, ephemeral. Success is occasional, failures are more common. The playing 11 at Brisbane will look nothing like the playing 11 in the next Test against England. In my estimation, only Sharma, Gill, Pujara, Rahane, and Pant are certain to play. The other 6 are unlikely to feature since the following will return: Kohli, Bumrah, Sharma, Ashwin...leaving spots for only 2 other players, who may both be spinners. I do not know when Thakur or Saini or Natarajan or Sundar will play again for India. If you think it is unlikely they'll never play again having contributed to this win, think about this:
The miracle of Kolkata 2001 was the last Test match for: Nayan Mongia and Venkatapathy Raju
The euphoria of victory did not extend their careers. They were replaced by Sameer Dighe and Nilesh Kulkarni (for whom Chennai was the last Test of his career, too).
15) The value of Pujara's self-denial became apparent to me the moment I realized that when Cummins opened the bowling after lunch, he was already into his third spell of the day. And when Hazelwood replaced Cummins, it was his third spell, too. Drip by drip, drop by drop...the miles started piling accruing on those legs and when the second new ball was available the engine was willing but the body was not as sharp.
16) The loss was disastrous for Australia's World Test Championship (WTC) hopes. Here's what needs to happen in order for Australia get to Lord's for the final.
The unexpected series defeat against India has severely dented Australia's chances of making the top two. Their points percentage has dropped to 69.2, and they will need 89 points from the three-Test series against South Africa - which is yet to be confirmed - to go past New Zealand. That can only happen if they win at least two Tests and draw the third, in which case they will get 93 points from the series.
And, since you asked, this is what has to happen for India:
India have moved to the top of the table, with a points percentage of 71.67, with New Zealand currently second. To stay ahead of New Zealand's 70%, they need 80 more points out of 120 in the four-Test home series against England. They can get there with a 2-0 series win; if they lose one Test in that series though, they will need to win three. Given India's home record in the last eight years - 28 wins, one loss in 34 Tests - they should fancy their chances of securing those 80 points.
The WTC has added a new wrinkle to Test series, providing an additional layer of context where the outcome of a series matters not only to the participants but also to other nations, which is a good thing.
17) After the second Test, I had some misgivings about the umpires. I did not doubt their bias or their skill. Rather, I felt that there might be a subliminal tendency of lenience towards the Australians. For example, there were decisions that were given out to an Aussie bowler while a similar appeal from an Indian bowler was turned down (subsequently overturned on DRS appeal). That was my perception and it was reinforced when a few "out" decisions against the Indian batsmen were overturned upon review.
The fears that I had turned out to be largely baseless and unfounded. I did not sense any such umpiring bias during the fourth Test and was, actually, very impressed with the umpiring of Bruce Oxenford and Paul Wilson. Sure, they had to overturn a decision or two but there was nothing that was egregiously out of place. In fact, considering how tense the match was they were outstanding. I was particularly impressed with Paul Wilson, who seemed very calm and measured in everything he did. I hope he grows in stature and umpires more games.
And I dislike the rule that an umpire cannot stand in games featuring his home team. In this day and age with the scrutiny they go through and the ability to use DRS to overturn decisions, we could keep one umpire at least from the home nation on the ground, I would think.
18) In the long, storied history of Test cricket, never have 20 players been used by an away team during the course of a series. India did that this time, demonstrating the incredible turnover from test to Test, so much so only two players - Rahane and Pujara - played all 4 Tests for India. High turnover is usually associated with teams that lose by huge margins not series winners. Yet another amazing stat in a series filled with bizarre stats and facts.
19) When the series began:
Ravichandran Ashwin had 365 wickets in 71 Tests.
Nathan Lyon had 390 in 96 Tests.
The series ended with Ashwin on 377 (12 in 3 Tests) and Lyon on 399 (9 in 4 Tests).
Ashwin clearly outbowled and outperformed Lyon in the latter's den (pun intended). I am going to make a very bold prediction - Ashwin will reach 400 Test wickets before Lyon reaches 400. You heard it here first!
19) Prior to the Brisbane Test, the general consensus was that the Indian team should stack it's roster with every healthy batsman available and hedge their bets and bat out for a draw. When the team was announced I was surprised to see FOUR fast bowlers and one spinner. FIVE bowlers on a ground that favors bowlers. It took guts to make that call and, in the end, turned out to be an inspired one when Saini pulled up lame. Kudos to the team thinktank for deciding that taking 20 wickets was more important than scoring an additional 50 runs while facing a larger deficit.
It also put more onus on the batsmen to perform, knowing that there was little to follow as we effectively played with three #11 batsmen. The top order batsmen didn't score as big as they should have but knowing there was nothing behind them probably made Thakur and Sundar value their wicket even more and score all the runs they did. Runs that won us the game, honestly speaking, since it tired out the Aussie bowlers and demoralized them. Further, in the second inning, even when Agarwal got out (more on that below) there wasn't too much panic since we still had Sundar and Thakur to come. Think about that last sentence again. It's a sentiment that would have been improbable to consider at the start of the Test!
20) When Mayank Agarwal was padded up in the pavilion, I was content thinking that we had a competent player should the second new ball need to be played out in Brisbane. His first inning of 38 was very promising until a strange blunder - trying to punch on the up to the second ball after the lunch break, doomed him. I thought he would have learned from that but he did not. One ball after Agarwal survived a DRS review for caught behind he, inexplicably, tried to loft over the in-field and gave a catch to Wade at short cover. The fielder accepted the chance. Ironical since Wade himself had been guilty all series of gifting away his wicket to the Indians!
If Agarwal had not perished and had survived till the end with Pant, imagine the plaudits that would have followed him. It is good to "play your natural game" but, at times, some context needs to be enforced.
And, no, I would not have applauded his courage if that drive had gone to the boundary. I know it for a fact because, even as Cummins was running in, I was thinking to myself - play out the over, play out the over, expecting something disastrous to happen.
21) Shubman Gill scored: 45, 35*, 50, 31, 7, 91 - 259 runs @ 51.80
I watched almost every ball of all his innings. I do not recall him being hit on the body even once. Every other batsman had moments of concern or times when they were flinching and getting hit, including Labuschagne and Smith. I do not know if it my mind blocking it but Gill came out unscathed, I think. He plays beside the ball and his technique will be tested in England or whenever the ball moves in the air but speed did not bother him one bit. Take a look at these highlights (see above/below) and just listen to the sound of the bat hitting the ball - it is hitting the sweet spot more often than not (look at the 1:12 mark as Isa Guha points out, too). And when you hook Starc in front of square leg (at the 2:25 mark, for example) it means you have a lot of time to play the ball. What a player. I hope he stays hungry and grounded and plays for another 15 years. (Touch wood). And if he does that...uff....who knows how many runs he will score.
22) During the first inning of the 4th Test, the broadcaster's shared an amazing bit of information. According to their ball tracking software, Pat Cummins had not bowled a single ball down the leg side in the whole series. In the whole series. Just think about that. To bowl at his level and not stray even once is as much evidence as anyone needs to support his standing as the #1 bowler in the world. What a bowler. Test after Test, inning after inning, spell after spell, over after over, ball after ball, he just ran into and through the wall relentlessly attacking the batsman. If Pujara was the immovable wall, Cummins was the irresistible force.
23) On his YouTube channel, Ashwin sat down with the fielding coach, R Sridhar, and got him to reveal what happens off the field while the action we know so well unfolds on it. Ravi Shastri comes out looking really good from a tactical and leadership point of view. Many nuggets of information are revealed with a good dose of humor and self-deprecation.
It's in Tamil but has subtitles if you don't follow the language. Well done, Ashwin.
