How India's miracle comeback win may have saved Test cricket

01/23/2021

India’s miraculous comeback victory put cocky and overconfident Australia in their place – and might just have saved Test cricket, writes MIKE COLMAN

In recent years India has often been blamed for destroying Test cricket with T20
But on Tuesday in Brisbane they may have saved the game with comeback win
The understrength Indian side put brash and confident Australia in the place
Tim Paine was left to rue his sledge of Indian spinner Ashwin after Gabba loss
Compared to 4th Test, Big Bash game right afterwards looked like child’s game

Over recent years it has been a common refrain to blame India and the explosion of T-20 for the death of Test cricket.

Well, at the Gabba on Tuesday afternoon, far from being guilty of destroying Test cricket, India might just have been responsible for saving it.

Battered, bruised and with their best player back in Delhi jiggling his newborn son on his knee, the Indians pulled off one of the greatest comeback victories of all time to clinch both the game and the series and put the brash, confident Australians very much in their place.

Feeling the Paine: The Australian captain was left to rue his now-infamous sledge of Indian spinner Ravi Ashwin saying ‘I can’t wait to get you to the Gabba’

At the Gabba on Tuesday afternoon, far from being guilty of destroying Test cricket, India might just have been responsible for saving it

During the third Test in Sydney, as the match slipped out of his team’s grasp, Australian skipper Tim Paine had told Indian spinner Ravi Ashwin, ‘I can’t wait to get you to the Gabba’, such is the Brisbane ground’s reputation as a killing field for touring sides.

Not since 1988 had an Australian team lost a Test at the Gabba and only the most optimistic Indian supporter (is there any other kind?) would have backed this current touring outfit to reverse the trend.

The previous highest final innings score to win a Test at the ground was 236 by Australia against the West Indies in 1951.

On Tuesday, India scored 328, with pugnacious wicket keeper Rishabh Pant hitting Aussie quick Josh Hazelwood to the boundary to score the winning runs with 19 balls to spare.

It was a win as improbable as it was meritorious.

This was an Indian team that was all out for an ignominious 36 in its second inning to lose the first Test in Adelaide in the most embarrassing and dispiriting of collapses. Within hours the team’s captain, swashbuckling batter Virat Kohli, was on a flight back home to await the birth of his first child.

Frustration is etched on the face of Australian quick Pat Cummins as the runs ticked down

Dejected Australia players leave the field after losing at the Gabba for the first time since 1988

But somehow, under stand-in skipper Ajinkya Rahane, the Indians regrouped to win the second Test in Melbourne and then, when all seemed lost in the third, hung on for the gutsiest of draws.

Series results

FIRST TEST

December 17-21, Adelaide

Australia won by eight wickets

SECOND TEST

December 26-30, Melbourne

India won by eight wickets

THIRD TEST

January 7-11, Sydney

Match drawn

FOURTH TEST

January 15-19, Brisbane

India won by three wickets

India win the series 2-1

It was during that match in Sydney that Tim Paine lost much of the hard-earned credibility that he had built up after taking the reins from the disgraced Steve Smith following the notorious ‘Sandpapergate’ affair in South Africa in 2018.

Paine’s verbal abuse of Ashwin, followed by three dropped catches and the ineffectual use of his bowling attack as India held on for the draw, put his job very much on the lines as cracks began to appear in the Australians veneer of confidence.

And Paine never got the chance to get Ashwin to the Gabba when the spinner was ruled out with injury, as was the tourist’s number one fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah and senior all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja.

If ever there was a Test the Australians should have won on their favourite track, this was it: the understrength Indians reportedly incensed over what they considered sub-standard quarantine accommodation, Australia’s bully-boy opener David Warner having had another week to overcome the groin strain that kept him out of the first two Tests, and Aussie spinner Nathan Lyons – the one his supporters call GOAT – as in Greatest Of All Time – playing his 100th Test with 400 wickets within his grasp.

Yet, once again they blew it, with Paine’s decision not to declare late on day three with a healthy second innings lead and rain in the offing, bringing another round of criticism, led by his number one detractor Shane Warne up in the commentary box.

But it would be unfair to focus blame on the Australians for losing the Test when the real story is the manner in which the Indians won it.

Pant smashes a six during his brilliant unbeaten 89 to steer India to victory in Brisbane

Beset by injuries and the loss of Kohli – Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara were the only two players left from the first Test – they fielded an inexperienced side of youngsters and dreamers who took it up to the big, cocky Australians from the first ball and never looked flustered or overawed until the game, and the series, was won.

The loudest cheers from the delirious Indians supporters were reserved for Pant – considered unlikely to even play the Test after being struck a nasty blow on his left arm by Pat Cummins in Sydney – who finished on 89 not out, but he had plenty of mates.

There was spinning all-rounder Washington Sundar, who came to Australia to play the T-20 matches and stayed as a net bowler to assist the Test players’ preparation. Thrown into the Test XI to replace Ashwin, he had to borrow one of Pant’s bats but took four wickets and scored 62 in the first innings and an invaluable 22 in the second, prompting commentator Kerry O’Keeffe to quip: ‘There’s nothing wishy about Washi.’

Assisting Sundar in a first innings partnership of 123, was another net bowler, Shardul Thakur, who picked up the wicket of Marcus Harris with his first delivery of the Test.

Joy for India as they secured a thrilling three-wicket win over Australia to settle the series 2-1

And then there was fast bowler Mohammed Siraj, who chose to stay on the tour after his father, a motor rickshaw driver in Hyderabad, tragically died in November aged 53.

Vowing to make his Test debut in his father’s memory, and promising his mother he would take five wickets, he achieved the first goal at the MCG on Boxing Day, and the second at the Gabba when he took 5-73 in Australia’s second innings.

It was that kind of Test match: one of ebbs and flows, masterstrokes and blunders, failures and heroics.

The type of absorbing five-day contest that some say was made extinct by Twenty-20 cricket years ago.

Really? After the live broadcast of the presentation of the Border-Gavaskar trophy and interviews with a shellshocked Tim Paine and an almost bursting-with-pride Ajinkya Rahane, the TV coverage went straight to the Big Bash match between the Perth Scorchers and Brisbane Heat.

Somehow it just looked like grown men playing a little boys’ game.

After the live broadcast of the presentation of the Border-Gavaskar trophy and interviews with a shellshocked Tim Paine and an almost bursting-with-pride Ajinkya Rahane, the TV coverage went straight to the Big Bash match between the Perth Scorchers and Brisbane Heat. Somehow it just looked like grown men playing a little boys’ game.

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