ReDkp
7th April, 2023
“Only one team was playing with the spirit of the game, that’s all I can say.” -Anil Kumble, Captain, Indian Cricket Test Team in 2007-08 BGT.
To all those who dubbed, "He thinks He is Harsha Bogle," the reply is: He could don any hat around in his own right." If someone asks what are his credentials for speaking cricket: He has watched, heard and played a fair amount of tennis ball cricket and has been an aggressive character on the field during his playing days back on the grounds of D.R.D.O. Township. At times, things have also gone up to sledging and hand combats! So, he is the right person to explicate this chapter of the BGT rivalry.
"Punter's team was like a 'Pack of Wolves.'"- Inspired by the words of Late. Peter Roebuck, A former English Cricketer and Australian Columnist.
Not to make any mistake, Punter is the nickname of the leader of the Pack of the Wolves a.k.a. Ricky Ponting. The modern-day IPL kiddos more or less know him as a coach sitting in the dugouts of Mumbai Indians and Delhi Capitals at present. But he was no less than an aggressive ruffian on the field during his playing days. A testimony of the Aussie legacy of being aggressive had reached a zenith under his captaincy tenure at the Australian Cricket Team.
This clash happened during the 1999-00 Border Gavaskar Trophy. He was rattled by a bouncer delivered by Srinath, our young Punter uttered:
"Go back and fuckin bowl!"
Since the 90's the Australian team was the team to be feared! They were always an inch ahead in comparison to other teams in that era. Especially that team led by Steve Waugh, in the early 2000s had just transformed the team that carried the Aussie aggression into a team of bullies or 'The Pack of Wolves,' who could do anything to win. Their attitude on the field was such that they would get under the skin of the opponents by sledging and destroying their morale.
During that Landmark 2001 Border Gavaskar Trophy, the Aussie captain Steve Waugh during the pre-series interactions had coined this term for their series win against India as:
"The Final Frontier!"
But then, Their mission failed and ended up as a series of raises for the Indians, as the bullies lost the series 2-1 against an inexperienced Indian team under a new captain Sourav Ganguly who was under tremendous pressure on and off the field!
Cut the screen, seven years later, to 2007-08, the core motive of the 'Pack of wolves' remained the same, Punter, Gilly (Adam Gilchrist) and Haydos (Matthew Hayden) were at the later stages of their cricketing career, Brett Lee was at his prime years of fast bowling, their ace spinner Warne and Glenn Mcgrath had just bid adieu to International cricket. Mr Cricket (Mike Hussey) had made a mark in the team and International Cricket. Michael Clarke who will be in some spotlight through this narration was being groomed as Ponting's successor to lead Aussies across the formats. The team that had won three world cups (1999,2003,2007) consecutively was in the transition phase.
But then, we Indians were no less in that era. The team was just out of Rahul Dravid's era of captaincy, the tenure where we did register our first test win on South African soil in 2006 at the Jo'burg, Test Series wins against West Indies and England in their home soil, just reflects team was in the right direction! Who said? We were battered out of the 2007 Cricket World Cup and lost to the Minnows Bangladesh in the opening match of the campaign. That just dropped the team's morale completely.
It was a period when Greg Chappell was coaching the team, no no no! He had caused wreaked havoc in the group with his gross experimentations. It was such that Irfan Pathan was sometimes sent out to open the innings. Oh wow! Through that we did get MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina in that process but what about the other side? Sehwag lost his natural attacking game and form, Sachin was played at Number 4 in that World Cup, it was a serious crime not to let your best batsman play in his best position, Zaheer Khan had lost his bite and he had to toil hard in county seasons to get his form back. The worse of this was the Ganguly-Chappell conundrum that deserves a separate narration and Rahul Dravid had no control over all the imbalance due to Chappell's dictate.
But post his tenure came that England series win under Rahul Dravid's Captaincy and that Inaugral T-20 world cup win under M.S. Dhoni boosted the lost morale of the team and its supporters. There was a new hope born out of nowhere in nine months. And Well after this World Cup win, came the Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2008, whose origins again require a separate narration.
Full of confidence, travels the Indian Cricket team to Australia, and going by the above context set in the above instances, travelling down under has always been a daunting task for every team. It was not just on the field but the off-field factors as well. The Australian media and their supporters often played the role of an aggressive 12th Man. The first question that the Indian captain for that tour Anil Kumble faced was:
"Your Batsmen Can't Play Short Pitched Deliveries right!"
As a batsman back then in my school days, my reflex would go for a pull or hook shot for a short-pitched delivery and the next time the bowling team wouldn't try that ploy on me since I had a weakness of either express pace due to the lack of exposure to such bowling or the well-executed slower deliveries.
Short Balls are effective only when they are delivered at a higher pace since the reaction time for the batsmen could reduce considerably and there are chances that there could be an edge off the bat and could go towards the wicketkeeper.
That was some genuine fear for our team since many of our batsmen couldn't play the hostile short-pitched bowling, the fear was always there as they had brett lee and Mitchell Johnson. The only batsman in our line-up who could play that kind of bowling was an experienced VVS Laxman, he was a wristy player and had that split-second extra to hook or pull. Australian Great Ian Chappell attributed him for his extraordinary record against the mighty Aussies as:
" Very Very Special Laxman"
With a broad contextualising now it should be appropriate to move to the crux of the narration:
It would be better if the other three tests are not discussed in detail considering the length of the proceedings on that one test. The first test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground traditionally known as the boxing day test was nothing less than a humiliation since Haydos made a bunny out of the Indian Bowlers scoring a century at such a pace to evict India from the game, suffering a 337-run defeat! Psychologically defeating right.
Now comes the core of the narration: The New Year's test, a test match that would be traditionally held at the Sydney Cricket Ground. This ground was a happy hunting ground for VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar (Who would forget his 241 at this venue in the 2003-04 series, an inning without his favourite cover drive ).
Table 1: VVS Laxman @ SCG
Table 2: Sachin Tendulkar @ SCG
As it turned again, this duo scored the bulk of the runs during India's first Innings.
Let the analysis go on the progress of the days:
Day 1: Australia won the toss and elected to bat on a pitch that offered moisture and flesh of grass and subsequently favouring batting through days two and three only to develop into the spinner's paradise on the fifth day due to the pitch's breakdown and development of rough due to the fast bowler's foot marks.
Indian bowling had seemed to have picked up 6-meter length well in the beginning, courtesy of R.P. Singh's opening spell and some stump-to-stump lines by Kumble and Harbhajan, the mighty Aussies were reduced to a mere 6-134 and at one stage and a wrap up around 200 was on cards. But Our Hero had other plans. Andrew Symonds who was soon going to become the talk of the town played the knock on his test career, that fast-paced 162 was outstanding notwithstanding those umpiring errors that were made by our clowns of the narration Mark Benson and Steve Bucknor on scores 30,48 and 148 of Symonds Innings.
Day 2: The Run Hunt!
Oh! That was some serious aggression in the eyes of Rahul Dravid now. There was consistent bowling in that outside off-stump line and the 4-6 metre length. Those leaves off Brett Lee just reflect his sheer class and determination. He was sent open the innings, and the tricky phase had to be negotiated by the openers, Dravid did that job as well, scoring 53 and that set the tone for Laxman, Ganguly and Tendulkar to take the run of play forward. And it did happen.
Day 3: The Brunt
Finally, there arrives the D-day of the narration arrives, and our hero Harbhajan Singh who surpassed 50 runs with a series of risky shot making ended up in an altercation with Andrew Symonds, only for Mike Bensen to interfere in the proceedings. And what next Match Referee summoned both of these players, post the run of the match's play and some serious charges were placed against Harbhajan for being "Racist."
Day 4 and 5: The Climax that Became Anticlimax
Fourth Day and up to the Fifth-day first session, it was all about the Aussie decimation, making it almost impossible for the Indians to win this test match, and they had to save this match. Again a bad umpiring decision by Mark Benson around Mike Hussey proved to be costly since he was given not-out on 20 and 45 and he went on to make a scintillating 145 not-out.
On the Fifth day SCG wicket with all the wear and tear and rough around, India was given a target of 333 runs@72 overs over a run rate of excess of 4. Now kids will argue it is an easy chase right, yes by the Bazball Theory, but someone who knows the conventions of test cricket will directly say, India should look to survive those 72 overs as every over from there was going to be hell for the batsmen.
And things exactly went in that line, our batsmen did get those initial starts, but falling off wickets in regular intervals didn't exactly help the cause either coupled with two crucial umpiring errors that ended up being fatal for the Indian Team. Then came that brain-fading final ten minutes of the test match. The time was clocking at 5:54 P.M. concerning ACST(Australian Central Standard Time), ideally around 12:54 w.r.t Indian Standard Time. We were placed at 210-7 at the stroke of the fifth day's play, with a maximum of two overs that could be bowled, there were hopes of a draw that could potentially be clinched from the jaw of defeat but the 'Pack of Wolves' were never looking to give up since they knew that it was just a matter of one wicket and the pitch had deteriorated such a way that a new batsman would find it death hell to survive. And Punter plays a masterstroke and passes the ball to our Hero Micheal Clarke since the ball was well gripping and also the factor of exploiting the rough created off the right-hander with his handy left-arm spin. And guess what happened next...
In the span of the next 6 minutes and 6 balls, the scoreline got reduced to 210 'all out.'......
The match was done and dusted in the fifth day's dust bowl but the altercations are yet to subside... From this section the use of unparliamentary terms is bound to increase, the Aussie flavour will unleash from this moment...
Seriously, is this the level of umpiring in a match that had so much on stake? At least 11 faulty decisions have been made during the game, and at least 7 of those fucking umpiring mistakes have gone against the Indian team, even if any two of those decisions in 11C2 ways were going in India's favour that meant India had possibilities of moving towards all three results in a more fair manner. That Dravid and Ganguly's Dismissals in the second innings were just atrocious at best described. Ponting just signalling out for one of the decisions is just arbitrary to witness.
Post the match's completion, the match referee Mike Proctor summoned the concerned parties for a hearing and subsequently after long hours of hearing it was issued that Harbhajan was subject to a grade three offence and was banned for three test matches on grounds of racial sledging.
What the hell happened on that D-day? Cut to the 116th Over of the Indian Innings on the Third Day. Our hero was batting and Brett Lee was bowling, and there was an edge of Harbhajan's bat and it went past the slip fielders for a boundary and he dashes on to Brett Lee uttering "Hard Luck." Brett Lee handled that situation with some maturity now, just by choosing not to react. It doesn't even appear to be a sledge, but our overcooked Andrew Symonds just wanted to give back in consonance with the Australian Legacy.
He then charged back with the f-word or why shy, he charged back with "Fuck" towards Harbhajan, for which he confessed in the hearing that test cricket is not a destination to be friendly with your opposition and he just shot back his way. This angered Harbhajan and the field was already heated with all the umpiring controversies around.
Sachin Tendulkar, the god of cricket, who was our hero's batting partner during all this going on the field, gives his testimony during that hearing and also records the same in his Autobiography "Playing it My Way" that he did hear Symonds going after Harbhajan aggressively to sledge even before over 116th, and that particular jibe provoked him to give back in a ruffian way using north Indian Swear word "Teri Ma ki..." Gibberishisation led to it being heard as "Monkey!" which was a prohibited slur to be used against Symonds. A few months before this incident, cut to October 2007, it was MS Dhoni's first series as ODI captain, and Australia had travelled for this 7-match ODI series to India, in a match held at Mumbai, Symonds was publicly booed by the crowd and was dubbed with the very same slur. In fact, in the list of blacklisted terms exchanged by the BCCI and CA, this term was present.
Expanding on this swear word could question REDKP's integrity but mind you it is a heated field where the flurry is high, it is expected that such slurs would automatically come out of a mouth of a player. In fact, in classes at various junctures, REDKP has expressed my frustrations secretly in a lighter manner or even in a quite hoarse manner at times, despite his character being quite cool and calm, but a circumstance could turn him into a hot-head either. And on the field, he has been an aggressive hothead for a while now.
After all this drama, our hero was banned for three matches on charges of Racism. Now, this was a serious allegation not only of the player but was generalizing towards the nation as a whole since the cricket team was representing us the people of India. So, his allegation was an allegation towards me being "Racist" as well. It is just like the aftermath of the Sandpaper Gate which was a disgrace for the nation of Australia as a whole, this does affect our global position. The rage was quite high back then, and BCCI responds to this decision in a way that a strong board would have responded to such a situation. The board issues a statement the very next day on 7th January 2008, since this test match took place between 2nd-6th January and the hearing takes place on the 6th Evening and by the early hours of 7th the decision was out. BCCI issued that they were challenging the decision of Mike Proctor and called the ban "Patently Unfair."
Then what next... A Typical Indian movie climax was bound to happen since there was no conclusive evidence as to the slur uttered by the offender (If not wrong, there were no stump mikes back then), and there was Sachin's testimony to prove the fact that it was Symonds that started the provocation, the ban was revoked under the hearing of New Zealand high court justice John Hansen, but the charges were reduced to use of offensive language rather than racial sledging and 50% of his match fee was charged as fine.
This series was for the Indian Renaissance since the Indian team conquered the CB Series against the Pack of Wolves and from there until 2017 continued the Rise and Rise MS Dhonian Era and the IPL. In fact, during the CB Series, the inaugural IPL auctions were conducted and all these players were signed by the IPL clubs. Thanks to IPL that we could witness Tendulkar and Ponting opening together for Mumbai Indians in 2013 and Sourav Ganguly and Ponting playing for Kolkata Knight Riders in 2008 and guess what in 2011, Harbhajan and Symonds ended up playing together for Mumbai Indians. Huh! It was a match made at Heaven!
What happened next... The IPL and... BCCI turning into a Shark from big fish...The pack of wolves were never the same again! The IPL seemingly killed that attitude...
Time for his shots that align with VVS Laxman's shots. He was quite rusty when he played these shots. Thanks to his friends for shooting this nets-like session and bowling the vlogable lengths.
The End!
Some more cricketing narrations:
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