Cricketing memories

Now that I have a couple of days between jobs I started binge-watching “The Test”. The Australian cricket team had been rocked by a scandal and Justin Langer had just taken on the reins as a coach. The series is about the turnaround of the Australian cricket team.  In this era of black and white opinions and win at all cost competitiveness, the long game was nostalgic. 

“How could you even watch a game played over 5 days?”. This was a common question from incredulous colleagues as I moved to the US. They had grown up on the “slow” diet of baseball. Two and a half hours of back and forth drama seemed drawn out for the average attention- challenged American. 

Cricket soon faded from my emotional memory as I assimilated into the culture. As my son grew up playing basketball the fast-paced game took our attention away from the archaic glacier paced sport of cricket. Between football, baseball and basketball, apart from an occasional world cup one-day, cricket was far from my mind. 

“The Test” brought back a rush of emotion for cricket. An emotion that was hidden and locked safely in the recess of my mind like a family jewel. The Test unlocked the memories of growing up with a bat and ball. 

My first memories are as a kid ballboy in an adult game in the front yard of our house with sticks neatly drawn in red brick on a white wall. My father was a spin bowler and with my uncles and their cousins, we almost had a full eleven within the family! It was hard to get to bat and I had to drum up sympathy with a sullen face to get a chance to bat after toiling in long-on for a good amount of time. 

The stance was critical. My father would hold my hand and show me the right way which was always the way G.R Vishwanath would stand. I preferred Gavaskar. He would bowl to me and we spent hours, many weekends, just one on one. 

The neighborhood, of course, was full of cricket crazy boys. The driveway and “car shed” would be our cricket field for several years. 

Later when we moved to the suburbs, cricket became an obsession. We graduated from the car garage to the crematorium. A large unbuilt land adjacent to the burial ground was our field. My cousins and I would be out all day. Cricket was never boring even when we had to toil in the outfield against a brutal team hitting our bowlers all over the ground. The ball would occasionally disappear behind the thick bushes that served as our boundary line, separating the playing field from the burning corpses. 

Death was so near yet so far from our minds as we continued our game with another ball. Cricket was larger than life. 

Of course, like everything else in life the team was dependent on a few key boys to bring the equipment and if something went wrong they would pick up their sticks and bats and disappear in a huff. The rest of us would leave, discussing what could have been. 

The Indian Summer is brutal but for us, in those times it was just another day of cricket interspersed by quick visits back home for lunch and snacks. After a hard day’s play, we would bask in the relative coolness of dusk sitting on still smoldering stone benches, arguing about the strategy of sending Raghavan one-down vs five-down or giving one more “over” to Ravi and why that simple fix would have magically helped us win. It would be 9 pm before we dispersed only to be ready at 7 for the next day’s game. 

Cricket was all-consuming to me and my cousins and probably many of my friends and I am not even sure how and when we studied to get to where we all ended up. 

Amidst all this 1983 happened. Growing up used to a steady diet of slow test matches the “one-day” world cup was an exciting change of pace. 

Along with my cricket crazy cousins, I would huddle around the transistor radio( we had just upgraded from mono to stereo!) as Kapils Devils started doing the impossible. The first win against the mighty West Indians while impressive could be a fluke we thought. And yet there was excitement. The morning Hindu Newspaper was eagerly awaited for the elaborate analysis of the previous day’s matches. 

Zimbabwe was a new entrant into the World Cup and what was to be an easy win for India turned out to be a defining moment for Indian cricket. It is said the Indian captain was in the shower after winning the toss and electing to bat since he typically comes lower down the order. A teammate came and knocked and told him wickets were tumbling. Gavaskar and Srikkanth and now Amarnath was gone. 

In those days being down 17-5 after electing to bat first was doom. The BBC was on strike and probably felt lucky since there was not much in the game. They were to miss one of the greatest cricketing knocks ever and possibly one that changed the face of Indian cricket. 

Kapil, we would come to know not only scored 175 and helped India win the game from such a precarious point, he did it with his brains. He used the ground and wind to time and place his fours and used the long part of the ground for twos and threes. It was a victory that was etched in the memories of most people in my generation as an eloquent expression of “nothing is impossible”.  And more importantly for us, here was a captain who could strategize, a concept that until then had only applied to the Australian cricket team.

They had to win the game to reach the semifinals and they did it. But then mighty England stood in their way. 

I mentioned the transistor radio as our go-to device and not the TV because it was an era of power cuts where we lived. The radio with its battery allowed us to view the game, experiencing it through the excited voices of experts, like the blind Dhritarashtra listening to Sanjaya in The Mahabharatha. Cricket was war! 

TV commentary was bland anyway and we would often watch TV on mute with the radio commentary. 

The England-India semifinals was late in the night, Indian time. We did not have power(electricity) to watch TV. And tired after a long day, I went to sleep. Three of my cousins( joint family!) retired as well. My most cricket crazy cousin Raja would continue to listen to the radio. We woke up in the morning and he beamingly informed us that India had won. We asked him if he watched it. His smile turned to a frown. The power had come back and yet in the intensity of the match he had failed to realize he could have switched on the TV and woke us up as well. 

Sandeep Patil had demolished Willis with his willow and with that the English hopes. India would go and lift the world cup beating the mighty West Indians ( Carribeans) once again, this time in a decisive final. 

The country had arrived. India was cricket and cricket was India. Everyone could now go do the impossible. 

For me, the charm of the long game of five-day test cricket would remain as I followed the Indian team getting demolished at home by the same Carribeans as Malcolm Marshall, the God of swing and speed tore into the Indian lineup. The Indian fan is a student of the game and the West Indians were the greatest teachers. The death squad of Greenidge, Haynes, Richards, Lloyd backed by the pace squad of Holding, Marshall and Davis were on fire. They avenged their embarrassment in the short game earlier that year. 

One-day cricket had its charm but the long game lingers in memory like a perpetual fragrance.  My most memorable Test match was the September 1986 tied test in my home town of Madras. Australian cricketers have always been an enigma. Thomson and Lillie conjured pace and menace and the Chappell brothers, competitiveness. And of course Bradman, the cricketing God overshadowed everyone. 

But the players whose names would be etched in a trophy 10 years hence, Border and Gavaskar would produce some of their best knocks in this game. Gavaskar was playing his 100th consecutive Test match and I needed to listen to every single ball he played. The local hero was my namesake Srikkanth, the swashbuckling striker whose cavalier yet commanding cricketing approach was a refreshing change from the plodding days of the past openers. 

In those days a Test match was a slow grind punctuated by a few exciting sessions across 5 days, eventually ending in a “draw” which allowed both teams to go home with their pride intact. This Madras Chepauk test would change that forever. 

Australia won the toss. The bearded Boon(David) along with Dean Jones would punish the Indian bowling. In the September Madras heat, the 25-year-old Jones would ignore and endure bouts of vomiting and stomach pain to score 210 runs over 8 and half hours, becoming a hero to cricketing fans all over the world. The captain Allan Border would pile on for his 19th century before asking the Indian team to bat. 

Gavaskar would disappoint and Greg Mathews would lure him into a caught and bowled. Thanks to the cameo knocks of Srikkanth and Azhar, the superb century by Kapil and a handy tail India reached 397. To the Australian’s credit, they tried to make a game out of the Test and declared after a quick 170 in their second innings, leaving India 348 to win. 

This time Gavaskar produced one of the best knocks of his illustrious career. One that fell short of a century and yet was a gem. 

The last day was riveting cricket, a true tussle between ball and bat. The temperature inside the concrete stadium would reach almost 45 degrees C with 90% humidity. 

By lunch, India had only lost Srikkanth with 94 runs on board. By now word had spread around Madras that India was probably going for the win. Many made their way to the stadium. Those who couldn’t stood outside TV stores and tea stalls with radios. 

Greg Mathews wore his full white shirt and a half sleeve sweater while bowling almost 40 overs. A sweater in sizzling heat? 

The little master was a rock but the crowd got restless with the plodding of Amarnath. There was a visible sigh of relief as he departed and a perennial crowd favorite Azhar would keep the score moving at a much faster pace. 

At tea time, India needed 155 from 30 overs to win. An achievable target. The crowd was pumped. 

Soon after tea, the Gods of cricket, probably looking for some amusement, distracted Sunny into a drive and Dean Jones would grab it with glee. Gavaskar was inconsolable as he walked back dejected. 

It is often said that Indian cricketers grab defeat from the jaws of victory. As India entered the last 20 overs they had everything under control. Border’s decision to declare seemed destined to backfire. In a moment of aggression, Azhar stepped out to loft a six and was gone. Kapil, promoting himself up the order was out in 2 balls. And all of sudden what looked like an easy win was starting to become a possible defeat. 

Ravi Shastri along with a plucky Chetan Sharma would guide India to a certain victory we thought. Only 18 runs required. The heat was getting to the Australians and appeals of LBW were turned down. It was tense in the middle. And then Chetan lost his cool, stepping out to hit one over the boundary but ended up holing out unnecessarily. 

Shastri hung on as his partners departed. With just 4 runs to win he was left with the last batsman – Maninder Singh. 

Mathews started the last over to Shastri. After defending the first ball he managed two runs off the next thanks to a misfield. Two to win. 

You cannot fathom the collective cricketing breath emanating from what is now known as Chennai unless you have lived and breathed that very air. The city was at a standstill. Five days of cricket and it is now down to two singular moments that would write itself into history. 

The decision that Ravi Shastri took the next ball would go on to be dissected by billions, Hundreds of case studies possibly on strategy under pressure would be written. 

Three balls to go and two runs to win. Shastri knew his partner had the skills of a baboon with the bat. And yet he gave him the strike. 

Tversky and Kahneman would go on to write about the human tendency for loss aversion. Shastri was the prime example of this behavior. Two runs to win and one run to tie, he opted to safely drive the next ball deep into long on for a single. 

India would not lose. 

The clock was well past 5 pm, as Mathews rolled in towards the finish line of his marathon 240-ball day, Maninder meekly played back with the ball hitting his pads. Umpire Vikramaraju raised his finger and we had a tied test!

In these moments, we often find that the heroes in a game are overshadowed by the beauty of the game itself. Over the five day battle, there were so many memorable knocks, bowling, fielding and, catching in impossible weather conditions. 

It was only fitting that the teams tied to let the game itself bask in its glorious victory.