Buzzing again: India showed tremendous fighting spirit to win the second Test after the setback in the first.
| Photo Credit: DEEPAK KR
The mood must have been sombre in the Indian team’s dressing room after the first Test ended in Hyderabad. India had lost after taking a lead of 190.
That was not all. K.L. Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja got injured. The two key men who did well in the Hyderabad Test were not available for the second. And there was no Virat Kohli. And, of course, there was no Mohammed Shami, either. Rishabh Pant was still recovering from his injuries from the terrible car accident.
So India took the hour-long flight from Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam without nearly half of its best possible eleven. It was facing an England team that had been playing a confident, attacking brand of cricket and winning in all parts of the world, the victory at Hyderabad adding to its aura.
But, this Indian team is unlike the previous ones. It has the ability to bounce back after a chastening defeat. Only a month ago it defeated South Africa inside two days on a seamers’ paradise at Cape Town, right after an innings defeat at Centurion.
This Indian team has the depth and resilience to overcome the loss of the biggest stars.
Remember Brisbane 2021? So many players were injured that India had to look at its net bowlers to put together an eleven. Captain Kohli had already left to attend the birth of his first child. And it was a series in which India was bowled out for 36 in the first Test.
Greatest victory
Yet, India won in Brisbane, breaching Australia’s fortress at the Gabba and that remains India’s greatest Test victory.
The win scored here on Monday may not have been as thrilling, as dramatic or as soul-stirring, but it is important and should count among the finest. It was a perfect Test win by a team that had been made less than perfect by circumstances.
Bat first, put up a large enough total with at least one batter willing to play a patient innings in these impatient times and then make the rival chase the game, with Bazball or whatever style it prefers, and give it a big target — 399 — to chase, even if one of its players expresses the confidence that they would be ready to chase 600.
Rahul Dravid and his boys should be proud of the victory. This was not a win achieved on a wicket where the ball began to turn even before the match began. This was a proper Test match pitch that offered something to the batter, the seamer and the spinner. That was the case at Hyderabad, too.
It wasn’t the spinners who turned the match in India’s favour here. It was the genius of Jasprit Bumrah.
What Bumrah did on the second day of the match defied belief. Bazball had no answer to his reverse swing. Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis would have been proud of that spell. Yashasvi Jaiswal, who scored a double hundred, is 22. Shubman Gill, who made a second-innings hundred ending a frustrating run, is 24.
The mood must be anything but sombre in the Indian dressing room now.
