Down under in Adelaide
Waking up at 5.30AM on cold, wintry mornings, snuggling under a blanket in front of the TV, and watching the world come alive on TV – these are my first and abiding memories of life as a cricket fan. A paradoxical life, both disappointing and highly rewarding, at the same time.
Disappointing because supporting India more often than not led to heartbreak and an unending litany of ‘what-if’ woes; rewarding ‘cos watching cricket telecast by Channel 9, and the sheer spectacle of seeing green fields and fast pitches, with the hook and the cut played in utter disdain of the crazy pace was an experience in itself.
Australia, to me as a young cricket fan, was the ‘final frontier’ where India would go with hopes and be completely cut down to size. Except for the 1985 World Championship of Cricket, where Shastri and Srikkanth and S Vishwanath wrote themselves into the hearts of every Indian fan, while also winning the trophy and a luxury car with an unpronounceable name. All other visits ended in complete humiliation. With or without a certain Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Even when he was driving McDermott and Hughes and Whitney to a sublime century, at the WACA (of all places), or playing a boy-on-the-burning-deck innings in 1999, there was always an air of inevitability about the final result.
Till 2003, and Ganguly’s greatest Test innings, and a drawn series which made me and a bunch of other Indian fans believe. Come 2008, and we could do the previously unthinkable. But it ended with a whimper at Sydney, and an aborted charter flight which took the Indian team to Perth, and perhaps one of the greatest Indian test victories of all time. Hope was reborn.
2011, and it was India versus Australia time again. This was the series where everything would change. The magnificent Indian batting lineup, certainly on its last tour Down Under as a unit, against an Aussie team fighting its own battles of succession and adjusting to life without any consistent success. Surely, the stars had aligned.
As a fan of the last 25 years, I couldn’t let this chance go. Watch a test in Australia, with the seagulls and beer and fast scary bowling and bright sunshine. And with an Indian team looking to scale it’s own pinnacle of achievement. (Forget England and 4-0, that was an aberration, and Australia was always the final frontier.)
The die was cast, and I booked my tickets to Adelaide to watch the last test. Before I could board the flight, reality bit. The Indian cricket team was hammered, and might even be whitewashed atAdelaide. (I still think not, and hope for a magnificent turnaround, with Dravid playing a magical innings.) But here I am today, in Adelaide, excited to go watch the test in a few hours, and still hoping for a fighting Indian performance.
I have few expectations. I hope the team plays well, and fights hard. And I wish to see the trio of Dravid, Laxman and Tendulkar play the way the Aussie crowds remember them. They are great cricketers, each one a legend in his own special way, and a few poor innings does not make them any lesser cricketers. I, and most other fans, would still remember the many magical innings they have played.
Just go and make yourselves proud, all over again. And sign an autograph for me. And I will come back from Adelaide a happy fan.
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Hope there is a spectacular collapse in the tea session.
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