When Indian Cricket Team Triumphed Australia in Australia in Summer of 21

As a kid born after the 1983 world cup glory, cricket games that had moments of brilliance and stayed with me as a happy memory were  few and far apart. Be it 1993 Hero Cup Semi Final, Sachin’s Desert Storm in 98, 2001 remarkable Australian Home Test series, 2003 World Cup, 2007 T20 world cup win and to top it all 2011 World Cup win at home which brought all of us on to the streets to celebrate.

But what I witnessed on 19th Jan, 2021 was something different. Something very special and never did I feel that level happiness as a cricket fan before.

Was this Indian team that won test series against Australia in Australia the best I have ever seen? Hell No!! I have had the pleasure of watching far more talented Indian teams and Indian players. Then what made this series win so special?

For starters, the sheer satisfaction that our team was able to  do what we always thought was impossible for India teams. We were not used to our No7/8 batsmen putting up a fight and digging the team out of a hole, we thought that’s something only Gilchrist and Australia are capable of doing. We were not used to our fast bowlers intimidating Australia in Australia. That was only allowed for McGrath and Brett Lee to do. It was acceptable to lose a series in Australia.

When India lost 1st test match after getting bowled out for 36, the optimistic fan in me wanted to believe that it was just an aberration and we are better than this. But then our star batsman captain Kohli had to leave, one of our best bowlers in Shami got injured and team was looking all over the place in terms of confidence and body language. There was no ray of hope for an average cricket fan like me to look forward to or hope for any sort of comeback.

But then the Boxing Day test match showed us glimpses of how this new generation of cricketers are not cut from the same cloth as what someone like me was used to. They believed in their abilities and showed us in sport like in life, when you get knocked down you get up and punch back.

Rahane took the challenge as an opportunity and lead from the front with a brilliant century to win the famous Boxing Day test and level the series. And also, this was the game where we saw for the 1st time young man from Punjab named Shubman Gill impressing one and all with his amazing stroke play and attitude. He reminded me of how today’s 21 year olds are not overwhelmed by the big stage rather they are ready to take on the very challenge head on.

My post game emotion was that of a happy fan, proud of great leadership shown by Rahane and excellent attitude shown by the team to come back from 36 all out and win the famous Boxing Day test match. And at this point I was relieved that we will not lose the series 4-0.

After the second test there was a gap of good 7/8 days before the third test at Sydney. Rohit Sharma was set to make a comeback and personally I was not sure if that was good or bad as he has had a very average test career till then,especially outside of India. (With the luxury of hind sight I can say I was wrong on my assumption of the HitMan Sharma)

Sydney test started and it was going as per the script for Australia to make a comeback and win the match. But that’s when this Indian team stood up and showed to rest of the world what is not to be! Australia set India a target of 400+ with 4 sessions to go. When everyone expected Australia to steamroll India on the 5th day pitch at Sydney, Pujara with his rock solid defence and Rishabh Pant with his aggression opened up the possibility of improbable India win. As they say not all dreams come true and this dream of famous India win hit a pause as Australia bounced back by sending Pant and Pujara back to the hut in quick succession. And now we had Hanuma Vihari on his one leg (as he injured his hamstring while batting) and R Ashwin with a sore back (apparently it was so bad that his wife tweeted he couldn’t stand on his feet that morning) on the crease and Ravindra Jadeja with broken thumb to follow. It sounds all gloomy right? And it was like that. I like many Indian fans of my generation accepted that it’s ok to lose from here on as that is what we are used to right? But again this side was nothing like the ones which we were used to. Ash and Vihari played out the entire session with their sever injuries to give India an improbable draw. This effort from Ashwin and Vihari was even more commendable considering the amount of sledging they had to face from apparently new looking Australian team that wanted to play the clean game but after all they were the same old bad boys when put under pressure.

Again giving us a very important life lesson, until you are knocked out you must get up and punch back, doesn’t matter even if you are punching sitting on one knee, what is important is that you are still in the ring and fighting.

After this test I was very thrilled with what this team has done and extremely proud of players like Vihari and Jadeja in showing the courage to keep fighting even when hurt. And of course Ash, I have now huge respect for this guy. To bat like the way he batted (which is not his primary skill) with such bad back to save a test match and at same time keep motivating the young Vihari to continue on one leg speaks volumes about the person and the leader in Ravichandran Ashwin.

After the Sydney game again the optimist fan in me started thinking if this team can do the improbable and win the last test match and the series, but and it was a very big BUT. Last match was to be played in Gabba, where Australia had not lost a test match since 1988 and with only 3 days between 3rd and 4th test match, there was no way injured Ashwin,Jadeja,Bumrah and Vihari are going to recover. Which gave once in a lifetime opportunity to people like Natarajan,Sundar and Shardul who were at the right place at the right time and grabbed their opportunities with both hands.

Fast forward to Day 5 of the final test and what we witnessed was absolutely surreal. Steel and Patience of Chateshwar ‘Rock’ Pujara, taking so many body blows from head to chest to elbow and fingers which at the end made sure that Australian fast bowlers were tired and out of gas for likes of Gill,Pant and Sundar to play absolute fearless cricket. What IPL and excellent India A program under ‘Sir’ Rahul Dravid has done is to make these 21-23 year olds match ready on Day 0. No words can do justice to the skills and temperament shown by this young generation of ‘New India’. At the end Rishabh Pant was just too hot to handle for the formidable Aussie pace attack and INDIA prevailed!!!!!!

This was the perfect example of a Champion team winning over a few Champion players.

At the end of it collection of all these individual moments of brilliance over the course of 4 test matches made this series the greatest ever in my experience as an average Cricket fan. This win showered positivity and hope for otherwise gloomy last few months due to the scary and deadly pandemic.

Thank you to all the players from Team INDIA in making those unbelievable and not so easy sacrifices and staying in the bio bubble, putting their bodies in line and still fighting their hearts out to give us fans this moment of glory which we will cherish for many years to come. And Thank you for teaching us a very important life lesson of keep fighting till we prevail by not thinking and worrying about what we don't have or lost rather focus on what we have and use those resources with utmost sincerity. 

THANK YOU!!!

-Average Indian Cricket Fan

 

 

Open Letter To Mr. Vinod Dua on NRI Prejudice

Dear Sir,

I am writing to you with regards to your latest episode of “Jan Gan Man ki Baat”( Episode 258: Atul Kochar and NRI prejudice). And I am writing with a hope that you will read this.

Sir, while I totally agree with you on what Atul said is wrong and highly condemnable but I don’t agree with you on how you painted every other NRI with a same brush. As an NRI myself I felt really bad with the tone and language you used for all of us. I totally agree with you that many young Indians are Intellectually poor and don’t understand our history,culture and society, and are living in an alternative universe created by “WhatsApp”. But this attitude has nothing to do with where we live and how much we earn. I have friends and family members who live both in India and outside and who are polarized as Liberals and Radicals. Sir, would you also call a hardworking labor who migrated from a village in UP/ Bihar to Delhi/Mumbai for a better opportunity and more earning: “chavanni atthani ke liye apna gaon chod ke gaye hai” and advise them not to discuss or have any opinion about social/political issues back in their hometowns?We live in a world which is literally getting flatter by the day and I don’t think anyone should be judged or called names for moving around the world to earn a better living. I for example,very proudly still hold an Indian Passport and feel I have full right to discuss and contribute in any or every political and social debate related to India.I identify myself as a Liberal and don’t support the radical mindset of BJP and RSS and when I express my opinion on social media there is some individual from the “Bhakt” community who similar to you tells me to shut up because I don’t live in India and don’t understand real problems and ground reality. 

I respect you a lot sir and really appreciate and admire journalists like you, Ravish Kumar and others at The Wire for doing what you are doing so that people like me have a platform to get an unbiased report and point of view about things happening in our society and performance of our governments.

Hope you will not take any offense in me expressing my point of view on something I thought was not a right judgment of your fellow Indians by you. 

Regards,

NRI ( Who does have little more intellect and not just one particular skill :) )

I Became INDIAN Only After I Crossed My Country

Who am I? Am I an Andhrite because I speak Telugu or am I now a Telanganite as I was born in Hyderabad? Or am I actually a North Indian because that's where I was raised? And finally I identify myself as an INDIAN only when I crossed borders of my mother land. 

As a young South Indian boy with a unique South Indian name, some part of me always felt out of place during my growing up days in Central India ( in layman's terms North India, considering anything above Andhra is North and below is South 😉). I would not say I was ever discriminated or treated with bias, but I could sense that many people are not able to relate to my background and were actually doubting me by asking questions like, " You can't be a South Indian as  you are  so fair. And if you are a South Indian,then how come you speak such good Hindi". After a point these questions  became part of my life and for some weird reason, at times it used to make me feel special.

Pic Courtesy: laughingcolours.com 

Fast forward few years, and I ended up in the "Country Of Dreams" and to my surprise right from the customs line at JFK (New York), I saw so many people who I could relate to. Their skin color,dialect and everything about them was so familiar and unlike back home these people were actually trying to help each other without even asking one another which part of India they are from? 

As I started to get my things together in this new world, I met a middle aged Pakistani lady who works at my office cafeteria and till date we never miss a chance to greet each other and ask each other "Aur kaisa chal raha hai?" (How is it going?). We are not friends and we don't even know each other's names. Only thing that we relate to is that our origins are similar and we speak a common language. That's when I realized we don't hate Pakistanis we only hate the "STATE" Pakistan. 

Of many other pleasant surprises, one that stands out to me is how every Indian living outside India is trying to speak a common language to connect to their country men (and women). I have met Andhrites,Tamilians,Bengalies,Gujratis, all trying hard to learn and speak Hindi. I ask myself why? We don't even try to do this back home. We beat people who don't speak our language. We don't like to hang out with those who are not from our part of the country, but as soon as we leave our borders we change? Do we have some invisible switch? Answer is NO. We all like to be surrounded by people who we can relate to and sadly enough we realize we can relate to all Indians alike ( for that matter even Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans) only after we leave India. I wish every Indian was lucky enough like me to have this experience to learn how we are all the same and it is so much more fun to live together without asking each other what is your caste,religion or state.

JAI HIND!!

Life of a New Father (Who is also a husband of the New Mother)...

Life of a “New Father” starts much before the birth date of your baby. It actually starts from the day when a couple decides to have a baby and start a family of their own. Its funny with commencement of this new phase of life how something that used to be fun & exciting  becomes a mission of your life (yes I am talking about sex) and after a point negative result of your wife’s pregnancy test start hitting your false “Male Ego”.

Next phase begins when your wife tells you the good news and you in your mind feel “Yess…Mission accomplished”. In this phase as a husband (still of your wife’s not the new mother), you want to do every think possible to comfort your partner who is going through all the pregnancy troubles for you. You want to find out a solution for every trouble and make her feel comfortable. Of course for most of the pregnancy troubles there are no solutions and you end up sitting outside of the bathroom feeling helpless when your wife is struggling throwing up (You can’t even keep count of this). But the good news is, every effort you make to pamper your partner in this phase goes a long way and is much appreciated.

Let’s just fast forward to the day in the labor room. This day you see your wife experience immense pain, something as a man you have never seen or imagined before. This experience in labor room gives you as a man totally new and different perspective of every woman in your life. With every push of yours wife’s, you want to give her a bear hug and say “Thank you for doing this for me and I can never pay you back for what you are doing”. Finally, after all this pain and struggle comes the moment of your life which all of the sudden becomes the most precious moment of your life. This is the moment when you see your baby’s head coming out, (retrospectively when I think about it, it’s so ironical that the mother goes through all the pain and trouble for 9 months and dad gets to experience the moment of joy first) and you don’t know when you started crying until you feel few drops falling on your hand. From this moment on your life as a “husband of the New Mother” begins.

As a new mother your wife shows you a side of hers which you had never seen before or even thought of before. This is the side when all of the sudden your casual, bubbly wife becomes most responsible, caring and protective mother. She no longer wants to sleep more or laze around. All she is thinking round the clock is what she needs to do next for the well being of your baby. It takes time to get used to this new woman in your life but when you realize what she is doing you can’t stop yourself from feeling lucky for having her as the mother of your little one.

Final phase of the “Life of a New Father” begins when you hold your baby for the first time in your hands and walk next to her basinet to the nursery (I am so glad that this phase has no end date). You want to do everything for your baby from changing her 1st diaper to making sure you have arranged for best possible resources for the comfort of your bundle of joy.

Once you come to terms with all the joy and happiness that has come to your life, you realize then that dude; you are also “the husband of the New Mother”. Mother who is having endless sleepless nights, mother who is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure everything related to her baby is taken care of, mother who with heavy heart is going back to work leaving back her piece of heart and feels guilty about that every day, mother who is spending so many hours a day expressing milk for your baby counting every ounce just to make sure your baby is well fed. How can you not take care of this wonderful mother?

Life as a new father is a real blessing. You feel lucky every time you see your little one sleeping peacefully resting on your chest. You feel blessed when one smile of your baby takes away all your tiredness. Your best award is the moment when your little daddy’s girl pounces on to you no matter what she is doing or in whose lap she is sitting the moment she see you after a long working day (this is moment you also feel little bad for your wife :) )

I cannot thank god enough for giving me this new phase of life with these two wonderful people. Life without them would have been so boring and meaning less.