Here it is!!!! It finally happened. Although many will say it was unexpected victory i believe it was expected. But first let’s celebrate this rare moment of glory in Indian cricket. After what can be called as pretty forgetful one day series, Indian cricket team has bounce backed with a resolute performance to clinch their first ever test win in South Africa, and deserved every bit of long celebrations that followed (believe me I was stunned when I heard the stats of party. 12 champagnes, 60 beers had already finished and still they had not seen the sunset.) We all know Statistics of the match by now and I won’t bore anybody giving the same details again. Rather would like to view all the performance from a completely different perspective.
At the beginning I mentioned that this win had to be called a expected win. I know most of the people will laugh at me but the fact is India is ranked 3rd in test rating while south Africa is 7th while in one days India is 7th and South Africa is 2nd so one has to say India were expected to win this. Apart from that I strongly believe we are not poor travelers any more. From 2002 England tour I cannot remember a many away test series where India has lost badly. (If I am not wrong the only bad away tour was 2003 New Zealand series). We have series win in West Indies, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and Bangladesh and have series draws in Australia, Sri-Lanka, England. This is in addition to no Africa tour and a loss in New-Zealand (Yes New-Zealand was disaster fact is we did not have cricket pitches there. They were more baseball grounds where they hardly expected the ball to land on surface and hence had kept all the grace on the surface intact). That isn’t a bad record is it? I think no. So I will still say it was expected.
What haunted this team was failure in last 3 series. But lets all accept a fact that those African teams were 10 times better than this current African team. They had people like Hudson, Kirsten, and Cullinon at top with Kallis, Cronje, and Rhodes waiting to bat after them. Plus they had brilliance of Klusner, Boucher, and Pollock at the bottom. Bowling was furious with Donald, Pollock, and Hayward or in old age Fanny De Villiers and some help from Symcox, Klusner. Compare them to current team and you will find that no current batsman or bowler will get a tick over those legends (except for few who are still in the team). This batting line up looks very weak and lacks experience. Bowling though good is not good enough if all Indian batsmen can raise them game to their own standard level and certainly no way near to previous African pace attacks where every bowler applied tremendous pressure on batsmen. Their side in past was so much better that they came to India in 1997 and became the first side to beat India in India after almost a decade. And only Australia has achieved that after them till now.
Second factor worth considering is timing of the series. Indians are always very slow adapters to the conditions. For both series 1997 and 2001 we had test series first and then the one day series. So each time Indian team failed badly in first test and till they got used to conditions test series was already over.(I am specifically ignoring 1992 tour because that was first series after South Africa’s re-admission to international cricket and was treated more like a ceremonious event than a cricket series. I don’t say Africa was bad in that series but India went on that tour as if they were there to raise funds for charity and was totally unprepared for the tour.) So this time we got time to get used to conditions and that proved to be very vital for this success.
Having said all that I have said I still think it’s a great victory in History of Indian cricket because India often have failed to win the things that they ideally should win. So bad was our performance in past that we had lost even in Zimbabwe. And I believe the credit for this transformation has to go to Sourav Ganguly. Love him or hate him he was and is a differentiating factor between our teams of past and present. And just as if he had to write the destiny again, India needed him to bring on this tremendous turn around. May be this is a signal from almighty god to Chappell and Dravid that they cannot decide destiny or fate of anybody and they are just the peons of God. I strongly believe in destiny and also in the fact that whatever happens to somebody, happens for his/her good. And I think this fits best to Dada. Although manner of treatment given to him was wrong, I think Dada needed to be out of side to understand importance of a place in Indian Cricket team and to bring back the fire and desire that had started to slide away from him.
Although 24X7 media has not said it and have glorified efforts of other people I still think inning that changed the fate of the match was Sachin’s determined 44 along with Sourav’s 51 and VRV’s 29. He never got the due credit and Dada walked away with all the glory. I think that second session on first day was very critical since task of playing out that new ball on a pitch which was at its worst in that session was a great task and knowing Sachin I can surely say that he rates this innings very high in all the illustrious list of innings that he has played.
Finally a word about man of the match Srisanth and his Malayalam dance heroics. I admire Srisanth for his achievement and for his Malayalam dance and believe that this was a much needed treatment for Nel who throws his mouth at everybody at will and surprisingly gets away with it without fight. But at the same time I must say that I hated what he did when he got Amla with a beauty of a delivery. I think this was uncalled for and never fits in Indian cricket and tradition. He needs to be told a word or two by his senior members.
Overall in moment of glory and pride and lets take a opportunity to congratulate Rahul and Chappell for delivering under almost pressure of their career and lets hope that they will play well enough to take home their first ever series win from SA.
