As India prepare to take on Australia at the fearsome Gabba, you'd have to be a serial optimist bordering on delusional to believe the visitors have a koala in a wildfire's chance of winning the game and the series. It's one of today's best (not in terms of class, mind) Test teams versus a gutted out shell of an XI; a hodgepodge of the walking wounded who really ought to be led by Florence Nightingale rather than the eminently dignified Ajinkya Rahane. An Aussie pace attack to dream of in comparison to an Indian one suffering a collective nightmare. It'll take much more than what the team had in Sydney to come out of the last Test with a positive result and I don't know if we have any more to give.
And, speaking of which, what a Test that was! That we drew in Sydney, against tremendous odds and broken body parts, is a stellar achievement in itself; a draw that felt like a victory. The batting was ugly but hey, so was the behaviour of the Aussies. Fuck that lot. Yet, all the nonsense playing itself out on the TV blossomed into a rare and beautiful moment online.
Being online is a chore nowadays. No matter what social media platform you hang about on, there doesn't seem much to be cheerful about. It would take a lot of curating to stay blissfully ignorant of the turmoil around us, domestically and globally. Sadly, it doesn't need a similar amount of effort to expose yourself to the ridiculous, often terrible happenings in the world in every sphere - environmentally, politically, intellectually, socially, culturally, medically... Not to mention the decimation of our minds and personalities by a year of COVID that doesn't look like it'll take the hint and go away any time soon. So, right now, what's uniting us, apart from internet addiction and confirmation bias?
In this hostile desert, the fifth day of the Sydney test was an oasis. Whether we were in living rooms, internet chat rooms (do those still exist?), on Twitter, FB or WhatsApp, a lot of Indians were following the proceedings. For once, it was a great feeling to wake up and see a flood of messages on WhatsApp about the cricket. Whether it was someone prematurely slating Vihari (guilty, milord) or praising Pant, suddenly we were all in it together.
A whole generation of us has grown up watching supremely talented individual players cover themselves with glory while the rest of the team stayed out in the cold. A list of teeth-grating losses that have punched the same part of the heart so often, there's a permanent dent, a resigned dread that we'll never be able to shake off. A T20 is a quickie; an ODI is a one-night stand. There isn't much to feel about either; regret or pleasure is fleeting. A Test match is a long-term commitment and you need a lot of talent to fuck it up, which the cricket team of the world's second-most populated country is surprisingly good at.
So, pardon the palpitations as millions of psychologically scarred people tuned into the Test, anxiously willing the batters to play out another over successfully, getting outraged at the 'gamesmanship' of the Australians or heaving a collective sigh of relief when they gave up and acknowledged that they'd chucked everything at this Indian team and we hadn't come within a Darrell hair's breadth of capitulating. Proof that this game, the day, the moment, meant something and really did bring so many people together, can be borne out by the rarest of occurrences - a Cricinfo server crash.
In a world increasingly divided by the internet, it took something that happened online to drive home how united we Indians were that day. I thought it was as sweet a moment to savour as the one that ended the game.
Oh, have a safe and sane year, everyone.
Song for the moment: Somewhere between waking and sleeping - Air
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