So that’s why the gatekeepers of Chinnaswamy were trying to prevent spectators from entering the ground this morning for as long they could. They had read the chai leaves and recognised the omens that take possession of Test cricket and were only trying to spare thousands from the pain. Still, we threatened to break down the gates, hollering and demanding to be let in. Maybe whatever transpired is entirely on us – India’s worst Test cricket day at home.
For a while India at 7-35 flirted perilously close to 36 but honestly, missing its lowest Test total by ten runs is not any kind of landmark. To be 30 less than what we’d ever scored at home – during what considered is our most successful Test era – is a whopper. Egg on face material.
Those signs and omens? Three days ago, Gautam Gambhir said if his team , “can play the natural game, if they can get 400-500 runs in a day, why not? We will play it that way – high-risk, high-reward; high-risk, high-failure… There will be days when we’ll get bundled up for 100.” 100 today wouldn’t have been peachy. A day before the game, BCCI and other associated social media accounts celebrated the fact that New Zealand had not won a Test in India for 35 years.
You don’t do that. It may appear a trendy in-ya-face-ya-mug confidence that goes viral on the internet and yes, do try it in white ball cricket. But kindly refrain from messing about with the demanding, temperamental creature called Test cricket which anyway has been around for nearly 150 years, longer than you me and all us smarty pants. In its vocabulary, anything viral is a disease to be dispelled. Yes, Kanpur was wonderfully wacko and marvellously mad, leading many to ‘India rescues Test cricket’ headlines, but what happens in Kanpur should fundamentally stay in Kanpur.
Not be transported to Bangalore on a day of two halves, actually more like one-third, two-third. One third in Nottingham on a grey bleak day, with the ball talking, biting, sniping. Two-thirds in Kotla on its graveyard shift, with the sun shining and urban kites wheeling over bleached bones of the Indian first innings.
On the Chinnaswamy P Terrace, as the Indian innings imploded, in the face of a New Zealand attack extracting swing off the air, bounce off the wicket and assistance from a surface that had sweated for days, there was confusion all around. Firstly, why were we batting? Secondly, what was this batting order? Thirdly, what was this batting? Yasser from Melbourne is only here for this one single day of the Test, flying out tomorrow. Dhruv has travelled from Delhi to see this single Test in the series. Everyone has a right to know.
Reports from the press box say that that the wicket had not been watered for a few days before the Test. It would be dry, and break, hence three spinners and New Zealand bats fourth. There is contemptuous scoffing – planning for the other team’s fourth innings before working out how to meaningfully survive the first session. As wickets fall, the batting order resembles scrambled eggs. After the openers, no one is where they should be and, before you know it, everyone is lost. As sharp-edged the bowling and fielding is, the dimissals are dire: some brought about by sustained pressure and the frozen scoreboard, others by curious shot selection. We’re rating them in degrees of direness: Jadeja’s flapper-flick at the stroke of lunch wins in terms of situation, timing, execution. Every New Zealand run under the sun stabs the heart – a reminder of what awaited India had they kept their heads.
Heads, hearts, everything has been churned. Names from the past are being invoked – ‘Chepu’ ‘Puji’ ‘Pujaraa-Rahaane-man’ and a few lapses into WWDD What Would Dravid Do. (If he were still coach, maybe throw a chair or two). Arms are waved and head nodded towards the direction of the media box, where Sunil Gavaskar has been seen sitting in a corner between stints. His ‘give the first session to the bowlers’ mantra is being uttered like a prayer.
Early in the New Zealand innings, Tom Latham is dropped off Siraj by KL Rahul at second slip. From the giant replay, it appears Rahul has responded late, his head twitching away from the ball, his hands flailing at it as it goes past. Abhijeet in the row behind me calls it best: “K L Rahul is batting at second slip.” Swaying out of the line of one from those elongated Kiwi pacemen.
Everyone around is laughing, no point crying. There’s more to come: chances fall short or are dropped, stumpings whiz by or are missed, a yes-no-maybe between the batters is wasted when Jadeja fires the ball to the end without danger. Rishabh Pant hobbles off in pain. Nothing goes right for India today because they start out on the wrong note.
As the day ends, permutations and combinations are being formulated to save the game. Rain? There is much muttering. What will we do in BGT? Better here than at the Gabba, baba. I get a message, better now than in the final. WTC final, of course. Indian cricket fans will never stop dreaming ahead.
But if New Zealand don’t take the chance to win this Test, it’s going to be another 35 years before the next opportunity. By then, who knows Test cricket may itself be… you know the rest. Another prophecy becomes hard to ignore. Lalith commuted an hour and half to be at the ground well in time for the toss before finding the gates closed. Wait for it, he says, the wickets for the next two Tests (Pune and Mumbai) will be rank turners. India wins 2-1, everyone forgets 46 all out.
Suddenly another set of Gambhirims come to mind. From 2012, after losing seven away consecutive Tests in England, he says, “Once these people come to India we should not be hesitant in making turners… and [see what happens to] the kind of chit chat do they do when we go overseas and they talk about our techniques.” Anyone taking bets on Pune and Mumbai?
