It's in the game!

While Mahendra Singh Dhoni triumphantly held aloft the Test series trophy in New Zealand (with his trademark smile that we’re now so accustomed to seeing), after 41 years of bitter annihilation and defeat, commentators and ‘Cricket Experts’ in dimly lit lavish air-conditioned studios went gaga over the victory, hailing Dhoni and his boys for a ‘fabulous, marvelous and scintillating’ show. I could not but muse…was it really?

My candor might seem slightly out of place to you and I might put up the impression of a perpetual misanthropist, but the victory cannot appropriately be attributed to the above mentioned overstated adjectives. In fact, the Kiwi team was evidently so pallid that a victory seemed certain right from the outset. So the overwhelming approbation being showered on Dhoni and Co. can diminish…very well diminish.

Fundamentally, I was flabbergasted that we had won the series 1-0 as opposed to comprehensively clinching it 2-0. A draw in the third test was actually a totally unanticipated result, given that the Kiwis were on the mat at the end of day 2 itself, when India commenced their second inning. But alas…! That was where our blue-eyed skipper made the calculation error (I’ve done it several times myself and have been rightfully admonished by my Math teacher for doing so). India batted for simply too long in their 2^nd inning, posing a formidable target but allowing the desperate Kiwis to emerge alive from their hole, with some assistance from the local Rain Gods, who had apparently vowed to strike on the final day’s play (Didn’t our ‘Captain Marvel’ take a look at the weather forecast?) Diffidence…sheer diffidence…is it not paradoxical that a team headed by a fearless, audacious leader with aggressive intentions bowed down to the pressure of ensuring a series win and let the match slip by?

However, one mustn’t forget that the Kiwi team Team India was up against was one of the poorest Kiwi teams in the history of New Zealand cricket (what with key players scurrying to cash rich rebel leagues?)And so…it was only a bunch of inexperienced, incapable, young group of lads that Dhoni and Co. had to relinquish. This is precisely why I would, with no remorse, take away some credit from the Indian victory…what’s so ‘testing’ about thrashing around a pack of toothless, incapable lads who look as though they’ve just dropped out of college, on impenetrably flat batting paradises?

However, all said and done, there were a few players who cashed in on the opportunity and were remarkable lodestars for the team. Gautam Gambhir, for example showed the temperament of a champion. Take for example that 10½ hour vigil in the Second Test to save the team’s skin. Or that swashbuckling, flamboyant 167 in the Second innings of the Third test to set up a perfect winning scenario (only for M.S. to squander it…). Rahul Dravid has also finally seemed to have gotten rid of the demons of his mind that inadvertently inhibited his potential. To watch him in sublime form all through the Test series and getting runs almost every time he came out to bat was relieving. Sachin Tendulkar, on the other hand, looked as magnificent and august as ever all through the tour, amassing enough runs to be declared the ‘Man of the Tour’…from the 163 run decimation in the Christchurch ODI to the 160 run feast in the Hamilton test, Sachin Tendulkar has looked so consistently transcendent that it is impossible to find a replacement for him, as of now. From the bowling department, Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh have proven once again that they are right up there in the league of the best bowlers in the world, their sterling performances all through the tour a testimony for that.   

On the contrary, I thought India played genuinely high-octane cricket in the One-Day series, that saw them comfortably steamroll the Kiwis in a series, where the Indian batsmen ‘made hay while the Sun shone’, quite literally. Watching the likes of Virender Sehwag, Suresh Raina and Yuvraj Singh in blazing form was indeed elysian oblivion. What with Sachin Tendulkar defiantly stating that it was the best batting line up he’d ever been part of?

India, befuddlingly, had the worst possible start to the campaign with New Zealand comfortably castigating them in both the T20 international games played. With India touted as the ‘World Champion’ team in the Fast and Furious form of the Gentlemen’s game, what they have to still prove with conclusive testimony is that they are worthy holders of the appellation.

All said and done, India’s holiday to New Zealand has been a highly prosperous one and one that catapults their prospects of scaling the highest summit-becoming the numero uno in the world in all the formats of the game.

India has dug and has dug fairly deep. But the treasure they are in pursuit of is still far deeper.