Thank You, Sirs!

I will never try to predict the result of a cricket series.
I will never try to predict the result of a cricket series.
I will never try to predict the result of a cricket series.
I will never try to predict the result of a cricket series.
I will never try to predict the result of a cricket series.
I will never try to predict the result of a cricket series.
I will never try to predict the result of a cricket series.
I will never try to predict the result of a cricket series.
I will never try to predict the result of a cricket series.
I will never try to predict the result of a cricket series.

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Maybe I should never even try writing on cricket again. Maybe I should from now onreserve my comments only for matters political or economic, or -- yeah, that’sit -- historical. Couldn’t go very wrong about the Second Battle of Panipat orsomething, could I?

After the humiliating first test defeat, I wrote that if anyone believes that India canbeat Australia, he may as well believe in Santa Claus. Readers who clearly pack a meanclairvoyant punch wrote back and said they believe India can beat Australia, and theydon’t believe in Santa Claus.

After the second test, I tried to cover my ass by doing a riff on Santa Claus and howhe does exist, and sometimes he plays for India. Patriotic readers wrote back to say thatthey could see through my CYA strategy.

Now that the third test is over, and my cardiac flutters subsided, and SteveWaugh’s team has been proved to be not the greatest cricket team ever (if it neededany proof), and the entire cricketing world other than Australia suffused with joy (infact, why not Australia too? What a great series this has been, after all, playedaggressively and no team giving any quarter, and replete with stunning performances withthe bat and the ball), as it is confirmed to one and all that there is after all justiceon earth, as we know with total certainty that we have watched the coming of age of twomen who should serve India for many years (and one of them will very likely captain Indiaone day), as the Bengalis begin to point out that Ganguly has now won three series in arow as captain including one on foreign soil (Bangladesh), as Ricky Ponting gets down tofiguring out how he nearly managed to make less runs than the number of catches he took inthe series, as we complain laughingly that only India could have got themselves into asituation like this, eight wickets down chasing 155, as the world gets clearincontrovertible proof (if any was needed) that test cricket is not dead and will neverbe, as we all go back to our desks and beds and the rest of our lives, I have a column towrite.

Why did we win?

I think we won because the Indian team managed to match the Aussies in mental toughness,something we have rarely been able to do in the past. This was an all-conquering team,master of all it surveyed, and ruthlessly hungry for more of the same. This wasAlexander’s army, fresh from overwhelming Egypt and crushing Persia, at the gates ofPataliputra. Mumbai was a devastation, we were looted and plundered, the air was thickwith the stench of the dead. The Indian captain was booed by the Wankhede crowd as he cameup for the after-match interview. The media was merciless: was there no man in this teamother than that stocky little fellow from Shardashram School? The rest of the team? Twotop batsmen who had never succeeded against this bowling attack, two openers who, for alltheir sincerity, just did not seem to have what India needed, a middle-order batsman whoseemed to be Bradman while facing Ranji sides but a mediocre Ranji player when facing aworld-class attack, and the bowling: India didn’t even have its top two bowlers anymore -- Kumble and Srinath, and the others-young, untested, under-confident. All seemed lost.

And then India regrouped.

India regrouped.

I have no idea what transpired in the team meetings after the Mumbai test. It has alwaysbeen clear to everyone that Ganguly is a man who hates to lose. He has been accused ofvarious things: of being selfish, of putting his own interests above his team’s, ofbeing arrogant. If channeled properly, all these shortcomings can be of great use, forwhat these traits combine to produce is a pathologic hatred of losing, of coming second,of not winning. Tendulkar hates to lose in a different way: one gets the sense that heknows that he was born for some purpose -- no one could be born with so much talent withoutthere being a higher purpose to it -- yet umpteen times in his career, his destiny has turnedon him in the cruelest of ways: no batsman has been out to a greater number of completelyincredible catches than Tendulkar has. And when destiny couldn’t make Tendulkar offereven that half-chance to a Pakistani attack, it gave Sachin a debilitating back pain, twoyears ago, in Chennai. India lost, leaving Tendulkar and the rest of the country in tears.Sachin knows that he is doomed to play against only himself and a destiny that ishalf-seductress, half-psychopathic. Sachin has nothing to prove to anyone except himself,and every time he can’t make India win, he loses a personal battle, and he takes itbitterly. Dravid shows his feelings far less than do Ganguly and Tendulkar, but there canbe no doubt about his burning desire to win. You can see it in his haunted eyes, his angerevery time he is out, whether on 0 or 176. He hates to lose.

Perhaps, behind this team’s success is the fact that so many of the team, whetherestablished or trying to find their feet, had so much to prove, needed so much to provethat they were what they had the potential to be. If Ganguly wanted to answer his criticswith as much violence as they had directed towards him, if Tendulkar wanted to look hismirror image in the eye squarely, if Dravid wanted to hush all those who snidely relegatedhim to the status of a flat pitch bully, then Laxman needed to answer his critics that hewas not just Mr Beat-up-on-Ranji-bowlers. Harbhajan needed to drive it home to all hisdetractors that he had the power to come back after being accused of chucking, after beingchucked out of the national camp for indiscipline. Zaheer Khan stands at the threshold ofwhat can be a glorious career, and he wants to be up there with the best. Shib Sundar Dashas his whole life before him to create as he wishes.

There is ambition in this team, flaming personal ambitions. There are ghosts in thisteam, nasty ghosts that lurk in the mind. Lurk? They came out in the open in the Mumbaitest and spat in the faces of these men.

But they did not run. They faced up to their ghosts, and sent them scurrying back intothe dankest darkest corners. These men got mad, and then they got even. They went out withnothing to lose and the world to gain.

They got the world, and made a billion people grateful.

Thank you, sirs.