Remember when we’d express ire on our recalcitrant school going sons for not studying hard enough for their impending exams, warning that they’d fare badly and then getting a pleasant surprise to see them getting good marks – that gave a real high and make us eat our words albeit at times grudgingly. Something similar to that happened yesterday..
As veteran cricket aficionados we friends often air our considered opinions to each other on the fate of the Indian team now hanging in the balance and presently engaged in the England Test Series battle. When the team was announced for the Fifth Test, most of us were up in arms against choice of the weakened bowling attack that had no ‘Boom-rah’ ! Particularly irksome was return of Prasidh Krishna who’s profligacy in leaking runs put India under pressure in earlier Tests. Most rooted for Kuldeep to be given final look in.
To begin with, all our overt apprehensions seemed to come true- India put up a listless First innings display barring a valiant half-century by Karun Nair and England went into a superfast gallop as their two openers treated our pacers with utter disdain and we all felt that the series was pretty much sealed with the home-team running away to a huge 1st innings lead. But we seem to have underestimated our boys and the fight wasn’t over. It all started with the audacious Duckett throwing away his wicket and Akashdeep giving him coziest of send offs. Apparently Duckie had cockily told him ‘You can’t get me Out ‘!
Post lunch there was a dramatic transformation as the pacers led by a redoubtable prize fighter : DSP Md. Siraj bowled with such renewed aggression and intent that suddenly the English batters weren’t hitting 6s but at ‘sixes & sevens’. Spurred by Siraj’s intensity Prasidh also raised the bar and bowled his heart out. It’s now being noticed that when Bumrah plays the other pacers don’t perform to potential but in his absence the burden falls on Siraj to lead the attack & he delivers. Tireless, he hasn’t cared for the workload.
What’s clear is that we hype up some of the big players into ‘larger than life’ characters & put pressure on them to always perform. Interestingly while all talk is centred around Bumrah’s fitness and workload, the one Test India won was when Bumrah didn’t play. In the same vein, had we persisted with two veterans (also legends,as like to call them) Virat and Rohit, we’d have never witnessed the emergence of Shubhman Gill the leader !
Working on Living 