Another chance to stand up and be counted for Kohli and Co
There are certain feelings so deeply embedded in our consciousness that they keep surfacing, as if on rote, especially in a certain set of conditions and circumstances linked to the past. For a follower of the Indian cricket team, there is one emotion that has shadowed him from time immemorial, the dreadful feeling of an imminent defeat, whenever playing in a foreign land and on a wicket layered with grass.
Though there have been teams in the past that have corrected that anomaly once in a while, the general pattern has been one of doom and gloom.
Virat Kohli’s team is, by almost unanimous consensus, different and is supposed to change this bitter legacy of the past. Its first pit stop for changing that perception is South Africa, where it is hoped it would counter adverse conditions to vanquish its rivals. Going by the result of the first round, it has floundered, leaving many of its supporters disappointed and even a bit shocked.
The seaming, bouncing ball at the picturesque Newlands in Cape Town, once again became the nemesis of the famed Indian batting line-up, much like its predecessors in similar conditions. Was the change which most of us were expecting a creation of our own imagination, not rooted in reality? Is this team no different from the others?
There was a period in the Test when the brave and courageous Hardik Pandya was swatting his bat to smack the ball to all parts of the ground, that raised hopes of an Indian revival. Very often in the past one has been writing match reports that has focused on one brave Indian performer, who has risen above the mediocre performance of his team, though not been able to alter the result of the match. Those were times when no one expected India to even match its rival, let alone win. We would all draw consolation from one or two odd outstanding performances and get on with life, excepting defeat as a logical end of an unequal contest.
When Pandya with his brutal hitting was shaking the very foundations of the South African pace attack, I wondered would this be the match-winning innings we all were waiting for or be one more addition to the list of individual glory, a consolation prize amidst the gloom of defeat? That Pandya’s heroic effort made no difference to the end result raises the question that were our hopes based on unrealistic expectations, where we had glossed over the limitations of batsmen who have only thrived on perfect batting conditions?
It may be too soon to draw conclusions from the result of just one Test, especially given the fact that the Indian pace attack was more than a handful for the South Africans. Not many Indian teams in the past have in these extremely testing batting conditions competed on equal terms for most part of the match. That the Indian pace attack matched their rivals, more used to these conditions, is a positive in itself, not to be ignored.
The second Test, beginning on Saturday, in hostile but probably less testing conditions at the Centurion, will give Indian batsmen another chance to stand up and be counted. On their success or failure not only hinges the outcome of the series but also how Virat Kohli and his team will be remembered by history.