It doesn’t take long for India to get over losses in test matches. Unlike the long period of national self-loathing after a World Cup or T20 World Cup setback, mourning a Loss of the World Test Championship it is much shorter and quieter.
There is outrage but no effigy burning. There is the usual call for mass layoffs of seniors, but those voices lack sting. There are those mandatory autopsies, but the scrutiny is not intense nor does it yield credible solutions.
Since the WTC finals follow the IPL, fingers point to the T20 league, but it’s still the cat you can’t bell on. The cricket community is also feeling guilty. After sitting spellbound until the wee hours of the morning to watch MS Dhoni lift the trophy, IPL cannot be blamed too much.
So who is to blame for the WTC debacle? Every loss needs a scapegoat and also a comforting thought to hide the team’s obvious inadequacies. So conveniently, scheduling, workload, fatigue, and conditions become the proverbial bushes that decision makers and fans hit.
The growing popularity of the perpetually bloated IPL indicates that the cricket ecosystem has made its peace with cricket franchises undermining and undermining Tests. Packed stands at all IPL games and empty seats for the older form of the game at the same venues are exhibits that make fans willing complicit in the supposed slow death of Test cricket. This has been an old case, going back almost 50 years.
It was in the 1980s that India first fell in love with overs cricket. The lightning strike that struck Indian cricket in 1983 had an impact on the nation’s collective cricket consciousness. Test matches lost their adhesive, could no longer stick in the fans’ minds for eternity. Days-cricket would lose its archival value and face an identity crisis. The bold new format would capture the imagination of the cricketing world.
In time, the Indian cricket playlist would see a rewrite, ODIs and T20s would take tests out of the brain banks, even nostalgia was now in technicolor. For the fan on the street, the slideshow that defined Indian cricket’s 50-year journey would have all the limited cricket highs: Kapil Dev’s Devils, Ravi Shastri’s Audi, Sachin TendulkarJoginder Singh’s Desert Storm, Joginder Singh’s Last Ball and MS Dhoni’s Six. The test specials: VVS Laxman’s 281 and Rishabh trousers‘s Brisbane: would get honorable mentions, but stayed out of it. To grab the attention of Indian cricket fans, with a clear bias towards the shorter forms of the game, a Test cricketer would have to put in a once-in-a-lifetime, never-before-seen performance.
momentary pain
There is another indicator that shows that the shorter version had a greater emotional investment. For die-hards, the wounds that fester the most are from an ODI loss, not a Test loss. Tendulkar dating Saqlain Mushtaq’s doosra in 1999 Chennai Proof of India losing to Pakistan doesn’t sting nearly as much as Javed Miandad’s latest six ball against Chetan Sharma.
Country bragging rights are also over the ODI and T20 formats. Do fans care that India, to date, have never won a Test series in South Africa and that England’s last triumphant tour was many years ago? Not precisely. Most of the concerns about cricket, and also the reason for most of the major dismissals in Indian cricket, have been the team’s inability to win the shorter ICC version trophies.
There is more evidence to suggest that even pop culture distances itself from Testing and Testing cricketers. Known for having their hand on the pulse of the nation, Bollywood’s chosen theme for a cricket film tells a story.
The 2001 India vs Australia Test series had a fascinating history. A young and revamped team under the leadership of an inspiring and fearless captain did the impossible to win back the trust of fans in the post-match fixing era. Sourav Ganguly one loss away from being sacked, a horrible start to the Test, the Laxman-Raul Dravid renaissance and teen spin sensation harbhajan singhThe magical hat-trick of calcutta The test itself was a dream script made by hand to be captured on celluloid.
But it didn’t quite inspire any filmmaker. Not to say that the Cinderella story of the Indians at the World Cup in 1983 didn’t deserve a big screen adaptation, but so did 2001 and the Ganguly boys. The ODIs had gotten the better of the Tests once again. For all the gravitas of Test’s triumph at Eden Gardens, it didn’t quite measure up to World Cup victory in England.
There was also another time when a World Cup win got Bollywood interested in cricket. The 2011 title win was the climax of MS Dhoni, the Untold Story. There have been equally historic Test victories in Indian cricket, but there is no one to tell those stories on screen. Just like the official Dhoni biopic, this cricket-mad nation deserves to hear many more untold stories.
Historically, Test specialists have been the forgotten and undersold stars of Indian cricket. Their actions do not receive endorsements. In a country of more than 1.4 billion people, people like Ravichandran Ashwin has a loyal fan base but they are far from the most popular cricketers. When the cricket world’s most consistent match winner says he feels abandoned and unloved, it’s a sad comment on India’s cricketing culture. When Ashwin returned home after missing out on a Test yet again, and the collective anger of the fans was gone, he went public with his longstanding angst. He said that he shouldn’t have been a bowler and talked about the trauma of being looked down on.
others who care
But isn’t this a global problem, isn’t the world turning its back on test cricket? Not precisely. The ongoing Ashes series, between two nations that value Test cricket more, shatters that myth. Australia kept their best players away from the IPL. And there was Mitchell Starc, someone who could have made around $10 million if he had entered the auction. But the left arm pacemaker proved that when Aussies talk about the pride of wearing Baggy Green, they mean it.
Before the ashes, said Starc The Guardian his reason for choosing to play for his country and saying no to the riches of IPL. “Money comes and goes, but I am very grateful for the opportunities I have had. Over 100 years of Test cricket and there have been fewer than 500 men to have played it for Australia. That in itself makes it very special to be a part of this,” he said.
Most of the best cricketers publicly profess their love of Test cricket, but there are few like Starc who lead by example. In these days of cricket franchises, it’s all the rage to be seen guarding tests – it qualifies one as a cricket connoisseur. But the seasonal self-righteous outrage over the decline of Test cricket emerging from India, after the past two WTC final defeats, rings hollow. These effusions are hypocritical, this has been our doing. As a nation, we gave up on testing a long time ago, so let’s end the charade. We have prioritized IPL over WTC, so there will be repercussions.
With the WTC final behind us, in the next few days, India will resume regular service again. Debates on the thorny issue of cricket will return. Can rohit sharma win the ODI World Cup at home? Will Hardik Pandya break India’s ICC curse at the T20 World Cup next year? Does Dhoni feel like playing one more season of IPL? Can Kohli deliver an IPL title for RCB?
By the time these questions are answered, it will be in 2025 and India is likely to reach the WTC final again. And the same old question will confront them. Will the IPL-fatigued Indian team adjust to the conditions in a week and win the title at Lord’s? Who are we kidding, the answer is obvious.
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