CRICKET CORNER:
When winter approaches, my mind is dragged to the traditional Test cricket. Especially from my childhood, that tradition is maintained. It's agreed over the years and decades that the game has drastically changed/ evolved as the lovers of the Royal game of glorious uncertainty might observe, but personally speaking the Test matches in the period of Christmas and New Year have the aura of romance.
The Ashes between England and Australia come to my mind that all the connoisseurs look upon with utmost interest. But these days, since India has emerged as a strong cricket power across all the formats, any bilateral series played by my country draws the attention of cricket lovers across the globe. With time Indian pitches have turned out to be "the last frontier" for the aspiring champions of the Test Championship.
So, when the Blighties under the attacking New Zealander coach arrived here, I was looking forward to the series with keen interest. The series was a well-fought one, though the end result was a 4-1 victory for the home team, but it was rather a misleading representation of the fight we saw for most of the period of a full-fledged five-Test series surrounding the 22 yards.
The visitors fought well, although, in the crunch moment, they played an ultra-attacking game and were fooled by the guiles of the Indian spin trio. Aswin was a wily fox, Jadeja, the consistent part of the jigsaw puzzle for the English batsmen and Kuldeep, a refreshing variety of left-arm art that we rarely see nowadays. To compound the problem for the colonial masters, there was the new world's pace spearhead in Bumrah supported by the occasional burst of ever-willing Siraj to contend with. A spinning wicket or otherwise, this bowling combo could challenge even the best batting lineup in the world of cricket. It's in cricket always observed that the bowling power wins Test matches consistently, and this was again proved here. Mind you, this bowling lineup didn't have Shami in it.
To complete the reason for a total rout for the MCC, I must say that the form of Indian top-order batsmen was red-hot. Captain Rohit, Rahul, and Virat (in the limited appearance) are experienced batsmen, and they were expected to bat ably. What impressed me the most was the batting of rooky duo - Yashaswi, as an opener and Subhman as the most important number three batter in the world. They just denied the English bowlers spearheaded by old pro-Anderson and Co. any openings. The new spin-trio of England were no match to their Indian counterparts, but they showed characters in patches.
The highlight of the series was Yashaswi's batting when he scored two double centuries and more than 700 runs (both national records). He showed a monumental appetite for runs and proved that his debut century in the West Indies was no fluke.
Here is a new star who arrived to rule the bowlers worldwide, hopefully. To speak about the batting for India, I must mention contributions from the Indian bowlers and the all-rounder Jadeja, who showed character in the moments of need in the first half of the series.
In the fielding department, the visitors matched the Indian players, and both the skippers applied their instinctive acumen throughout the series to make it a memorable series to date.
In the end, the game was the real winner. The Indian bowlers Ashwin and Bumrah made huge leaps in the ICC rankings, as Gill, Rohit, and Yashaswi did. It would have been a perfect ten for India had Virat in the thick of things, but then every story cannot be folklore!!!🇮🇳🏏
#sportscorner
NB. Please wait for my memoir on Sunny Gavaskar titled "The Little Maestro - The Ornament to Cricket" (Part-I) whose first draft has been composed and the Kindle version is expected to be self-published on the Amazon platform by this month.
