After the Black Caps disaster a famous win in Australia would make India heroes again
India’s Test series drubbing by New Zealand has not been taken well by the country’s cricket fanatics. But as the team arrive in Australia they’re only one famous victory away from being loved again.
One of the cutest stories I’ve ever heard about how quickly you can go from hero to villain as an Indian cricketer in India involves Chetan Sharma. This dates back to 1986 after the medium-pacer, then 18, had been smashed for a six off the last ball by Javed Miandad in Sharjah to give Pakistan a dramatic win over their arch rivals.
Upon his return to India, Sharma suddenly went from being the guy who never had to bother about traffic regulations while driving in his hometown to now being stopped and being fined for breaches he wasn’t even aware of. Not like he ever saw the funny or cute side of it.
There are of course uglier illustrations of what happens when the same billion besotted fans who build temples for their cricketing idols feel scorned by their performance. This is what it is like when India turns on India.
For, while it is of course OK for their beloved Indian team to lose occasionally, some defeats are taken very personally. Like the recent 3-0 Test series drubbing by the unfancied New Zealanders has been.
In the past, it’s resulted in stadiums being set on fire, like during the infamous 1996 World Cup semi-final at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata, players being abused verbally and physically or even worse.
Most of the Indian players involved in the team’s embarrassingly early exit from the World Cup in 2007 had their homes stoned and their effigies burnt on the streets.
MS Dhoni, then still young in his career, had to go spend a week in a friend’s house and make sure his fancy car was parked far away from his home. The same treatment was meted out to those in the squad four years earlier after Sourav Ganguly’s team had made a slow start to their campaign in South Africa.
Imagine then for a second being married to or being related to an Indian superstar cricketer, when they’re on the road and your safety is at risk.
Greg Chappell knows all about facing the wrath of the Indian fans, once being slapped on the back by an enraged fan at an airport because he wasn’t happy with the head coach’s selection decisions.
And nobody is exempt from their rage. Even the great Sachin Tendulkar was booed at his own home ground, the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, in 2006 when India went down to England, and the master blaster was struggling for runs. Jasprit Bumrah was named and shamed in a road safety ad for having overstepped the crease in the 2017 Champions Trophy final against Pakistan.
Cricket after all does mean that much to most people in India. It drives the country and its economy, yes. But it also drives the mood of the nation and for some is the only escape from their own realities.
Thankfully, the anger of the Indian public no longer manifests itself in violent acts. No more stoning of houses or burning of effigies. Probably the one benefit of social media in India has been that a lot of those bloodthirsty fans have an outlet to vent out their spite and their contempt for having been let down by the heroes whose performances they live and die by.
And whether it’s Rohit Sharma or Virat Kohli, there’s been a lot of that coming their way in the last week or so, ever since the Indians went down in a heap against Ajaz Patel and Glenn Phillips in Mumbai.
It’s been the same to a less obscene degree from former players and experts on TV as well. At least they no longer have “Match ka mujrim” translated as “Culprit of the match’’, a show where ex-players like the late Bishan Singh Bedi would be used to verbally annihilate the current lot following a defeat.
So much so that the members of the Indian squad will be counting down the hours before they board their plane to Australia on November 10.
Historically, the moment the nation turns on the team, the first action step taken by the side is always to shut the media out. Ganguly barred his team from doing interviews during the 2003 World Cup after the stone-pelting back home. Dhoni never gave an interview to an Indian journalist after his house was attacked in 2007.
And we’ll see that virtual blockade happen straight away from the moment the team lands in Perth next week. They’ll close ranks and are likely to build a force-field around them that will make them even more opaque than usual. I heard recently from someone at Cricket Australia about how a number of media requests from the broadcasters are being dead-batted already.
Having been an Indian cricket journalist for 10 and a half years, and followed the team to every corner of the cricket world, I know very well how the script plays out. Heightened security around the team, to keep not just the inevitable hordes of Indian expats crowding their hotels, but also the media.
The liaison managers will double up as security too, posted often near hotel lobbies to keep out the nosey journalists on tour from India but also anyone here trying to sneak in and try to get a glimpse at what the Indian players are up to.
The shield will get fortified even more in case results start going against India or there is the slightest semblance of a controversy. Press conferences won’t be mandatory but dealt more as a necessity when required. And do not always expect the player of the day or the most relevant subject of the day to show up either.
When Dhoni decided to hang up his boots abruptly from Test cricket while he was still at the helm of the team in Melbourne in 2014, we were not allowed to enter the hotel premises, but then also had the hotel manager literally shove a finger into my chest and accuse me of trying to enter for “ulterior motives” when all I asked for was directions to the bar. I mean, to his credit, I was trying to reach a few of the Indian players known to me for a scoop on the shock Dhoni retirement.
There’s been talk of the three-day match simulation at the WACA being behind closed doors, despite the venue being pretty public in terms of vantage points.
Just for the record, I had to crawl through brown snake-infested bushes to then lift the black curtain covering the entire Blacktown Oval in 2020 to catch a glimpse of India’s early training sessions on the last tour. The WACA should be a lot easier to sneak into.
The first thing you learn about covering Indian cricket is that nothing is handed to you. You just have to find a way. Just like the first thing an Indian cricketer learns is that you can have everything taken away from you, but not for too long. You’re only one famous win away from winning all of them back.
The first of the five Tests begins in Perth on Friday November 22. The final Test starts in Sydney on Friday January 3.
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