I was there when Virat Kohli declared that he doesn’t respect the Australian players because they don’t respect him. I was there when he insisted that he didn’t have any friends in the Australian dressing-room anymore.
I was there when David Warner ran down the pitch at the Adelaide Oval to come in between a riled-up Kohli and Steve Smith, even as Rohit Sharma charged towards the premier Aussie batter with angry intent.
“Stay in your limits,” Kohli then yelled at Smith as Warner of all people tried to keep the peace.
Later in the day, the press conference at the Adelaide Oval was all about “crossing the line” and Warner trying to decode where that “line” was.
That was when there were limits and lines to be crossed. Or they were around to be acknowledged anyway. It was, to use wrestling parlance, the Attitude Era of the Australia v India rivalry. That is long gone now, of course.
We are officially in the PG era, where responses and celebrations are sanitised. It’s censored. Most holds are barred. There will officially be no blood. Forget crossing the line, don’t even bother getting close to it.
And you don’t even have to go too far back into the past to find it. The scenes I described earlier all came during the 2014-15 India tour of Australia.
Back then, an incident like the send-off drama between Travis Head and Mohammad Siraj would have kicked off a war of words both on and off the field between the two teams.
Alongside manic over-the-top reactions after every wicket. Batters being welcomed to the crease with at least half-a-dozen of the fielders around them and reminding them of the harm’s way they were soon going to be in.
The scenes at Adelaide Oval late on Saturday evening would have been the spark that ignited a series in terms of players being at each other’s throats. It would have added an explosive element to the remaining three Tests. More fire. More angst. More drama. But in Adelaide over the past two days, it’s felt more like both teams trying to douse the fire before there’s even smoke.
That’s where we have come to. This is not to say that this is bad for the game. It’s not the worst-case scenario that Indian and Australian players get along so famously with each other. There is still, of course, the massive competitive edge between them. But it’s clear that the edginess is gone.
You could hear it in the way both Rohit and Pat Cummins played down the reactions to the angry send-off from Siraj to Head, and the way the South Australian reacted to it. They all preferred to indulge in the “these things happen” and there’s “nothing to see here” tone with Cummins even finishing his press conference saying “I think we’ve spoken enough about that” to the umpteenth question to him about the episode.
Both players involved have been sanctioned by the ICC. But that’s barely a rap on the knuckles. The focus now is on moving forward, with the dialogue towards the media also along the lines of asking them to move on.
How things have changed. The incidents with Kohli and the rest of the Aussies came on the back of an emotional start to the series in Adelaide in 2014 in the wake of Phil Hughes’ passing. But only two days into the series, you had Warner sledging fast bowler Varun Aaron after smashing him for a boundary. You then had Rohit getting stuck into Mitchell Johnson a week later. And by the end of the series, Kohli was being chaperoned by Warner and Haddin to the batting crease every time he walked out.
The fact remains though that Siraj will still have to face the wrath of the Australian audiences. They haven’t changed much. They will get stuck into him. He will get booed wherever he goes. He will get jeered whenever he touches the ball. The thing is that Siraj isn’t a pantomime villain. He is no Stuart Broad. He’s not the type who’ll enjoy the extra attention. He’s just a humble fast bowler with white-line fever who can let his fieriness get the better of him. It was interesting to see how some of his senior teammates were putting an arm around him at the end of each session while he was being booed raucously off the field. And they will rally around him for the rest of the series.
Siraj is unlike Virat at his peak. Virat was the ultimate villain. Australia hadn’t seen an Indian player like him, who could get under their skin and play their game with their rules. And it’s unlikely they’ll see another, not anymore.
The Attitude Era is dead. Welcome to the PG era of this rivalry.
More Coverage
Aussies into semis despite second washout against Afghanistan
Australia is through to the Champions Trophy semi finals despite rain forcing play to be abandoned during their chase of Afghanistan’s target of 274 at Lahore.
Billion dollar league: Private ownership on the cards for BBL
Cricket Australia is investigating how private equity could enhance the Big Bash and return the league to its former status as the undisputed No.2 T20 league on earth.