On Monday, Test cricket threw Indian fans into a situation they had no idea how to live through. Who knows when, or if, we will ever experience something like this again
Karthik Krishnaswamy06-Aug-20255:30
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Sometimes, Test cricket throws even its most seasoned watchers into situations they have no idea how to live through. On Monday afternoon IST, when a desperately backtracking, desperately diving Akash Deep tips Gus Atkinson’s slog off Mohammed Siraj over the boundary cushions at wide long-on, he also tips all of India’s millions of fans into unknown territory.None of us, not even the oldest among us, has lived through anything like this.England, with their last pair at the crease, need 11 to win. Two hits will do it.India have never won a Test match by a margin smaller than 13 runs. They have won once by one wicket, but they have never lost by that margin. They have been involved in a tied Test and a draw with one wicket remaining and scores level, but they batted last both times. Three last-wicket pairs have saved Tests against them, but on none of those occasions had an India defeat been possible.Related
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Never before, in short, have India’s players been on the field, together, in this situation: one wicket away from victory, and a hit or two away from defeat. Never have we, their fans, watched them deal with this and attempted to deal with it ourselves.What previous experience would we even compare with this? Brisbane 2021 felt like a fairytale all the way through that final day, but through its last ten minutes or so, we were almost certain we were winning. We had begun to pinch ourselves long before the winning hit trickled over the rope. It was magic, but not of this kind.The closest we have come to this could-go-either-way feeling was, perhaps, Mohali 2010. India were chasing then, and were a wicket away from defeat. Our hopes rested on a man with a crocked back, magic wrists, and a team-mate doing his running. It was glorious, but did it feel like this? Was this much at stake? As the first of two Tests rather than the fifth of five, did it feel this… gladiatorial?We have tasted agony and ecstasy many times before, then, but neither of the kind that is imminent. Which one will it be, and what will it feel like? And until it happens, what are we to do with ourselves?We have experienced, in the last half-century, the thrill of nine previous Tests ending with margins of ten runs or fewer, and ten with one-wicket margins. On 18 of those 19 occasions, that thrill was undiluted, or unenriched, by partisanship. Cricket won no matter who won, and we won too. India weren’t in the picture. We may have celebrated with Geraint Jones or fumed at Billy Bowden when Edgbaston 2005 reached its climax, but that is preference, a pseudo-partisanship sullied by rationality, and not the raw, pulsing ache of the real thing.3:04
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This, now, is the real thing. It matters like hell who wins. It matters so much that we even feel, to some degree, how much it must matter to those out in the middle.How much it must matter to them.To Akash Deep, whose futile attempt to catch Atkinson is the latest in a series of fielding mishaps that add a tinge of both tragedy and farce to his fate of being the non-bowling member of India’s three-man strike force on this final day, spent after sending down 20 overs, fuelled by painkilling injections.To Prasidh Krishna, taker of eight wickets in the match, four in each innings, in danger of being judged not by that fact but by his last ball: a pretty good ball in most contexts, but here, too close to the batter, with too spread-out a field, allowing Atkinson to clip away the single that keeps him on strike.To Atkinson, on strike again, aware that he will have to do it off his bat and his alone, with even the act of running reducing his partner to debilitating pain.To Chris Woakes, the non-striker, for whom a dislocated shoulder is merely a problem to be solved. This right-handed man who bowls, throws and bats right-handed has decided, having explored every option in the nets, to face up left-handed should he need to – a gloriously absurd misnomer with his left hand and arm out of commission and hidden away in his jumper.To Siraj, who put the word ‘Believe’ on his phone wallpaper this morning, upon whose intensity and venom the exertions of bowling 30 overs in an innings about to enter its 86th have had no effect.This isn’t just one contest of ball and bat in lives defined by ball and bat. This is, while they live it, life itself.It does odd things to the watcher. Involuntary drummings and entwinings of fingers unused to separation from mobile devices. Restless bladders. Constricted throats. A pressure in the cheeks. A prickling in the tear ducts.1:15
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For the India fan, all this comes with context. A series of Homeric drama that is about to be lost or drawn, a scoreline that is about to become 1-3 or 2-2, to follow a shattering, unprecedented 0-3 at home against New Zealand and a what-might-have-been 1-3 in Australia. A coach, a captain, former coaches, former captains, retirements. A great fast bowler who is playing this series but not this match, a fine fast bowler who is turning into a folk hero, accustomed to heartbreak but never losing belief, always certain of his power to bend the script to his will.He hurries through the crease now, for the 181st time in this innings, the 279th time in this Test match, and the 1122nd time in this series, wides and no-balls included.Cross-seam, 143kph, into the base of off stump. A bowler, a batter, a set of stumps. A swipe, a shattering. Cricket stripped to its element. Breathtaking, literally. Exhalations all around the ground, all over the world, all in sync. Realisation before thought.The Oval 2025. We have never experienced anything like it before, and who knows when, or if, we ever will again.