India doesn’t take too long to get over Test match defeats. Unlike the long spell of national self-loathing after a World Cup or World T20 setback, the mourning of a World Test Championship loss is much shorter and more silent.
There is outrage but no effigy-burning. There is the usual call for mass sacking of seniors but those voices lack sting. There are those mandatory post-mortems but the scrutiny isn’t intense nor does it throw up any credible solutions.
Since WTC finals follow the IPL, fingers do get pointed at the T20 league but it remains the cat that can’t be belled. The cricket community too has a sense of guilt. After sitting spell-bound till the wee hours to watch MS Dhoni lift the trophy, you can’t overly blame IPL.
So who is to blame for the WTC debacle? Every defeat needs a scapegoat and also a comforting thought to hide the team’s obvious inadequacies. So conveniently, the scheduling, workload, fatigue, and conditions become the proverbial bushes that the decision-makers and fans beat around.
The ever-growing popularity of the perpetually bloating IPL indicates that the cricket ecosystem has made peace with franchise cricket undercutting and undermining Tests. The jam-packed stands at all IPL games, and the empty seats for the game’s oldest form at the same venues, are exhibits that make the fans willing co-conspirators in the alleged slow-death of Test cricket. This has been an old case, it takes one almost 50 years back.
It was in the 1980s that India first fell in love with limited-overs cricket. The thunderbolt that hit Indian cricket in 1983 had an impact on the collective cricket consciousness of the nation. Test matches lost their adhesive, it could no longer be glued into the minds of fans for eternity. Days-cricket would lose its archival value and face an identity crisis. The new racy format would capture the imagination of the cricketing world.
With time, Indian cricket’s playlist would see a rewrite, ODIs and T20s would push out Tests from the brain banks, even nostalgia was in technicolour now. For the fan on the street, the slide-show that defined Indian cricket’s 50-year journey would have all limited-overs cricket highs – Kapil Dev’s Devils, Ravi Shastri’s Audi, Sachin Tendulkar’s desert storm, Joginder Sharma’s last ball, and MS Dhoni’s six. The Test specials – VVS Laxman’s 281 and Rishabh Pant’s Brisbane – would get honourable mentions but stayed on the margins. To catch the attention of the Indian cricket fans, with a distinct bias towards the game’s shorter forms, a Test cricketer would have to come up with a once-in-a-lifetime never-seen-before performance.
Momentary pain
There is another indicator which shows that the shorter version had higher emotional investment. For the die-hards, the wounds that fester most are from an ODI defeat not a Test loss. Tendulkar getting out to Saqlain Mushtaq’s doosra in the 1999 Chennai Test that India lost to Pakistan doesn’t hurt as much as Javed Miandad’s last-ball six off Chetan Sharma.
The country’s bragging rights are also about the ODI and T20 formats. Does it matter to fans that India, to date, has never won a Test series in South Africa and the last triumphant tour of England was many years back? Not really. Most cricket concerns, and also the reason for most major sackings in Indian cricket, have been about the team’s inability to win ICC’s shorter version trophies.
There’s more evidence that suggests that even pop culture distances itself from Tests and Test cricketers. Known for having their hand on the pulse of the nation, Bollywood’s choice of subject for a cricket film tells a story.
The 2001 India vs Australia Test series had a riveting storyline. A young new-look team under an inspiring and gutsy captain accomplished the impossible to win back the trust of the fans in the post-match fixing era. Sourav Ganguly one loss away from getting sacked, a horrible start to the Test, the Laxman-Rahul Dravid revival and teen spin sensation Harbhajan Singh’s magical hat-trick – the Kolkata Test in itself was a dream script hand-crafted to be captured on celluloid.
But it didn’t quite inspire any film-maker. Not to say that the Cinderella story of Indians at the World Cup in 83 didn’t deserve the big-screen adaptation, but so was 2001 and Ganguly’s boys. ODIs had got the better of Tests once again. Despite the gravitas of the Test triumph at Eden Gardens, it was no match to the World Cup victory in England.
There was this other time also when a World Cup win got Bollywood interested in cricket. The 2011 title win was the climax for MS Dhoni, the Untold Story. There have been equally epoch-making Test victories in Indian cricket but there’s no one around to tell those stories on screen. Like Dhoni’s official biopic, this cricket-crazy nation deserves to hear many more untold stories.
Historically, Test specialists have been Indian cricket’s unsung and undersold stars. Their performances don’t get endorsements. In a country of 1.4 billion-plus, the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin do have a loyal fan base but they are far from being the most popular cricketers. When world cricket’s most consistent match-winner says he feels neglected and unloved, it is a sad commentary on India’s cricket culture. When Ashwin returned home after once again sitting out a Test, and the collective anger from fans was missing, he went public with his long-standing angst. He said he shouldn’t have been a bowler and spoke about the trauma of being under-appreciated.
Others who care
But isn’t this a global problem, isn’t the world turning its back on Test cricket? Not really. The ongoing Ashes series – between two nations that value Test cricket the most – breaks that myth. Australia kept their top players away from the IPL. And there was Mitchell Starc, someone who could have made around $10 million had he entered the auction. But the left-arm pacer showed that when the Aussies talk about the pride of wearing the Baggy Green, they mean it.
Before the Ashes, Starc told The Guardian his reason for choosing to play for his country and saying no to the IPL riches. “Money will come and go, but I’m very grateful for the opportunities I’ve had. Over a 100 years of Test cricket and there’s been less than 500 men who have played it for Australia. That in itself makes it very special to be a part of it,” he said.
Most top cricketers publicly profess their love for Test cricket, but there are few like Starc who walk the talk. In these times of franchise cricket, it’s fashionable to be seen caring for Tests – it brands one as a cricket connoisseur. But the seasonal sanctimonious outrage about Test cricket’s decline that emerges from India, after the last two WTC final defeats, sounds hollow. These outpourings are hypocritical, this has been our doing. As a nation, we gave up on Tests long back, so let’s end the charade. We have prioritised IPL over WTC, so there will be repercussions.
With the WTC final behind us, in the coming days, India will resume regular service again. Back again will be debates on cricket’s thorny issue. Can Rohit Sharma win the ODI World Cup at home? Will Hardik Pandya break India’s ICC jinx at the T20 World Cup next year? Does Dhoni have it in him to play one more IPL season? Can Kohli deliver an IPL title for RCB?
By the time these questions get answered, it will be 2025 and chances are India might reach the WTC final again. And the same old question will confront them. Will the IPL-fatigued Indian team adjust to conditions in a week’s time and win the title at Lord’s? Who are we fooling, the answer is obvious.
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