This is the way a series ends: not with a bang but a whimper. Called off for the sake of precipitation that didn’t even count as rain, specks of moisture that lacked the energy to fall and so just wafted about laterally in wispy veils like a Bonnie Tyler dress.
No play on the fifth day of the Sydney Test meant that the finale of match and series was an anticlimax. But the substance of the series entire remained deeply significant. An abandoned match only meant that India won 2-1 rather than 3-1.
The latter would have been more fitting, given how dominant the visitors have been. But never mind. After 71 years of trying, India had finally won a Test series in Australia. The manner in which it arrived was scarcely relevant.
My first clear memory of an Indian visit was 1999, when the visitors were towelled up by Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath. The images that remain are players like Sadagoppan Ramesh and MSK Prasad battling away with a voracious slip cordon waiting. Blue Indian helmets getting badged. Brett Lee appearing out of nowhere and smashing stumps. The pace and seam always seemed too much, like such a team could never have a chance in these conditions.
On later trips, even with the purest batting pedigree that read Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman, Sehwag, Ganguly, their teams couldn’t win. Australia’s bowlers wouldn’t always find a way past, but they would find one often enough. India’s bowlers were never a match, relying on one or two when four were needed. Anil Kumble seemed to bear the weight of 10 teammates on his upright shoulders.
India only once had a great set of bowlers at the same time: the ever-linked names of Chandrasekhar, Bedi, Prasanna and Venkataraghavan. Usually three of the four spinners would take the field at once, as they did in Australia in 1977-78. In one of the great series, India led 2-1 and entered the fifth Test at 2-2. Facing down an absurd run chase of 493 in Adelaide, they ended up falling short with a score of 445.
There have been other memorable contests. Even as Donald Bradman gorged runs while his team handed out thrashings in 1947-48, Australian crowds saw moments of brilliance from Vijay Hazare, Vinoo Mankad and Lala Amarnath.
The drawn series in 2003-04 was a classic, the way Dravid responded to Ricky Ponting run for run, the way Ajit Agarkar swung out Australia in Adelaide, and the way India pressed for victory at the SCG. Not quite. Nor in January 2008, when India lost the Sydney Test in the dying minutes, and eventually the series 2-1. Had they won in Sydney that year, perhaps they would never have gone on to win in Perth. But who knows.
At last, though, they have it. The 2018-19 series. Not such a classic, and not against such strong opposition, but a series belongs squarely to India. A team with one great batsman and a couple of very good ones. But the difference now is the existence of a bowling attack. A genuine one, four bowlers without a weak link. Eight if you count the rest of the squad. All of them bar Bhuvneshwar Kumar were called upon, and Bhuvneshwar is quality enough that he would have delivered.
That still shouldn’t have been enough. There were always supposed to be a few Australian batting performances, with home conditions offering a boost to modest batsmen. One more good knock in Adelaide, a couple of decent ones in Melbourne, and the series could easily have been Australia’s. That this wasn’t allowed to happen was down to India’s relentlessness.
“It’s not the best batting side but it is the best bowling side,” was the assessment from long-time Indian broadcaster Harsha Bhogle. “And bowlers win series.”
Which doesn’t mean you can disregard Cheteshwar Pujara. There would have been no win without him either, a player who once struggled overseas, but who turned on three centuries to set up the win.
In Adelaide he averted a 1-0 deficit. Melbourne was all Pujara, and Sydney would have been a third win if not for rain. He faced 1,258 balls in the series, the third-most in any series between the countries, and from fewer innings than Kim Hughes and David Boon ahead of him. He protected a fragile middle order and tail, and wore out Australia’s bowlers almost on his own. His captain Virat Kohli, on whom hopes have so often depended, made one century for the series, in the loss at Perth. And things turned out fine regardless.
Kohli traced his team’s evolution back to Sydney four years earlier, on India’s 2014-15 tour. “This particular venue is where M.S. [Dhoni] gave up captaincy and we had a totally young side starting at number six or seven in the world. We come back here as the No 1 Test side in the world.”
After finalising the win he called it “as a stepping stone for this team to inspire the next lot of Test cricketers; to make kids realise that there is no greater satisfaction than playing Test cricket and winning series like these.”
He added: “As long as the purest format stays alive cricket will be healthy. [Test cricket is] the most important and the most valued format of the game. We are just proud to have the opportunity to spread that message.”
After 71 years, it’s a message worth listening to. The first Indian side to win in Australia. The first Indian captain to lead such a win. The lineage of all those champions who couldn’t achieve the feat. Take a moment to savour it, because firsts by definition can’t come round again.
• This article was amended on 8 January 2019 because an earlier version misspelled Lala Amarnath’s last name as Armanath. This has been corrected.
