There have only been four instances when a team following on has won a Test match. That’s four out of roughly 2,500 Tests over 149 years.And yet, when one talks about the third such instance in the game’s history, it’s not only about statistics, not player profile, not centuries scored or wickets taken. It’s about ‘atonement’ trumping a sense of ‘guilt’.
It’s about a cocky determination taking a bull-run by the scruff of its neck, about a David telling a Goliath that “the last word shall never be said” .It’s like a Marlow in Joseph Conrad’s ‘Lord Jim’, making a profound philosophical exposition on a will to triumph beyond ambiguity, limitations and the near-impossibility of reaching at a definitive conclusion ‘until the last ball is bowled’!To continue with the Conradian analogy, the Eden Gardens Test, was in more ways than one a battle between sympathy and judgment; self and the other.Seated in the Press Box on the uppermost tier of the BC Roy Club House for five days, the imageries just kept flowing in a stream of consciousness — with poetic justice unmistakably ensconced in the 171-run win, after being dismissed for that exact same total in the first innings!
It’s one match that remains firmly etched in memory — as much for the dramatis personae as it was for the drama: Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly infamously keeping his Aussie counterpart Steve Waugh waiting for the toss; and Waugh ‘reciprocating’ with an open offside field when the Bengal southpaw came in to bat.Given Ganguly’s penchant for off-side strokeplay, Waugh threw the gauntlet, daring him to play to his strengths, while reposing faith in his own credentials to stymie the enemy after 16 Test wins on the trot.Having suffered a 10-wicket defeat in Mumbai days ago, India were yet again staring down the wrong end of the barrel by the third afternoon at Eden Gardens.The bitter memories of the 1996 IndiaSri Lanka World Cup semifinal and 1999 India-Pakistan Test came rushing in — leaving one to wonder whether ‘Blood, Bottle, and Bisleri’ would once again rain on Golgotha (a news magazine’s headline for its cover story).On both those occasions, crowd trouble over an imminent Indian defeat had seen all hell break loose at the venerated Eden.But destiny had something else in store on the banks of the Hooghly in 2001.For once, instead of objects being hurled from the stands in frustration, Eden Gardens saw 80,000-strong fans banging their empty plastic water bottles in a calypso to egg-on Ganguly’s men who were in hot pursuit of an improbable win.For once, ‘redemption’ for the home fans and their team alike came through the heroics of two soft-spoken but never-say-die crusaders.When Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman traded their capes for India caps.That Dravid, who until then had a bad patch, didn’t show up at the postmatch press meet, went to serve as a perfect foil to an Indian captain exhort -ing the media to ask questions “only in English” to hat-trick man Harbhajan Singh, leaving the off-spinner at his wits’ end and scribes in splits.Minutes later, as a composed Waugh walked in for the presser, it was ‘calm of mind, all passion spent’.Cricketing justice at its cathartic best.
