Why 2021 was the year of Test cricket in India – Times of India

If Test cricket is art and aesthetics the Indian fan experienced a generous helping of the navrasa or nine emotions, as articulated in the ancient texts of dramatic theory, in 2021. The veer (bravery) rasa, which medieval poets of valour feasted on, was personified by Hanuma Vihari and Ravichandran Ashwin at Sydney last January. Vihari was tormented by a strained hamstring. Ashwin couldn’t bend down to tie his shoelaces that morning. Injured in body but indomitable in spirit, the two battled pacers and pain for three hours together to hobble India to safety against Australia. That draw, essential to keep India’s Test championship dream alive, laid the psychological basis of the miracle at the Gabba. Vihari and Ashwin showed that impossible is a state of mind.

It is this mantra that the team, led by Ajinkya Rahane, carried forward to the Gabba. India had come close to winning there in 1968 (lost by 39 runs) and 1977 (lost by 16 runs). But the venue was constructed as impregnable by former Aussie players. The opposition’s mental disintegration has always been intrinsic to their strategic architecture. The tone of the tweets after India’s humiliating 36 at Adelaide and England’s recent defeats reflect that.

But the world experienced a combo of the adbhut (astonishing) and the shringar (romance) rasas at the Gabba. What’s more romantic than an Indian Test playing 11, without Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd Shami and Ashwin, winning a do-or-die encounter. But India again found the unlikeliest of high-performance all-rounders: Shardul Thakur (67 and 2) and debutant Washington Sundar (62 and 22). Thakur scalped seven wickets, the most in the game, Sundar took four. Mohd Siraj’s high-energy 5/73, debutant T Natarajan 3/78, Shubhman Gill’s elegant 91 and Rishabh Pant’s unbeaten 89, a crackerjack innings under pressure that completed his transition from promise to fulfilment – the injury-racked Team India offered more wonderment than Bollywood’s
Lagaan. The victory underlined the power of positive thinking and the importance of keeping the faith in the young and the hungry.

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