India’s lack of killer instinct is often blamed for the side’s lackadaisical performance on field. And there’s quite a bit of truth behind this saying. Team India has more often than not choked in pressure situations in the past, snatching the most improbable of losses from the jaws of victory.
Over the years, though, there have been a few dots on the horizons when players as individuals or the team as a whole, showed rare spunk, holding fort, and also going for a ruthless kill against all odds and adversities. Kapil Dev and his devils miracle fight-back in the World Cup final in 1983 must be the most memorable of such turnarounds. A motley crew of bits and pieces cricketers with little or no knowledge in the shorter version of the game exceeded their own potential and came out top on an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation against the mighty West Indies. It was India’s greatest moment of glory, when a whole country woke from its slumber and believed probably for the first time that they could rub shoulders with the elites of the world.
Almost three decades have passed since then and though we haven’t won the coveted Cup yet, our on field aggression have come out in open, surprising many unsuspecting bullies. Sachin Tendulkar’s brave knock against the hostile Pakistani pace trio on his debut series, gentle Subrata Banerjee’s heroics with the ball against England in a lost cause at the ’92 World Cup or Kiran More getting on to the nerves of Javed Miandad in a rare Indian win over their arch-rivals, speaks volumes about our self-confidence.
At the 1996 World Cup hosted in the sub-continent, joint hosts Indian and Pakistan faced each other in a quarterfinals encounter in Bangalore. After a healthy top-order display from Navjot Sidhu and Sachin Tendulkar, it was Ajay Jadeja who put the icing on the cake with a thunderous finish which brought Pakistani pace-man Waqar Younis to tears.
Pakistan, however, undaunted by the Indian onslaught, started on a blistering pace of their own, Saeed Anwar and Amir Sohail lofting the Indian bowlers all over the park. Sohail stuck on to medium-pacer Venkatesh Prasad and hurled a volley of abuses at him after dispatching him to the fence. Sohail promised to hit him over-and-over again to the same spot but his euphoria was short-lived.
The local boy, uprooted the Pakistanis stumps and send him packing to the jubilation of the home crowd. The match turned its course and India’s win soon became a forgone conclusion.
After a nerve-wracking victory over England at the Natwest final at Lord’s Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly had a bare-chested dance-move in store, wildly swinging his jersey in one hand, for the English contingent and specially Andrew Flintoff who had done something similar after an England victory in India. Ganguly, the master of Indian grittiness, also did not spare legendary Aussie captain Steve Waugh during the famous Test series in 2000/01.
The Aussie skipper was left waiting ahead of every toss during the series as Ganguly took his won sweet time just to get under the oppositions nerves.
Harbhajan Singh, too, took on the burly and angry Andrew Symonds during an away tour, Downunder. Never to shy away from a fight, S. Sreesanth has also been seen engaging himself in verbal tussles with almost everybody in the cricket field.
India’s current new ball hero Zaheer Khan is also no muck with sledging and is more than capable of throwing more at the opposition if pushed to a corner.
An eye for an eye should the mantra of Team India at this World Cup too, and no stones should be left unturned to reverse the tables on upstart oppositions.
-Agencies