Show some heart

Kohli & co face their toughest test yet

The India cricket team started their tour of South Africa on January 5. With this outing, they start a period of 18 months when they will play away from home and arguably against the three toughest teams — South Africa, England and Australia — in world cricket, at least in terms of Test cricket. Coach Ravi Shastri was spot on when he stated that “the next 18 months will define this Indian cricket team”. It is crucial that he took the long view of things. India is past the stage when a session of breathtaking stroke play — as many would fondly recall the Sachin Tendulkar-Mohd Azharuddin blitzkrieg with India at 58 for 5 in the Cape Town Test in January 1997 — will be enough to draw satisfaction. Of course, one can expect a talented India team to have its moments of domination such as the one on Friday when Bhuvneshwar Kumar knocked off the South African top three in no time. Yet, the key thing is winning consistently and converting dominance over one session of play to dominance over the whole series. Do the members of this Indian team have it in them to succeed where no past team, featuring some of the most illustrious cricketers India produced, has succeeded?

To be sure, no one could have asked for a better frame of mind, or indeed a better run of victories, going into such an arduous phase. India has won all its past nine Test series, going all the way back to the middle of 2015. In the process, they have beaten South Africa, Australia, England, New Zealand, West Indies, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (now beaten three times over the past three years). In particular, the series result against South Africa was quite an achievement. India won 3-0 in a four-match series — the best margin of victory that either side has managed to date, home or away. What won India those matches was its ability to decimate the South African batting — the Proteas could cross the 200-run mark in just one inning.

The not-so-tiny fly in the ointment, however, is the fact that barring one series (against Sri Lanka), all were in home conditions. So confidence aside, there is little to help India when it starts travelling. Traditionally, Indians have been lousy travellers — memories of the Indian batting collapsing in a heap around a sole heroic effort, often by the redoubtable Tendulkar, are all too familiar. In fact, the man who led Indian cricket's dominance, especially in Test cricket, the talismanic leader, M S Dhoni, effectively lost his mojo in the highest form of the game after four back-to-back losses in away conditions (South Africa, New Zealand, England and Australia) between 2013 and 2015. What fate awaits Virat Kohli, evidently a very different individual than Dhoni, but perhaps more brittle in terms of temperament when plans start failing?

Let’s start with the Test cricket performance against the Proteas in South Africa. Before the current tour, India had visited South Africa on five occasions. On four tours, India lost the series. Once, in 2010-11, India managed a 1-1 draw in a three-match series. However, this time it is a clash of the top two Test teams, with India being the world’s number one side. It has a full pace battery as well as two of the best spinners in the business. There is no reason to believe why the Indian pace attack will not perform better than what it did in the sub-continent, given the helpful conditions in South Africa. 

The focus then shifts to whether this Indian batting line-up can bat big as a group — individual efforts have typically not been enough — and bat big often enough to leave bowlers with the time and runs to take 20 wickets. The time for gaining a technique is over for India. It has the wherewithal to perform. Probably, the best message for the Indian team to recall would be the response of S Sreesanth who, when sledged by Andre Nel, hoicked the pacer for a six right over the sightscreen. What had Nel demanded of Sreesanth? “Show me your heart”. India had won that Test match in Johannesburg.