India’s victory at Gabba goes on to negate the ‘hero worship’ phenomenon because every session India had a new hero who shined bright and helped the team to reach this historical victory.
In primary school, we had a lesson in our Marathi textbook. If I remember it right, it was called ‘Ekiche Bal’ (strength of unity). The story goes like this: A gentleman had five sons and they were always fighting with each other over some or other issues. One day, their father called all of them and handed each of them a wooden stick. He asked them to break the stick and they did it with ease. Then he gave each of them five sticks tied together and asked them to break the bunch of sticks. Of course, they couldn’t. That was the lesson for the gentleman’s kids. While you are alone, you can easily be broken. But when you are together, no power can break you. That’s the strength of unity.
“If not him, then who?”
Why am I even narrating this story? In India, we have lately fallen for ‘hero worship’ so much that we have forgotten we are as important as any other person for the progress of our country. “If not him, then who?” From politics to cricket, you’ll often hear this sentence being said in the context of leaders.
This historic victory by an Indian cricket team in Australia, despite the absence of its most celebrated batsman and powerful captain Virat Kohli, goes to prove that nobody is irreplaceable and if fought together, individual glories look trivial in front of team efforts.
There’s no doubt that Virat Kohli is an astoundingly class batsman. He’s proved his mettle time to time at the home or away games. I really do not have any concerns regarding Kohli the player. I have concerns regarding Kohli the captain. Kohli is probably one of the most powerful individuals in India today and rightly so. But how does he manage this power?
In late 2018, Virat Kohli embroiled in controversy after lashing out at a cricket fan who said he preferred English and Australian batsmen to Indian players.
“I don’t think you should live in India, go and live somewhere else,” Kohli told him in a video recording.
This was neither an abrupt response nor was it fitting of an Indian captain. It had more to do with the way Indian democracy and politics have changed over the last few years. When the current regime tags its critics as ‘anti-nationals’ every now and then and asks them to “go to Pakistan” over even a slightest of criticism of its policies, why would the Indian cricket captain, who’s also one of the power centres in India, not enact the same attitude towards his critics? It was arrogant of Kohli to do so, but it was more appalling that he never apologised for it. His response had come out of the superiority complex and sheer disregard for criticism.
Kohli’s performance as captain of Royal Challengers Bangalore has invited a lot of criticism and he deserves every ounce of it. He’s failed as the captain of the franchise, but here’s where the ‘hero worship’ factor comes in. When experts and senior cricketers raise questions over Kohli’s captaincy and the kind of power he enjoys over Indian cricket, they are silenced with criticism from his fanboys. “If not him, then who?” is the question that’s thrown at his critics. In this context, Kohli has been a phenomenon quite similar to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Mr Modi swept the 2019 general elections in India and one of the reasons for it was this projection by a section media that there was no alternative other than him.
“If not him, then anybody who can”
Cut to December 2020, Virat Kohli returned to India for the birth of his child (rightly so) after playing the first test against Australia. India was shattered and humiliated in the first test in presence of Kohli. India put on its lowest ever score in test cricket when Australia bowled out the subcontinental team on 36 runs. Australia was ahead 1-0 in the Border-Gavaskar trophy. Being a cricket fanatic myself, I really had no hope that the Indian team will make a comeback after Adelaide saga.
After Kohli’s departure, Ajinkya Rahane was handed over the captaincy of the battered team India. With sheer grace and responsibility, Rahane pulled together the young Indian team and came back stronger in the second test to steal a victory at Melbourne. It was the captain Ajinkya Rahane who hit a ton in the second test to announce that India had come back in this series. Border-Gavaskar trophy stood at 1-1 after the second test.
In the third test at Sydney, with gruelling injuries to key players, India still managed to draw the test match, all thanks to grit and resilience shown by Ravichandran Ashwin and Hanuma Vihari in the last two sessions of the match.
When India reached Brisbane for the final test, nobody in their wildest dreams had thought that this Indian squad can pull a victory in Australia’s fortress. Australia was undefeated in Gabba for 32 years. It was so much so that Tim Paine, the Australian captain, during the third test where Ashwin was blocking most of the deliveries to save the game, told him: “See you at the Gabba, Ash”. This statement would come back to haunt Paine as the young Indian side pulled a stunner at Gabba in the last test, breaching the Australian fortress and proving the strength of India’s bench. Had I been told before this series that India would win a test match at Brisbane without Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Md Shami, Ishant Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin, I would have laughed it off. But India, against all the odds, stood together and proved that if fought unitedly, no battle is too tough to win.
This also goes on to negate the ‘hero worship’ phenomenon, because every session India had a new hero who shined bright and helped the team to reach this historical victory.
But behind all this stood Ajinkya Rahane, calm and composed, not throwing his hands in the air every time the opponent lost a wicket. Rahane was aggressive, not through his gestures but through the brave decisions he made. To promote Rishabh Pant in last innings of the third and final test could have gone so wrong, that he’d have to face a backlash for throwing away the matches that India could have drawn easily. But Rahane stood by young Rishabh to let him play his natural game and see where it takes the game for India.
Amid everything that was happening on the ground, Rahane also backed the boys off the ground when they faced racial abuse by the SCG crowd in the third test. He did not hesitate to stop the play and complain to umpires that his players were unnecessarily harassed by the crowd.
After winning the final test, Rahane said: “I look good as captain because everyone contributed.”
Of course, Virat Kohli would come back as a captain in the next series against England. But I hope this ‘hero worship’ in cricket ends here. And hopefully in politics too.
“Because if not Kohli, then perhaps Rahane?”
“Because if not Modi, then anybody else who can?”
India’s Multiculterism on full display
At a time when many think that India’s pluralism has been under a constant threat and the nation is slowly moving towards majoritarianism, the victory at Gabba gives a great sigh of relief to people like me who think that India can prosper only if its a secular country.
When Mohammed Siraj, who’s taken his first fifer at Gabba, carried the tri-colour after the victory at Gabba, I could only sit back and feel happy about the Idea of India that I belive in.
Senior sports journalist Boria Majumdar also voiced the same opinion.
“Mohammed Siraj with the Indian flag and the entire team with him. This is our India. The idea of India we believe in. Thank god for Indian cricket,” Mr Majumdar said and I cannot agree more.
Siraj lost his father during this series, did not return back to India, and played a key role in this historic series win by team India. And remember- he’s only 3 tests old in international cricket. However, it did not affect the way Siraj led the Indian pace attack in the final test. He was right on the money with his line and length. When a son of an auto-rickshaw driver, that too from a religious minority, reaches the national Indian team, it is a moment of celebration for him and his family. But when he plays a role in an oversees victory for the Indian team where almost every expert had written his team off, its a victory of India’s pluralism and multiculturalism.
At a time when farmers, majorly from Punjab, are sitting around the national capital protesting against the three new farm laws, and have been victims of constant character-assassination from the establishment for being Khalistanis and Separatists just because they come from another minority, a 21-year-old lad from the same minority has played a defining role in India’s victory in Australia. Shubhman Gill has been a class apart throughout this series once he got a chance in the second test.
What do we know and what have we learnt?
There is no alternative (TINA) factor doesn’t practically work. As a famous saying goes, “No matter how good you are, you can always be replaced.” But when it comes to democracy, it should not be based around one individual. A team is as good as its captain. But a captain is nothing without his team.
This idea of secular India lives on, in many hearts including mine, and will work out for our country in the majority of instances like it did in Gabba. Because as stated in Ekiche Bal, “When you stand together, no power can break you.”
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