The Sydney epic: When India pulled a draw from the jaws of defeat

Not out batsman India's Ravichandran Ashwin (right) and Hanuma Vihari walk from the field following play on the final day of the third cricket Test between Australia and India at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Australia on January 11, 2021. (Image: AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

Even before this Indian team could reach Australia , former India captain and current BCCI president Sourav Ganguly had "doubted" about an encore of the historic 2018 series win. And, at that time Virat Kohli was not supposed to leave the tour after just one match.

"It’s going to be a tough series. It’s not going to be what it was in 2018 when they went," said Ganguly to India Today news channel in July 2020. And, now just one match to go in the series, India is still capable of winning the series with a team so depleted by senior and regular members which perhaps has no parallel in Indian cricket. Certainly not in Australia or for that matter in an away series ever.

Of course, India did defy all the odds in Melbourne by making a stunning comeback in the Test series after being humiliated (36 for 9 runs in the second innings) in Adelaide (the pink-ball Test). Yet, one will struggle to completely comprehend the enormity of an epic draw by this Indian team at the Sydney Cricket Ground on January 11. "If you thought India's win at the MCG was good, you should have seen their draw at the SCG," wrote seasoned cricket journalist Peter Lalor in The Australian.

However, none could have perhaps summed it up as beautifully as did the venerable Gideon Haigh, in the same paper. "Astrological determinism? Yesterday was Rahul Dravid’s birthday. India faced a task at the Sydney Cricket Ground that called forth all the gifts of the batsman they called 'The Wall'. Between them they formed just such an obstacle: call them 'The Barricade', evoking their alert, improvised collective defiance.

"India trailed in this Third Test from the moment Tim Paine won the toss on a flat pitch with a quick outfield then encountered a resurgent Steve Smith. They were missing their charismatic captain; they were absent key fast bowlers; they copped injuries, irritations, and, unhappily, abuse. Around them raged a debate about the venue of the next Test. It wasn’t only the home team they were keeping out, but the sense of gathering misfortune. This draw was a feat to rank with their victory in Melbourne."

The monumental draw in Sydney has given many unlikely heroes who were fighting individual battles themselves. Yet, they collectively out-thought and out-played their opponents.

Rohit Sharma was publicly 'pulled up' by his own captain when Kohli wondered about the lack of communication regarding his fitness status for this Test series.

Young Shubman Gill knew that if first choice opener Mayank Agarwal can't survive a back-to-back Test match failure (his average before landing in Australia was above 57!) in this top order, how quickly he needed to prove his promise and worth.

Cheteshwar Pujara's heroic (521 runs and 30 odd hours batting in 2018) was forgotten so easily after his old-fashioned Test fifty in the first innings.

Ajinkya Rahane as captain was left with just two genuine attacking options in Jasprit Bumrah and Ravichandaran Ashwin. Hanuma Vihari was possibly on the verge of playing his last Test for India and social media was as usual making fun of Rishabh Pant's wicketkeeping skills and his batting temperament.

Incredibly, all of them stitched together a result which was as sweet as any victory in such conditions will smell. If Rohit and Gill's opening partnership of 70 runs was the longest time at the crease for India in an away Test since 2010, they did even better in the second innings.

The last time Indian openers batted out 20 plus overs in each innings of a Test, home or away, was in 2004-05 in Bengaluru against Pakistan. And, then Pujara played another magnificent knock in the 4th innings. Pant may have missed out a ton by whisker, but his 97 may be spoken in the same breath of Gundappa Vishwanath's most famous 97 (against West Indies in 1975 in Chennai) by an Indian batter.

As long as Pujara and Pant were batting together, they even raised the hope of an improbable win. However, once they got out, there was a real danger of losing the game from there . But then, Vihari's Hanuman act of Sanjeevni was heroically supported by the body-blows and skillful and intelligent batting by Ashwin.

Despite his 4 hundreds and 11 fifties in Test cricket, very few take him as a serious batter, but an unbeaten 39 is for the posterity to cherish.

Sometimes, facts needed to be repeated in a way one can genuinely appreciate the adversity Indians were facing and the kind of attack they were battling on the 5th day of a Test against one of the most formidable attacks of all-time and not just the best of the generation.

Pat Cummins (number 1 bowler in the Test ranking), Nathan Lyon (the best Australian spinner since Shane Warne and who is just 4 short of 400 wickets) and both Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc have more than 200 wickets separately. And, yet losing MCG hero Ajinkya Rahane very early on the 5th morning, India staggeringly managed to hold its own.

Nearly three weeks after that humiliation at Adelaide (the infamous 36), who would have thought even a far weaker (on paper at least) batting line-up would have survived 131 overs in the 4th innings? For record, this was for the first time all the members were even watching (forget playing) a Test when India batted 100 plus overs in the last innings of a Test (last time it happened in 2002).

Perhaps, it's only appropriate to finish this article by quoting a paragraph from another veteran Australian author and journalist and a columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald. "This was an Indian team that had already proven its toughness. The big mouths of the crowd had given them a further infusion. Mockery backfired on the mocker. Will this end up changing behaviour? That’s a lot to hope for. But yet again, a team that felt abused gave their taunters a proportionate reward for their actions," wrote Malcolm Knox.