A growing trend of decisive results in recent matches, including in the last three tests of the ongoing India-England series, has suddenly made test cricket seem like it was intended to end in one of only two outcomes: a win or a loss. The draw, as a possible conclusion, is suddenly a derisive term in the modern game.
Which is why coaches proudly declare, “We never play for a draw.”
As a result, even when the odds are stacked against a team, as they were in the first test of the current series, and a draw might have been the best goal to aim for, attrition still gave way to adventure. Ravichandran Ashwin, the hero of the epic Sydney stalemate just a month ago, got out trying to cut a ball while even Cheteshwar Pujara, that master defender, tried to work a ball to leg when playing straight would have been the better option.
The conclusion is obvious. Occupying the crease, just concentrating on staying in there without bothering about the scoreboard may be a dying art.
Pitches too are increasingly being prepared with an eye on getting a result even if it means a track where the ball is flying around or turning square from the first morning. A lop-sided win in two days is preferable to the grind of a draw over five days.
Somehow, the latter is perceived as cheating the spectators of their right to entertainment on the assumption that all they want to see is a win or a heroic defeat for their favourite team. That spills on to the players too and so a batsman who goes for the spectacular is preferred over the one whose forte is a tight defence.
Playing for a draw is equated with taking a backward step.
Yet examples from other sports prove that there is both heroism and strategic gain in a draw. When India held the much higher ranked Qatar to a 0-0 draw in the FIFA World Cup qualifiers in 2019, it was by cutting out all the flourish and concentrating on defence. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but it earned them a precious point and also gave them the start they needed for their campaign.
By contrast, in the final game of the 1998 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers in Melbourne on November 27, 1997, the Australians just needed to hold on to the two goal lead they had built against Iran, three minutes into the second half. Having drawn the first leg in Tehran 1-1, all they needed to do was hold on to the ball and they would be through to the finals in France. But in front of a raucous home crowd the Aussies went for further glory and continued to do the running giving the Iranians a chance to score twice on the counter. The eventual 3-3 scoreline saw them go through leaving the Australians devastated.
Sometimes a dour draw is more worthy than the loss in a pulsating thriller.
But, in this era of hypermasculinity, playing for a draw is considered a sign of weakness, not just by the players but also by the media which shapes social opinion. Look at the headlines in the papers on the morning of the fifth day of that first test that India lost: ‘Will India go for the kill?’ screamed one. ‘Can India hold out for a draw?’ might have been more appropriate, but it would have been seen as a sign of weakness.
Sure, there has to be a way of breaking the stalemate in a game where only one team can go through to the next round. It is the reason why sports administrators came up with the concept of the contrived result leading to the absurd penalty shootouts in football. Mercifully the tiebreakers in tennis or even the one over shootouts in limited overs cricket are proper tennis or cricket, though the latter had the farcical bowl-out for a brief while including in the T20 World Cup in 2007.
Test cricket is one of the few sporting arenas where the draw is still a possible result. Let’s not kill the option or debase it. A draw is the equivalent of a win-win, a faceoff which ends with both sides giving a bit to take a lot. Often, there is honour in it as it shows two opponents who acknowledge each other’s strengths without conceding anything.
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