Border-Gavaskar Trophy: Rekindling past glories, India's winning road takes a new turn

 

A popular refrain throughout the recently wrapped-up Test series between Australia and India was that the matches were a throwback to the past when India grittily pushed back against the might of their opponents. In a way, India’s performance throughout the four-match series did evoke memories of the days gone by but this evocativeness mostly had some notable dissimilarities.

The biggest of them was, perhaps, that this was one of the rarer occasions when both teams met each other an equal footing in terms of team strength. One could then point out that this evenness didn’t last long in the Indian side as the visitors lost about half-a-dozen players to injury by the time the fourth Test came rolling by.

Then, coupled with the fact that the series decider was to be played at the Gabba, in Brisbane, the one place where the Australians were still near-invincible, pressure, too, became an accompaniment to past remembrances from the perspective of those following the visitors’ track.

The Test caps signifying the debuts of T Natarajan and Washington Sundar in the longest form of the game seemed less like an adornment and more like a mill around the neck. The stressful environment wasn’t the most conducive way for these players to get started on the Test front. Or, so everyone thought.

In hindsight, after watching the match and how its results affected the culmination of the series, it’s become obvious that the players themselves didn’t think the situation was so dire as each went about showing his calibre across the five days of play without once getting overwhelmed or bogged down.

Then, this too was another divergence from the past.

For, despite the air of assurance the Australians carried about them, this team had more chinks in its armour – the Gabba legend notwithstanding – just as the Indian team showed that its coffers of heart and ‘intent’ were still replete. This repletion didn’t translate to audaciousness and brashness – unlike in the bygone days of good results when the Indian team wore its attitudinal smirk on its sleeve as if to demonstrate one-upmanship – but showed in its unflappability and positive demeanour.

Such display of confidence from the touring team – after enduring a humiliating defeat in the opening Test in Adelaide – not only struck a chord with those rooting for them and even the neutral observers but also forced the hosts to take a step back and evaluate their chances in the match.

At Gabba, as the Indian bowlers made the Australian batsmen blink and the Indian batsmen made their bowling contingent flinch, the cape of superiority donned by the home team started to come undone. Or, to put it emphatically, this cape came undone after its strings kept getting unravelled in the two tests in Melbourne and Sydney.

Not that the Australians didn’t try their hardest to prevent what has now come to be an eventuality from happening. They put their best – and worst – behaviour out on the middle and it did spark a reaction. But the traction it netted wasn’t as extensive as they would have wanted and it only dented their prospects, further. And, in doing so, separated the past and present even more distinctively.

This takeaway has been that the Australians’ mettle can be tested, found wanting and exploited upon. Not that it hadn’t been done before or that it won’t not be replicated ever again. But to do so in such convincing fashion, where in the discussion regarding the series, while roving about other topics – fitness concerns, racial attacks, and sledging – remained firmly on the Indian team’s score-line and the players’ efforts to make their contribution substantial, was quite out of the ordinary. 

Especially, since the Indians not only had to rebound from the slump the Australians had heaped upon them in Adelaide but also needed to maintain their poise across a stretch of the three Tests that were to follow. Despite knowing that a draw would suffice to help them retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, the Indian team entered the match in Brisbane with this attitude, focused only on winning while forcing the Australians to remain continually on the backfoot.

That’s why the result of the series decider at the Gabba is as much the whole story as it’s part of the whole Test itinerary. That, as much as a recent past it is after having written over the ones before, it is also a as a handy reference point for the present and future that will mark the pages of the cricketing calendar.

MS Dhoni: The puzzle that stirred Indian cricketing ambitions

His predecessor Sourav Ganguly took India closer to winning its second ICC Cricket World Cup in 2003. Eight years later, in 2011, Mahendra Singh (MS) Dhoni led the team that brought home India’s second ICC Cricket World Cup, at home in Wankhede. In 2020, with less than a year to go to mark the decade of that win, Dhoni announced his retirement from the game.

Like his eventful entry into the national team, it came as a surprise via a post on his official Instagram page. “Thanks a lot for your love and support throughout. From 1929 hrs consider me as retired,” he posted along with a small music video of his playing days.

Dhoni’s form – with the bat – hadn’t been what it was and he hadn’t been part of the national side for a while which, in turn, fuelled speculations that his time was up. However, whether or not his days of playing for the Indian team had ended, the cricketing world will never know thanks to him pre-empting these rumours from fanning further. At the same time, in choosing to end his career for the national side on his terms – at a time he thought was convenient – Dhoni has left the game in the same manner as he made his way in: unexpectedly.

In the past 20 years, the Indian team has had eclectic hues of personality in its captain. Ganguly blended aggression tempered with determination to bring the country out of the despondency that the match-fixing blot was, to usher in the 2000s. Rahul Dravid became the team’s anchor stabilising it before the choppiness of its fortunes could threaten to overturn its efforts. And now, Virat Kohli has made the team his own by adding audaciousness to its existing insouciance. The latter trait is the legacy of Dhoni’s skippering.

Known for holding his cards close to his chest and for his inscrutableness, Dhoni as the captain not only backed his teammates as much as himself for every quirkily-seeming decision he had taken. The wins vouched for his calls while the losses were gauged as learning lessons. Regardless of how the team’s result came about though, it was aweing to watch him recast the team according to his specifications. It was as if he were using new-fangledness as the template to design the present – his – era of the team.

Over the years, ironically, this template of Dhoni’s, too, became rusty with time. The ideas that had seemed inspiring had started to be viewed as one-dimensional and visage of ambivalence became harder to look at. The man who used to come in and hit freely-swinging hits had become subsumed by the leader whose every turn with the bat looked awkward and heavy.

His wicket-keeping chops still remained unhindered but after a long while, India’s cricketing disquiet did not stem for want for a full-time and competent wicket-keeper but for lack of a batsman whose batting could be relied upon constantly. In this, too, there was an emergence of irony.

A couple of Dhoni’s teammates including his fellow 2011 World Cup-winning colleagues – Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir – had seen their playing days get overcast by form-related aspersions and had faced the retirement juggernaut before deciding – or as much as they had been allowed – to leave it all. But even as Dhoni was dragged into controversies surrounding these side-linings, his adherence to remain unspeaking kept up the shroud of enigma around him.

Dhoni leaves the sport as a 39-year-old with a 16-year career behind him. His cricketing skills gathered across these years had, have and will be analysed and dissected either to be learnt from or to be improved upon. Nonetheless, in this decade-and-a-half, with the cricketing world barely managing to understand the persona he was on and off the field, what will endure the longest about Dhoni is the facet of mysteriousness surrounding him, even at the time of retirement.

Smartphone selection: Where are we at?

Around seven or so years ago, I had written a piece on how (then) smartphone conglomerates had divided their potential consumer base into thinking in terms of needs versus wants. Then, of course, smartphones were still a nascent concept among Indian mobile-phone users. Now, times have changed vastly. Owning and using a smartphone has become a must in certain sections of Indian society. Likewise, the points articulating and driving the need and want factors have also diversified. 

The Presence of an Eco-system

Today, people’s utilisation of mobile phones – as is well-documented – goes beyond mere answering of calls and sharing text messages. They are the centre-pieces of a multi-lined artisanal creation connecting and bridging our lives, from professional to personal. It is as though our brains have been made redundant thanks to such hip-hopping technological assistance. 

Anyhow, as much as this is a progressive brain-fade moment for humanity, smartphone-makers prefer to use eco-system as the defining nomenclature for these developments. From a non-technical perspective, eco-system is akin to an array of steps featuring one’s mobile along with assorted gadgetries containing the same technological input as the phone. Thus, the whole Apple eco-system that operates on the iOS software and its Google-driven counterpart, Android. 

Thus, a layman back then was merely confused between which phone to buy. These days, a layperson has to seemingly make a near life-choice between one eco-system and the other. 

Exaggerated Nuances

Up to November 2019, I was one of those who looked like she had to deal with this eco-system 

existence. 

For the entirety of my life, since when I began using smartphones, I have only used Android-operated models – although I did have an iPhone SE for a brief time-span. In November 2019, I had to shift my software operator since I was able to get a (relatively) cheaper iPhone model over a Samsung phone that I wanted. The E-word loomed largely and I did not know what I was going to do. I am not a fan of using two phones simultaneously – there are times when I want to ditch the one phone I use. At the same time, I did not want to lose any data I had in my older Samsung phone while porting to my new device. 

In the end, it turned out all my worry was one of my own making prompted by the over-the-top repetitions about selecting an eco-system to latch on to. 

It’s been only a week since I started using the iPhone and so far, I have not had any trouble adjusting to new software. And although I was not able to transfer my backed-up WhatsApp messages, I would not count it as a loss by any means since I was able to port my contacts without much fuss. 

Selectiveness Versus Need-and-Want Dilemma

The bigger fuss, as I realised then, was brought about the lack of understanding about what one wanted for oneself. It is beneficial to have an idea – however, basic – about a phone one is interested in as it helps whittle down a seller’s excessive wheedling to facts. The disadvantageousness in doing so is that too many ideas start to crowd one in. At this point, one starts to focus more on the whole eco-system paradigm instead of on the phones and what they contain within them. 

In my experience, specifically, as a non-technical user to boot, the only relevant factor that matters what kind of a smartphone user, one is. If one’s primary – and only use – of a smartphone is receiving and answering emails, and making notes alongside calling and texting, there are no dearth of Android phones to choose. But if one wants to be part of a niche and wants to be seen as nit-picky, Apple is the only choice there is. 

Why the particular term, nit-picky? The reason I do so is that Apple offers a lot of intra-device connecting opportunities that Android does not despite its innumerability across the global market. If the other side of being nit-picky implies one has to opt for something less – read storage – Apple enforcing the idea that less is more only adds to the devices’ appeal. As such, if one were an Apple user, why would one want to veer towards more? Especially since more (features) would also mean unnecessary complication in choosing one particular phone over the rest. 

More importantly, its niche also helps Apple maintain relatively better hold on privacy and security as compared to certain Android-based phones that are sieve-like when it comes to data storing and sharing. 

All of these bring us to the price point. Granted, the phones do seem costly. But if one were honest, a careful Android user would only want to choose a brand that offers the most without compromising on much. Such phones, let us be honest, are expensive. And if one can afford to choose a pricier option, and one’s needs and wants to fit the bill, an iPhone is just as viable as an Android phone. 

Image Credit: Buildfire

Of innocence curtailed...

When I was eight

The world was mine to explore

Without caution, without fear

I could be whoever

As heart chose to desire...

A student one moment, a teacher in another

Wings of my own creation,

Without any gift from nature

I dreamt with my eyes open,

I soared...

Days turned, years yawned

Eight I was, no more...

Innocence I still did nurture

‘til it fell apart

Ill-action growing in fervour

Crushing flowers, ending dreams

In a repetitive furore…

Ignoring seemed prudent

Why bother?

Not me, not my life

The eight-year-old self

is restless though

Awake from its stupor

Take a stand, so I have

For me as for the others

For eight-year-old voices

Never again to be heard…

Montreal Masters: Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and the intersection of time

 

For the first time in over six years – since the 2011 Monte Carlo Masters – Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer will be the two top-seeds (in that order) at the 2017 Rogers Cup, in Montreal. A lot has had changed in these half-a-dozen years. Players have since retired and there has been the cascade of two back-to-back generational shifts. And yet, with Nadal and Federer still going strong, it does seem as though a few things have remained the same.

But, have they really?

Novak Djokovic’s decision to shut shop for the rest of the 2017 season, followed days later by Andy Murray opting out of the Montreal Masters meant that the entire existence of the Big Four was once again in disarray. Nadal and Federer then taking over as the top-seeds was a bracing continuity. Not only in terms of retaining the core significance of the nomenclature, but also in terms of extending the theme of their dual domination for the season up to now.

Of the five ATP Masters tournaments that have been played this year, Nadal and Federer have split success in two of the four Masters tourneys. The Swiss pocketed the Indian Wells-Miami double for the third time in his career, while the Spaniard rampaged on the dirt of Monte Carlo and Madrid. These triumphs, in turn, also spoke about the way they had seemingly turned back time to the days when men’s tennis was mostly bracketed around them.

Inspiring these results have then been about the clout these two have continued to wield over the game. But, the outcome of the last ATP Masters event, in Rome, is just as relevant in this context. And, this relevance comes by way of the aberration that the Rome Masters has been in the otherwise predictable nature of the season’s tennis calendar.

For one, it was the only event where Nadal’s impeccable shacklehold of his most preferred surface slackened. Secondly, it was the only tournament where a youngster convincingly prevailed over the more experienced and the (slightly) favoured contender in Djokovic.

Dominic Thiem’s upset over Nadal in straight sets in the Rome Masters’ quarter-final meant that regardless of his show of dominance on the surface, the days of the Mallorcan running through the clay season undefeated were bygone. This, coupled with Alexander Zverev’s one-sided win over Djokovic in the final, lent credence to the fact that despite their frequent on-court patchiness, the youngsters had the potential to push their game through in the bigger tournaments.

It’s therefore not surprising to see Thiem and Zverev take their place as the third and fourth seeds in Montreal this week. Much like Nadal and Federer, they, too, have benefited from the spate of withdrawals that have preceded the event. Thiem and Zverev’s presence right on their heels is also indicative. That not only has time flitted away, but it has also brought men’s tennis to a unique crossroads. Where in the reunion with the past, there’s also an equally enforcing reconnecting with its foreseeable future.  

Roger Federer: The tale a second wind sparked

“Days some when I can't pick up a racket, days other when I don't want to pick up a racket. Either I am psychologically drained, or a stiff back preceded by a painful knee. Considering me ancient wouldn't so much as bother me, as much as it would amuse me. I am a 35-year old playing a young man's game, but am still scheduled to play the biggest game of the season, come first light, this Sunday.

“My opponent and I have played many times, and he beat me under the sweltering heat of New York once, a day in which I had no chance of coming close to the finish line. With time, I learned to live with myself – and by that, I mean I learned to live with losses, every loss used to fester for days in my mind, now it festers for a few hours, I learn and then I move on, no questions asked, no memories retained.

“While I dissect the reason for the loss and archive it carefully to access that quantum of memory the next time I play the same opponent, the painful memory of the loss is ephemeral. I listen to my body more, more than I ever used to, I learned to live in the moment, more than I ever used do, and I fear losing less, which is something I have always been used to.

“I am one of the very few in this rarefied air who loves winning more than I despise losing. I also appreciate playing – these days more than ever, while I don't play for records any more, I simply love playing the game - and on good days, I'll happily take winning too. It's not so much as "how much" I play, as much as "how well" I play I most care about these days.

“There are very few emotions that can replicate playing inside the cauldron of Centre court, with the heat of battle and love for competition adorning the combative theatre, the tenor of the game – one half of which I control, and the other up to my deserved opponent, as roaring adoration from the crowd swivels into a deafening silence seconds before am about to serve, as I meticulously wipe away the sweat from my forehead with my right thumb under the sun that came out of the clouds seconds before, I hope to stand at championship point…”

And, so begins the tale of Roger Federer…

A tale that began not when he first came onto the scene as a pony-tailed youngster, who seemed to have the right blend of cockiness and poise as he collected trophies wherever he went and in whichever tournaments he played. But rather in a year, when he went about gathering a fraction of the titles anew, more than a decade-and-a-half since he first stepped onto the professional turf.  

These have had been titles that he had won before with ease but those which had started to elude him in the recent times, favouring his younger rivals – who, despite all his efforts against them – looked to be a mite stronger and a tad forceful.

This is then a tale that has put some context into Federer’s hallowed career-map because had he not taken that six-month layoff to rehabilitate his knee, we would have never gotten to see this resurgence of his. Neither would he have gone on to prioritise his career as we have seen him do in this past 12 months, choosing what and where he wants to play with an economised efficiency that one wouldn’t have thought possible of him.

By pacing himself – say, like, missing three-months of the clay season – he’s able to keep himself ahead of his rivals. Not only as a strategist, but also as a player who can stay with his rivals without his back being up against the wall. And, in a way, it’s the first that has acted as a catalyst for the latter.

On-court, he’s not missed a trick in strategizing. But, in the last two years even as his strategies flowed and ebbed in a match, this year he’s found a way to keep them optimised throughout matches, which has also neutralised his opponents with no backup tactics for them to rely on. Thus, where he found himself being drained and sapped of energy after being pushed to best-of-five and best-of-three – literally – his opponents being caught off-guard by him has led to finish most of his matches quicker, thus keep himself around for a while longer. In the short-term, in the given tournament. And, in the long run, dare we say in the Tour?

But, therein lies the other side to the tale. The side that dwells on unpredictability and uncertainty, where one knows nought when or where the trail of success will end. Not even Federer, who despite being the protagonist of his professional life, is still dependent on life’s scriptwriting to get him play his part. Starting with when he takes to the court against Marin Cilic on Sunday…

Sari Shopping: From pet peeve, to all in a day's work!

Integral as rites and rituals are to a wedding, equally necessary is the trousseau shopping. In a South Indian wedding, the terminology gets extended to the immediate relatives of the family of the bride-to-be, with nit-picking over selection of potential purchases – of Kancheepuram silk saris, to be specific – spilling over to the said family members as well.

To the uninitiated, Kancheepuram silk saris hold a unique pride of place for South Indians, many of whom who deem the ostentatiousness of the wedding based on the saris worn by members of the bridal party on both sides. In my experience as an attendee of quite a few such weddings, including a couple in which I have had to wear a silk sari myself, I can attest to the fact that the discussion of the apparel lasts a lot longer when reminiscing about the marriage than the wedding proceedings itself.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that ‘sari shopping’, as I have come to call it, is often a comparative endeavour. Of course, not with the intention of one-upping – at least, not in the weddings that I have attended – but based on inputs freely given and collected from close family and friends, who have had organised weddings in the immediately preceding time-frame.

From deciding on the best location to purchase the saris from to settling on the optimal price to be set as the budget, the whole process of zeroing down on the actualities itself takes over a few weeks.

Exciting as it sounds, the reality of shopping, however, is tedious and farthest from the expectations of utopia.

For those living in the metro cities away from South India, while there are several big-brand retailers to choose from when it comes to buying the requisite silk clothing drapes, discontentment with the available choices makes them head south – down to Kancheepuram itself – to avail of the so-called better product options.

And, though almost always there is assistance forthcoming from a local – recommended by one of the aforementioned family or friends – suggestions also pouring forth from the garrulous neighbour sitting next in the local transportation vehicle involve checking such suggested outlets as well. The latter translates to digression from the initial plans made, and re-accounting of the time needed to complete the rest of the travel itinerary.

Traversing through more outlets also means spending more time cooped cross-legged inside the stores, first pointing at the array of brightly textured – some, even ridiculously shocking to the otherwise sober urban tastes – material and then discarding the preference because of clashes with colour combinations, between the sari and its border.

I know, it sounds a little bit pretentious – and a reason for the previously mentioned mental inertia – but trust me, going for a purple sari and pink border combination is just not done. The shopkeeper will say it’s one of the most trending colour combinations, but as someone who has to wear the six-yard creation with a tanned complexion, it just won’t work. As won’t work the varying shades of green that keeping popping up at regular intervals.

Not that I have any problem with the colour green, but I have long held reservations about owning a sari in that particular colour. It just doesn’t feel right, but if only the shopkeeper would understand that and stop amassing that colour in front of me.

Finally, when you think that you have found the most gorgeous choice on offer, without any quibbling on the colour, design and border, there’s the biggest hurdle of them all waiting to catch you unawares. The price tag, a handy snippet of information, conveniently hidden between the elaborate folds of the sari suddenly makes an appearance and once noticed, it’s not something you can forget – not even by waving the wand and muttering obliviate – that easily. You think, your preference might make one of those rare exceptions to the pre-assigned budget and that familial love for you would be enough to surmount the price – after all, how frivolous slight over-spending can be when compared to love? – but, like I mentioned earlier, reality works in far different ways.

When the shopkeeper refuses to entertain and budge from his ‘no bargains’ motto despite repeated persuasions from the rest of the family members making up the trip, you are subtly advised – in Marathi, no less – to either pick something else, how about revisiting that purple-and-pink theme?, or wait for your turn when we resume the sari hunting in the next shop. While, a courageous person would still opt for the first option afraid of the extension to the shopping trip, me being me, I always take the other road. And, so onwards it goes, with me dragging my feet and leaving my heart behind with that glorious sari that I don’t think I will ever reconnect with again.

Mercifully, the withdrawal pangs don’t go for on long as I get to pick a better choice – there I said it – in the very next shop without having to worry about price negotiations or budgetary concerns. And, it’s pink too, with a monochromatic glimmer that I might have not opted anywhere else, but one that I have fallen hopelessly in love with and want to keep wearing, over and over again.