Playing It My Way: My Autobiography (27 page)

Australia, who were at 326–3 at the end of day one, suffered a collapse on day two, ending up with just 391. It all started with an unusual dismissal. Against skipper Steve Waugh we were trying to keep things tight and when he tried taking a single to short cover I prevented the run and said a few things to him on the lines that he was trying to get away from the strike. Rahul, fielding at leg slip, offered a few words and before long we were able to get under Waugh’s skin. Finally, when Harbhajan beat him with a good off-spinner and appealed for lbw, Waugh, in a momentary lapse of concentration, moved the ball away with his hand. We appealed for handling the ball, and the Australian captain was on his way back to the dressing room. Mission accomplished, we didn’t say another word to him.

I was determined to make amends for my batting failures in Kolkata and had practised hard against reverse swing in the gap between the two Test matches. I decided to follow the ball throughout my innings and not to lose sight of it at any time. To play well against reverse swing you have to keep your eye on the ball for as long as possible and that was what I did all day, as it was passed from the wicketkeeper to the slips and through the hands of various fielders back to the bowler. I focused on the ball and nothing else. The only time I was not following the ball was when I was talking to the non-striker about something. As the bowler came in to bowl I concentrated on the ball and monitored the release as closely as possible. From the arm position and the release point I could assess what was coming at me and I tried to play as late as possible.

This exercise was draining and by the end of the day I was mentally exhausted. However, I had done what the team needed me to do: I had scored a hundred. I had forged an important partnership with Rahul, which was all the more satisfying because we had to negotiate a very hostile Jason Gillespie spell with the second new ball. Gillespie, who was tired after bowling all day, wasn’t bowling quite so fast with the second new ball, but suddenly he gained inspiration from an unlikely source. One solitary Australian fan, sitting at the top of the sightscreen and carrying a huge toy kangaroo, started screaming after every delivery, urging Gillespie on. He was shouting ‘Come on Aussie’ each time he walked back to the end of his run-up. The fan had a huge impact on him. Within minutes Gillespie started to bowl really quickly again and was all fired up. Rahul and I even discussed what had happened to him all of a sudden. It just goes to show that you don’t always need thousands of fans to motivate you.

Our partnership of 169 helped the team to an important 110-run lead, giving our bowlers some runs to play with in the second innings. The match was nicely poised in our favour and we knew we had a chance to close out the series. Hayden was once again going to be the crucial wicket. He fell for 35 to the bowling of Nilesh Kulkarni. Gilchrist was the other danger man lower down the order, because we knew he could score quickly and put the pressure back on us. But Bhajji, who had a grip on Gilchrist and Ponting right through the series, once again took the bulk of the Australian wickets, finishing off with a career-best haul of 8–84 in the innings. We needed 155 runs to win the series.

The chase started well and we were cruising before Mark Waugh pulled off an unbelievable catch at short midwicket. It was a full-blooded pull shot from VVS Laxman and Waugh just flung himself at full stretch to come up with a stunning catch. Laxman had been batting brilliantly for his 66 and his dismissal left us at 135–6, changing the course of the match yet again. Suddenly we had a contest on our hands.

By this stage, the whole team was sitting nervously outside the changing room. Everyone was told not to change seating positions and we were all feeling the tension. There were not too many runs left to get, but at stake was a series win against the world’s best cricket team. The crowd was cheering every Indian run. It could not get any bigger.

At a crucial time, Harbhajan Singh and Sameer Dighe, our wicketkeeper and my very close friend, put together a partnership that, though not a big one, was perhaps the most significant of the series. Fighting unbelievable pressure, they somehow held things together to take us over the line and the rest of the team were in raptures. The way the two of them ran the winning runs was almost comical, but it was an incredible feeling to know we had won the match and the series. We were all shouting with delight and handing out high-fives and hugs. We had beaten the best team in the world and it felt truly amazing to have accomplished what I had predicted before the start of the contest. We had put the Australians under pressure and had reaped the rewards for doing so. The whole team had stuck together despite losing the first Test, and this series is without doubt one of the best I have played in my career.

Coming at a critical time, the series also helped restore Indian fans’ faith in the game. Cricket had once again triumphed over all odds. Both teams had played hard cricket and the passion and intensity was at a high level throughout. Played before huge crowds, it was the best possible advertisement for Test cricket. To Australia’s credit, they were always competitive and had actually come close to winning in Chennai themselves, picking up eight Indian wickets in the second innings.

As we celebrated the series win I remember being very pleased to see Anil, who had not played a part in the series because of injury. He had been present in the pre-series training camp and had come along to cheer on the team during the third and deciding Test.

During the ODI series that followed, which we lost 2–3, I reached 10,000 runs in ODIs, in the third game in Indore, and in the last match in Goa I did something that I have never done again in my life. I injured my index finger and ended up bowling off-spin with my middle finger for ten overs, picking up 3–35 in the spell, including the wicket of Steve Waugh. The moment Waugh came in to bat I started gesturing towards the midwicket fielder, suggesting to Waugh that I would get him out there. It was friendly banter and Waugh retorted by saying I wasn’t playing in my garden. As luck would have it, Steve tried playing a slog sweep to midwicket and was caught there by Ajit Agarkar.

1st Test. Mumbai. 27 February–March 1 2001

India 176 (
SR Tendulkar 76
; SK Warne 4–47, GD McGrath 3–19) and 219 (
SR Tendulkar 65
, S Ramesh 44; ME Waugh 3–40, JN Gillespie 3–45)

Australia 349 (AC Gilchrist 122, ML Hayden 119, SK Warne 39; H Singh 4–121) and 47–0

Australia won by 10 wickets

2nd Test. Kolkata. 11–15 March 2001

Australia 445 (SR Waugh 110, ML Hayden 97, JL Langer 58; H Singh 7–123) and 212 (ML Hayden 67, MJ Slater 43; H Singh 6–73,
SR Tendulkar 3–31
)

India 171 (VVS Laxman 59,
SR Tendulkar 10
; GD McGrath 4–18) and 657–7 dec (f/o) (VVS Laxman 281, R Dravid 180, SC Ganguly 48,
SR Tendulkar 10
; GD McGrath 3–103)

India won by 171 runs

3rd Test. Chennai. 18–22 March 2001

Australia 391 (ML Hayden 203, ME Waugh 70, SR Waugh 47; H Singh 7–133) and 264 (ME Waugh 57, MJ Slater 48, SR Waugh 47; H Singh 8–84)

India 501 (
SR Tendulkar 126
, SS Das 84, R Dravid 81, VVS Laxman 65, S Ramesh 61; GD McGrath 3–75) and 155–8 (VVS Laxman 66,
SR Tendulkar
17
; CR Miller 3–41, GD McGrath 2–21)

India won by 2 wickets

India won the series 2–1

In July 2001, two months after the Australia series, we played a tri-series against the West Indies and Zimbabwe at Harare. I had trained hard in the off season and felt in good shape ahead of the series. For close to two years, between August 1999 and July 2001, I had been injury-free and the off-season training had definitely helped improve my fitness. I used to run in the mornings and do gym sessions in the afternoon to strengthen my upper body and I also kept a check on my diet. The discipline had helped and the 1999 back injury was now just a bad memory.

I started the tournament in red-hot form and scored two fifties and a century in the four pool games, being dismissed only once. But just as I had started to look forward to the final, I suffered the second major injury of my career in rather unexpected circumstances.

It happened during the last of our group matches against the West Indies on 4 July 2001. Rahul and I were batting together and we were cruising to victory. With some 20 runs left to win, I turned a ball to midwicket and set off for two runs. That’s when I heard something click in my big toe. Immediately I felt a sense of discomfort and found it difficult to complete the second run. Before the next ball I walked up to Rahul and said that I had hurt my toe and that the temperature in my foot had suddenly gone up a few degrees. However, with so few runs needed, I decided to stay in and finish off the game as quickly as possible, making 122 in the process.

After the match I showed the toe to Andrew Leipus, who had taken over as our physiotherapist, and the next morning we went for an X-ray. The pain had actually increased in the interim and I was now struggling to walk properly. On our way to the hospital I asked Andrew not to tell me about the results of the X-ray, for no matter what, I wanted to play in the final. Soon after the X-ray, Andrew, looking somewhat helpless, just said to me, ‘You are a crazy man.’

Before the game it was decided that Andrew would strap the toe bent down to prevent any movement and I took the field against the West Indies in considerable physical discomfort. I had been in terrific touch throughout the tournament and the thinking was that my batting was more important for the team than my fielding and bowling. Personally, I felt I would be able to make it through the game, as it happened to be the final match. After all that effort, however, I proceeded to get out for a duck and we lost the match. It turned out I had damaged my sesamoid bone, which is the bone at the connection of the big toe and the first metatarsal.

After returning to India I was prescribed total rest, but after two months I still wasn’t happy with the way the recovery was going. I could barely walk without discomfort. In desperation I saw a specialist, who advised me to have surgery. We even fixed a tentative date, but that’s when Anjali advised me to seek a second opinion. She felt that surgery should always be the last resort and we had to be sure there was no other way to get the injury treated.

We went to the Bombay hospital and saw one of the most senior doctors around, Dr Dholakia. He showed me a big fat book on sesamoid bones and informed me that the author of the book, who was the world expert on sesamoid injuries, wasn’t a hundred per cent certain that surgery was the best way to treat them. He went on to say that I shouldn’t allow anyone to touch my toe, as it might be counterproductive. There was the possibility of permanent damage, which might bring my career to an end, and that was a scary thought. On the very same day Dr Dholakia started looking into where I could go to get my toe examined by a specialist.

Eventually I found myself at the Rosebank Clinic in Johannesburg, where Dr Mark Ferguson, who had worked with a lot of sportsmen, advised me to try out a few insoles. Over a week in South Africa I went from walking for fifteen minutes to close to an hour. Back in Mumbai I continued with the routine, building up from jogging to running. Running in cricket shoes was a bit of a problem because of the spikes, so for the next few months I wore shoes with no spikes immediately under my toes. The injury, it appeared, was finally on the mend.

My first tour after the lay-off, coincidentally perhaps, was to South Africa in October–November 2001. We were playing a tri-series against South Africa and Kenya before going on to play a three-Test series against the South Africans. However, in our very first tour game against the Nicky Oppenheimer XI on 1 October, the pain in my toe resurfaced. It was a strange sensation and I left the field to get some treatment.

Luckily for me we were in Randjesfontein, which is not far from Johannesburg, so I set out for the Rosebank Clinic again. Much to my relief, I was assured there that it wasn’t anything major and that a slight recurrence of pain was normal with sesamoid bone injuries. They told me that there was no need to panic. I left the clinic with a sigh of relief and was eager to get back to playing cricket again.

The first match of the tri-series was in Johannesburg on 5 October and I managed to score a hundred against South Africa. The intensity of the match pushed the thought of the injury out of my mind, but afterwards I was relieved that I’d been able to bat for so long with very little pain. It was as if I had started all over again.

Taking on South Africa in their home conditions is always challenging and it was even more so having just recovered from the toe injury. I had, however, started to feel more confident after a net session at Bloemfontein, the venue for the first of the three Tests. I distinctly remember that session because every ball hit the middle of my bat and it seemed to me that I could do no wrong.

The first Test started on 3 November and happily my touch with the bat was still there in the first innings. I made 155 out of a team total of 379, and it was the first time I played the upper cut over the slips, a shot I went on to use regularly in the second half of my career. I had come up with the idea of the shot to counter the South African fast bowler Makhaya Ntini, whose strength was to bring the ball in to the batsman from short of a length. I knew that if I played the upper cut against Ntini, it would affect his rhythm, as he was not prepared for this form of counter-attack. The pitch in Bloemfontein had a lot of bounce and in the absence of a third-man fielder the upper cut was a scoring stroke played with minimal risk. I followed the ball till late and just helped it on the way over the slip fielders, using the pace generated by Ntini.