Playing It My Way: My Autobiography (38 page)

We celebrated heartily, in which we were greatly helped by Rajiv Shukla, our manager for this tour. Rajiv was a positive presence throughout the tour, and had been part of the team in some of our most crucial away victories, including the NatWest tri-series win in 2002. On that occasion he took the entire team out to dinner at the Four Seasons to celebrate the victory and also organized a special performance of the musical
Bombay Dreams
, something we very much enjoyed.

We were playing some very good cricket by now and were looking forward to taking on Australia in October 2007 in a series of ODIs in India before heading Down Under for a full tour a couple of months later. Before that ODI series, however, Indian cricket received a huge fillip when we won the inaugural World Twenty20 in South Africa in September under MS Dhoni. I was not part of the Twenty20 team, of course, but I watched the team’s progress with great interest. The Twenty20 win helped restore the nation’s passion for cricket and the players received a hero’s welcome on their return to India.

India’s tour to Australia in 2007–08 was perhaps the most eventful series of my career. While we had come close to beating Australia in 2003–04, drawing the series one apiece and dominating the last Test in Sydney, we played even better in 2007–08. Even though the Test series is still talked about because of an incident involving Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan Singh in Sydney, a lot of other issues combined to make it an extremely intense couple of months.

We were full of confidence by the time we set off for Australia. After the series of ODIs in India in October, which Australia won 4–2, we had played Pakistan at home in November and early December 2007 and won the three-Test series 1–0. Most of the batsmen were in good form and we were hopeful of achieving our first ever series win Down Under. Unfortunately, before the first Test at the MCG there was only one warm-up game, as is often the case with scheduling these days, and even that was a near washout because of a storm, which meant we had very little chance to adjust to Australian conditions.

We had a reasonable first day at the MCG, picking up nine Australian wickets, and we quickly finished off their innings the next morning for 343. Anil and Zaheer had bowled well and now it was down to the batsmen. I came in with the score at 31–2.

I had thought carefully about the way I would approach my innings and had a plan for each Australian bowler. In fact, a glance at my scoring chart for the series will show up where I played the big shots: I really went after the bowling in the area between long on and midwicket. This was based on my experience of playing the Australian attack in the one-dayers in India a couple of months before, when the left-arm chinaman bowler Brad Hogg had caused us problems. I was determined to attack him because I knew it would force the Australians to rethink their plans. If they couldn’t rely on Hogg, the fast bowlers would have to bowl longer spells than expected and we could attack them when they got tired in the hot and testing conditions. I went into the Melbourne Test with a set plan against Hogg. However, once in the middle, I realized that I needed to play differently and changed my plan on the ground itself. Looking at his field placements, I started taking the aerial route and hit him in the area between deep midwicket and long on, forcing him to change his game plan and remove the close-catching fielders. This strategy paid off and I could subsequently milk singles, with no men close on the leg side. For other bowlers, however, I stuck to the same game plan that I had originally decided.

Brett Lee bowled at his best in this series. Back in 1999 Lee had been fast but raw; in 2008 he was the complete package. He had real pace, a vicious bouncer, a yorker, a fast swinging delivery and also a slower ball. He was consistently clocking 145 kph and I relished my contests with him. Among the other bowlers, Mitchell Johnson bowled some incisive spells, while the accurate Stuart Clark had the job of trying to keep things tight. To his credit, he also picked up some key wickets.

I went after the bowling from the start of my innings. I was feeling good and was set to kick on for a big score. However, you don’t always get a hundred just because you’re feeling good and I got out after scoring 62. We were all out for 196, which was nowhere near enough. Australia soon managed to establish a stranglehold over us, eventually winning the Test in four days. It was not the start we had hoped for.

Something unexpected that I had to deal with at the time of the Melbourne Test was a severe allergic reaction. On our way to Australia, Harbhajan Singh and I had bought a newly launched moisturizing cream at Singapore airport and for the first few days I had no problems using the cream. It was during the first Test that I started feeling a serious burning sensation on my face. Harbhajan did not have any such problem, so at first I attributed my reaction to a massage. I had had to lie down with my face on a towel and I thought it must have been something to do with the detergent used on the towel.

The problem started to bother me on the third day and I remember putting more cream on my face before going to bed, thinking it would help. The next morning I awoke in agony. My face was on fire and it was as if someone had pushed it into a barbecue. It was even worse by the evening with my face all red and swollen. So much so that I was too embarrassed to go out in public and had to hide behind large sunglasses.

Anjali was arriving in Sydney the next day. With the Melbourne Test over on the fourth day, I got permission to fly to Sydney a little earlier than planned and met up with her and the children at the airport. They were horrified by my face and asked what on earth I had done to it. I was not in the best of moods and wanted to get to the hotel as quickly as possible. When we finally arrived, after a forty-five-minute drive because of the traffic, I was really irritable. The hotel staff then took a long time to give us our rooms and I ended up shouting at the hotel manager. By the time we got to the room I had started to feel worse and told Anjali to ask the kids to sit in the adjoining room and leave me alone. The poor kids were wondering what was wrong with me to behave like this. By then, my face was troubling me even more. We called Reception and asked for a doctor to come to my room but were told that there wasn’t one available at that hour. I asked where the nearest hospital was and went there immediately. After a brief examination, I was given a lotion for the night and was asked to come back the following morning.

We got a taxi from the hospital and after a few minutes the driver said to me in Hindi, ‘
Aap wohi ho jo main samaj raha hoon.
’ (I think you are the person I think you are.) I admitted that I was and he offered to show us around Sydney, which I was in no mood to do. I asked him if he wouldn’t mind taking us to a fast-food place instead and Anjali got out to get some burgers for dinner while I waited in the cab. The driver accompanied her and when they returned she told me that he had insisted on paying for the food. He also refused to take any money from us after dropping us off at the hotel and left his number in case we needed to go anywhere else in Sydney during our stay. I was very touched by the gesture and told him that I would leave match tickets for him at Reception. Later I got one of my Test shirts signed by the team and left it with the tickets.

I returned to the hospital the following morning and asked the doctor to do whatever he thought necessary to give me some quick relief, as I had a Test match to play the following morning. The doctor was a little taken aback, considering my condition, but I was absolutely determined to play. That afternoon we were supposed to be practising but I was in no state to stay out in the sun. I ended up batting against my dear friend Subroto Banerjee, the former India medium-fast bowler, who was then a resident of Sydney, in the indoor nets for a good forty-five minutes. I managed to take the field the next day, however, and that was the first time I wore a floppy white hat, which from then on became my trademark on the field. I applied a lot of ice to my face and then plastered it with zinc cream. It looked ridiculous but that didn’t bother me.

After a couple of days, it finally started to settle down and I looked almost human again.

We suffered a blow on the eve of the Sydney Test when Zaheer was forced to return to India with a heel injury. Someone’s loss is always another person’s gain, however, and Zaheer’s return meant young Ishant Sharma would get an opportunity to play in Australia for the first time.

On the first day, we started well and soon had the Australians on the ropes, with six wickets gone for only 134, four of which were taken by RP Singh. Just when we seemed to be in control and were trying to press home the advantage, what seemed to us to be an error by umpire Steve Bucknor caused a shift in momentum. Andrew Symonds was ruled not out after he had very clearly edged the ball to Dhoni off Ishant – the sound was heard not just by the players but also by the spectators. My son heard the sound of the edge sitting in the stands and reminds me whenever we discuss the Sydney Test match. Symonds stood his ground and, riding his luck, got a very important century for Australia. His 162 changed the course of the game and Australia managed to put together a total of 463 after being in a lot of trouble. That wasn’t their only piece of luck, though. Even before Symonds had been given this reprieve, Ricky Ponting had been adjudged not out by umpire Mark Benson after he seemed to edge a ball down the leg side.

The best response was to go out and make some runs. I was glad to make amends for missing out in Melbourne by making 154, and it was a delight to watch Laxman score a hundred at the other end, with Rahul and Sourav also chipping in with half-centuries. But just when the momentum seemed to be swinging our way, Andrew Symonds started swearing at Harbhajan, who was batting with me and playing really well.

Bhajji had gone past 50 when it all started. For a number of overs he had been telling me that Andrew Symonds was trying to get him riled. I asked Bhajji not to rise to it but to continue batting the way he was. I knew only too well that by retaliating he would just play into the Australians’ hands. The best thing to do is to ignore such provocation. That’s easy enough to say, but of course it’s not always so easy to keep your cool at moments of intense pressure.

Bhajji was doing his best and was actually trying to be civil with some of the Australian players, including Brett Lee, when all hell broke loose. Bhajji had playfully tapped Lee on the back after completing a run and Symonds at mid off took exception to this. He apparently did not want an opposition player meddling with Lee and once again hurled abuse at Bhajji. Bhajji is an impulsive and passionate individual and it was only a matter of time before he would retaliate, which he soon did. That was the start of the controversy that almost caused the tour to be called off.

I want to state very clearly that the incident arose because Andrew Symonds had been continually trying to provoke Bhajji and it was inevitable that the two would have an altercation at some point. While walking up to Bhajji to try to calm things down, I heard him say ‘
Teri maa ki
’ (Your mother …) to Symonds. It is an expression we often use in north India to vent our anger and to me it was all part of the game. In fact, I was surprised to see umpire Mark Benson go up to Bhajji and speak to him. While the umpire was talking to Bhajji, some of the Australian players started to warn him of the dire consequences of his words, presumably to rattle him and disturb his concentration. The ploy paid off when a few overs later Bhajji was out for 63.

I thought the matter had ended with Bhajji’s dismissal and later I was surprised when I was told that the Australians had lodged a formal complaint at the end of that day’s play, apparently alleging that Bhajji had called Symonds a ‘monkey’, which was being treated as a racial insult. What surprised me most was the haste with which the Australians had lodged their complaint. I was later informed that it had apparently been agreed between the Australian and Indian boards during their tour of India in October 2007, following an incident in Mumbai, that the respective captains were to report to the match referee any incident with a racial element. Even so, I still believe that the matter would not have been blown so out of proportion if Ponting had discussed it with the captain Anil Kumble, Harbhajan and the Indian team management before reporting the incident to Mike Procter, the match referee. In turn, Mike Procter could also have handled the matter with a little more sensitivity.

Soon after the end of play on the third day we were informed by Mike Procter that there would be a formal hearing on the incident at the end of the fourth day, which was later changed to the end of the match. It did not leave us in the best frame of mind in the middle of an intense contest. While it was distressing to hear that Symonds felt he had been racially abused, it was equally distressing to observe what Bhajji was going through. As far as we were concerned, he had retaliated in the face of provocation, which was par for the course in an Australia–India cricket match. But he did not racially abuse another cricketer.

With the controversy overshadowing everything, the Test match assumed a completely different character. By the fifth day we were batting to save the game. Mind you, there is little doubt in my mind that we would have drawn had it not been for what seemed to us to be mistakes by the umpires and some rather unsportsmanlike conduct by a few of the Australian players.

Rahul Dravid was given out caught behind off Symonds for 38 by umpire Bucknor when his bat seemed to be a fair distance away from the ball. The wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist was standing up to the stumps at the time and was in the best position to see if the ball had touched Rahul’s bat. Yet he who prided himself on walking off if he nicked the ball appealed for the caught-behind and to our disbelief we saw the umpire raise the finger. It was a shocking decision. Some of us actually wondered if Rahul had been given out lbw.