Playing It My Way: My Autobiography (44 page)

What made it all even more personal was that, just the day before, Anjali had been in Leopold’s restaurant, which was one of the prime targets, and had also visited another target, the Oberoi, for dinner the previous night. She had gone to see a play at the National Centre for the Performing Arts and ended up having dinner with her friends there. She could so easily have been caught up in the mayhem.

The terror attack continued the next morning and the pictures were beamed live all day on 27 November 2008. We had a team meeting and were informed that England had decided to call off the series and had already left for Dubai. It was understandable, because none of us was in a frame of mind to play cricket. I returned to Mumbai that evening and was met by security personnel at the airport, who escorted me home. It was unnerving to think that it was all happening so close to where I lived. I was angry and upset and it was a horrible feeling having to sit back and pray for the ordeal to end.

A week after the terror attacks, it was announced that England were coming back for a two-Test series. This was a terrific gesture and each one of us appreciated the efforts of the English to return to India within two weeks of the carnage. While nothing could compensate for the trauma inflicted by these terror strikes, a resumption of cricket was a welcome sign for us all.

When we assembled in Chennai for the first Test on 11 December we were still finding it difficult to concentrate on cricket. Our thoughts were with the victims of the attacks and everyone was talking about those traumatic three days. But we had a Test match on our hands and we felt it was important for all our fans that we should put in a good peformance in Chennai.

England started well, with captain Andrew Strauss becoming the first England player to make a century in both innings on the subcontinent and Paul Collingwood also making a century. Unless we managed to pull things back on the morning of day four, it was going to be difficult to save the match. Zaheer and Ishant bowled very well in the English second innings but it was Zaheer’s spell of three wickets in five overs, including the centurion Collingwood, that brought us back into the game. For the first time we sensed we had the opposition on the back foot and it was now up to the batsmen to chase down the target of 387. It would not be easy – in fact it would be the highest ever run chase on Indian soil – but under Gary we had started to believe that anything was possible.

Sehwag set up the match wonderfully by scoring a brilliant counter-attacking 83 on the fourth evening. It was an innings of outstanding ability. I went in to bat on the morning of the final day and for the first hour or so just tried to soak up the pressure. Once we had weathered the early storm we started to look for runs. Every positive stroke put the pressure back on England and slowly but steadily the balance started to tilt in our favour.

Laxman and I had a good partnership and once Laxman fell, Yuvraj joined me in the middle. I was determined to bat till the end of the match. Indians love cricket and if, for just a minute or two, a victory in Chennai could lift their mood after everything that had happened, I would feel humbled.

Yuvraj batted well under pressure, making 85. There was a time in his innings when he attempted to play the reverse sweep to Monty Panesar and I walked up to him to tell him that all he needed to do was remain not out and finish the game. I reminded him of the Pakistan game at Chennai in 1999 and said I had been in a similar position before and remembered well how painful it was to lose from a winning position. Yuvraj reined himself in and we finally reached our target in the last hour of the fifth day. I had scored an unbeaten hundred for the team, but it was the extra significance of the game that made it particularly gratifying. In a first in Indian cricket, even the groundswomen, who hardly ever came to the foreground, celebrated the victory with great vigour. As we were walking back to the changing rooms, I was asked who I planned to dedicate the hundred to. I had not thought about it and was still very much in the moment, but on behalf of the team I dedicated the victory to the victims of the terrorist attack.

We followed up the victory at Chennai with a well-played draw at Mohali and won the series 1–0. Back-to-back series wins at home was an excellent way to cap off the year and we were all looking forward to our next away series in New Zealand.

Beating the Black Caps in New Zealand can be a tricky task, but we knew we had a great opportunity. We were in good form and seemed to have developed the useful ability to pull ourselves out of difficult situations; if one person failed, the second would step up.

In the five-match one-day series, we easily won the rain-affected first match, thanks largely to the batting of Sehwag and Dhoni. The second match was a washout, but in the third match at Christchurch, one of the smaller grounds, I had reached 163 when I was forced to retire hurt with a strained stomach muscle in the forty-fifth over.

It was frustrating to have to go off in that kind of form. I like to think I was in with a chance of scoring a double hundred had I been able to bat on, and I wasn’t alone in thinking that. As soon as I entered the dressing room, Sehwag walked up to me, saying, ‘
Paaji yeh apne kya kar diya. Double hundred ka chance tha.
’ (What have you done, brother? You had a realistic chance of scoring a double hundred.) I laughed and said to him, ‘
Arre main mar hi nahi pa raha hoon, double hundred kaise banaunga. Pitch achha hain aur hame abhi runs chaiye. Double hundred kabhi na kabhi ho jayga.
’ (I can’t even hit the ball, so how can I score a double hundred? It is a good pitch to bat on and we need big runs at the moment. I will score a double hundred at some point in the future.’) Sehwag, however, wouldn’t let up and said, ‘
Arre woh toh doosra double hundred hoga, aaj ka to aaj karna chaihiye tha!
’ (When you score a double hundred again it might be the
second
double hundred. Today you should have scored the
first
ever
ODI double ton!)

The match was a high-scoring one and, despite setting a target of 392, with Yuvraj Singh and Dhoni both making half-centuries, we were not safe. New Zealand played well to get to 334, thanks in no small part to an opening partnership of 166 between Brendon McCullum and Jesse Ryder, and the aggregate score of 726 in the two innings was the second highest in the history of ODI cricket.

I missed the next match at Hamilton, which we also won thanks to an onslaught from Sehwag that brought him 125. To celebrate taking a 3–0 lead in the series, Bhajji, Zaheer, Yuvi and I met up in Bhajji’s room for dinner, which was next to the health club in the hotel. There was a wonderful outdoor Jacuzzi and it had started drizzling outside, making it a beautiful setting. While my team-mates wanted to get into the Jacuzzi, I said I was content to stay where I was. Seeing my reluctance, the three of them hatched a plot.

We had ordered food in the room and were chatting while we waited for it when they grabbed me from behind and hurled me into the water. I was screaming at them, saying my watch would get spoilt, but it made no difference, as they were determined to have fun at my expense. They all followed me into the Jacuzzi and we started messing around in the water. By now the food had arrived and within minutes the French fries, sandwiches and ketchup had found their way into the Jacuzzi. It was certainly an unusual way to celebrate!

In the first Test at Hamilton, which started on 18 March, New Zealand batted first and made 279, with Daniel Vettori scoring a hundred. I still jokingly tell our bowlers whenever I see them, ‘
Arre usko kaise hundred marne diya tha yaar tumlog
?’ (How could you allow him to score a hundred?) He did play well, though, and took some calculated risks that paid off.

When I went in to bat in the afternoon of day two, I couldn’t time the ball to save my life. I just didn’t feel comfortable, so I decided to change my stance. This was something I used to try from time to time and it often did the trick. Normally I bat with a side-on stance, but in Hamilton I opened myself up slightly and also increased the gap between my feet a little. The umpire Simon Taufel noticed the difference and mentioned to me that I looked a completely different batsman after the drinks break and asked what I had done to myself. Sometimes such tiny adjustments can make a big difference.

Towards the end of the first day, the light dropped appreciably and Iain O’Brien, New Zealand’s best bowler in the series, was bowling from one end. The umpires were reluctant to stop the game, which I thought was unfair because it was a crucial time in the match and there was no chance of the light improving. I somehow managed to survive, though, and was unbeaten on 70 at the end of the second day. The next morning I got off to an aggressive start. My knock of 160 contributed to a sizeable first-innings lead, alongside fifties from Gambhir, Dravid and Zaheer Khan. Our bowlers, led by Bhajji with six wickets, delivered once again to set up a very satisfying win.

Unfortunately, I missed the latter parts of the match because I was injured in the very first over of the New Zealand second innings when I dived forward to take a catch at slip off Zaheer’s bowling. The edge from Tim McIntosh had come low and as I tried to get my fingers under the ball I damaged the index finger of my left hand. I had to be taken to hospital to have the injury checked and X-rays revealed I had a fracture.

There wasn’t much time before the second Test at Napier but the early end of the first one at least gave me an extra day to recover. To protect the finger, I tried putting three finger caps one on top of the other and also applied a fibre plaster, which I moulded by putting it in hot water, topped off with a lot of padding. With all that protection, I had little sense of where my finger actually was, but in the end I decided I could last a Test as long as I stood in a relatively quiet fielding position.

This time it worked out well and I managed to score runs in both innings of the second Test at Napier. New Zealand scored 619 in their first innings, with Jesse Ryder following up his 102 in the first Test with a double century, supported by hundreds from Ross Taylor and Brendon McCullum. We had to bat out a little more than two days to save the match. We had a brief team meeting ahead of the second innings and there was a strong belief that we could do it. Gary had a big role to play in this and exuded a kind of quiet confidence, which in turn had a positive impact on the team.

Gautam Gambhir batted superbly in the second innings and thanks to his magnificent 137 we saved the match comfortably in the end. He batted for ten and a half hours and played 436 balls in an exemplary display of patience and character. Laxman also scored a hundred and the draw was a true reflection of the team’s mind-set at the time: we were relishing the challenges set before us.

In the third Test in Wellington, we scored a reasonable 379, batting first, but then Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh combined to bowl out New Zealand for 197, giving us a 182-run lead. In our second innings, a magnificent 167 from Gambhir helped set New Zealand a target of 717.