Playing It My Way: My Autobiography (9 page)

At Old Trafford luck seemed to be with me. I batted patiently until I finally played a punch off Angus Fraser through mid off when on 98. Chris Lewis chased down the ball but by the time he threw it back to the bowler I had run three, completing my first Test hundred. The crowd stood to applaud but I was extremely uncomfortable about acknowledging them. I had never been in that position before and was acutely embarrassed about raising my bat to the stadium.

Every time I look back at the footage of my first century, I realize that celebrating was not something that came naturally to me. It was only with time that I became more confident of my presence in the middle. ‘Presence’ is actually very important in international sport. It is one thing just being there in the middle, but it is another making people aware of your ‘presence’. It is about body language and radiating confidence, something that the West Indian batting legend Viv Richards would personify. With me it happened after I had scored a few hundreds and felt more established in international cricket. As I grew more assured of my presence, I came up with my own signature style of celebrating an achievement by showing the bat to the dressing room. Most cricketers develop their own style of celebrating. For example, the way Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne showed the ball to the crowd after picking up five wickets in an innings was something they evolved over the course of their careers.

At Old Trafford I continued to bat on after reaching my hundred and with every passing over it was becoming apparent that the match would end in a draw. When the match was finally called off with two of the twenty mandatory overs still to be bowled, we had reached 343 for no further losses. Prabhakar and I had put together an unbeaten 160-run stand.

I remember walking back to the pavilion to a standing ovation. Both umpires, John Hampshire and John Holder, congratulated me on my hundred and all the England players walked up to me to offer some kind words. In the dressing room my team-mates congratulated me – not just on my maiden Test hundred but also for batting through the day and saving the game for the team, meaning that it was all to play for in the third Test. It was the second occasion I had done so. This one was more satisfying, though, because this time I played a central part in the effort, unlike in the fourth Test in Pakistan, where I had a supporting role.

Just when I was about to relax after a good day’s work, I was informed that I had to face the media. It was going to be the first time I addressed a press conference. I asked our manager Madhav Mantri, a former Test cricketer who toured England with India in the 1950s, if it was compulsory or if I could just skip it. He assured me it was a routine matter and said that the journalists would only ask me questions about my performance and about the match. My team-mates, however, started pulling my leg, saying they’d ask me questions I couldn’t answer and that it was going to be a really difficult session. Looking back, I must admit that I quite enjoyed the experience. I was uncomfortable to start with, but it was quite straightforward really. I just needed to share my thoughts and it wasn’t such a daunting task after all. Most of the questions were pleasant and it felt good to receive compliments from well-known cricket writers.

I was declared Player of the Match – my first such award – and once again felt awkward at the ceremony. I was handed the bottle of champagne but, not being eighteen, I didn’t drink at the time. I just wanted the presentation to be over and to hurry back to the dressing room with the award as soon as possible. In the end I brought the bottle home with me to Mumbai and finally opened it on the occasion of my daughter Sara’s first birthday in 1998.

On returning to the hotel after the match I got a call from home and remember speaking to what must have been thirty or forty people on the phone. It was a spontaneous gathering of all my friends at our neighbour’s apartment to celebrate the hundred and it was really touching to know that people in the colony were so thrilled at the accomplishment. Some of them jokingly mentioned to me that as I wasn’t old enough to drink, they were enjoying a drink on my behalf. My parents were extremely happy with my performance and my brother too felt vindicated.

The third Test match, at The Oval at the end of August, was another draw, which meant that we lost the series 0–1, but I was still reasonably satisfied with my performances in England and felt I had taken a few important strides. I returned to India a better Test cricketer and far more confident of myself as a performer, ready for the next big challenges: a tour of Australia at the end of the following year, followed by the World Cup jointly organized by Australia and New Zealand.

We began the tour with a couple of one-day practice matches in Perth in November 1991, the first at Lilac Hill and the second at the WACA, one of the fastest cricket wickets in the world. At the WACA we were bowled out for just 64 and it was clear we had to adjust to Australian conditions as soon as possible if we were going to be competitive in the series.

Our first three-day tour game was against a full-strength New South Wales team at Lismore between 23 and 25 November and it was in that game that I got my first taste of real Australian competitiveness. It was a fast, lively wicket and Geoff Lawson, the NSW captain, had no hesitation in putting us in after winning the toss. In addition to Lawson, their bowling attack included Mike Whitney, Steve and Mark Waugh, Greg Matthews and Wayne Holdsworth, and it was a tough test for us. The team also included Mark Taylor and five players – Whitney, Lawson, Steve Waugh, Mark Taylor and Matthews – had already played Test cricket for Australia.

I was looking to be aggressive from the very beginning and played a number of horizontal-bat shots over point and gully. It was in this match that I had my first exchange with Steve Waugh, who didn’t seem keen on the idea of an eighteen-year-old attacking the bowling like that. A lot of things were said to me and they were the first of many over the years.

It was in the course of this match that the Australian Test team for the first Test at Brisbane was announced. Steve Waugh was not included in the side, so I said to him that if he wanted to fight with me, he first needed to get into the Australian team. It was all done in good spirit and throughout our careers we had great mutual respect; in fact, the banter, it must be said, was a result of this. We knew how important it was to get Steve Waugh out early and tried all we could to unsettle him. There were occasions when we even resorted to observing total silence when Waugh batted as we came to believe that saying things to him actually strengthened his resolve to do better.

In the first Test at Brisbane, starting on 29 November 1991, the Australians beat us convincingly, thanks in large part to superb bowling from Craig McDermott and Merv Hughes. Like most of our team, I didn’t do much with the bat and we knew we had to bounce back in Melbourne in the Boxing Day Test. At the MCG we remained competitive till the middle of the third day, with Kiran More coming to the rescue with 67 in our first innings and Kapil Dev and Prabakhar both bowling well, before a batting collapse in our second innings dampened our hopes. I managed to stay in for a reasonable time and scored 40 off 107 balls, but I was disgusted with myself for trying to hit a big shot and getting out caught by Allan Border against the off-spinner Peter Taylor after doing all the hard work and playing myself in. I was so fed up that I didn’t eat lunch in the dressing room and was on edge for the whole day!

Something else happened in Melbourne that has never happened again in my life, I’m pleased to say. When I went back to the dressing room I realized that my abdominal protector had been broken into three pieces when I was hit by a Bruce Reid delivery. Reid, the tall left-arm fast bowler, got a lot of wickets in the series and I was lucky that no major damage was caused by the accident!

Down 0–2, we went to Sydney for the next Test on 2 January 1992 knowing it was our last chance to get back in the series. It was a typical SCG wicket, helpful to the batsmen to start with, and I thought our bowlers did very well to bowl Australia out for 313 in the first innings. It was essential for us to take a substantial lead and give our bowlers a chance to bowl Australia out again in the second innings. I didn’t sleep much the night before batting. I was sharing a room with Sourav Ganguly, who later captained India and is a very good friend. I remember a startled Sourav waking up in the middle of the night and seeing me shadow-practise. Sourav wasn’t playing in that game and was surprised to see me up so late. I told him I was planning how to play McDermott and the other bowlers.

Unsurprisingly, the next day I was feeling rather tired. India were batting and I was batting at number six, so I decided to take a nap on the dining table inside the SCG dressing room – asking Sourav to wake up me up at the fall of the next wicket. He did so when Azhar got out. By then I was feeling refreshed and was ready to go out and bat.

For the first time in the series our top order had fired and by the time I went in, the score was a healthy 201–4, with Vengsarkar having contributed a half-century. We needed another good partnership to push on for a lead and, with the opener Ravi Shastri playing extremely well at the other end, that’s what we managed to do. The second innings at Melbourne had definitely helped me and I was now able to middle the ball from the very start. There was a phase halfway through when I began to lose concentration and feel edgy, but I forced myself to exercise restraint and it soon passed.

After reaching my half-century, I began to play a lot more shots and was soon close to my second Test hundred. I vividly remember the glance to fine leg that brought up my century. I ran two and the second run was the fastest I have ever run. Ravi went on to score an excellent double hundred, the first by an Indian in Australia, as we put on 196 runs for the fifth wicket. Sydney continues to be my favourite ground outside India and to score my first hundred in Australia at the SCG was special. I had grown up watching cricket in Australia on the TV and used to wake up early to watch the Victoria Cup in 1985. Now I was playing at the actual venues and scoring runs.

The SCG Test is also remembered for the debut of a plump Australian leg-spinner with a mop of blond hair. Though Shane Warne took only one wicket in the match, it was evident to us all that he could give the ball a fair rip. While no one could have predicted the 708 Test wickets he would take in his career, the fact that he had talent was obvious from the very first day he took to the field in January 1992.

Knowing that we could bat only once – because of valuable time lost to rain and bad light on the third and fourth days – we batted for close to an hour on the final day and declared with a lead of 170 runs. With the track doing a fair bit and the bounce turning variable, we had a good chance of closing out the game in the time remaining. A win still seemed on the cards when Shastri’s bowling helped reduce Australia to 114–6 and it was only some dogged rearguard action from Allan Border and Merv Hughes that saved Australia.