The Cricket matches that MY generation will never forget!!
10/25/2015 11:04:00 am
I saw this
video on Facebook, the great moments of Indian cricket (2000-2015). It brought
so many memories. I was going to share on my timeline, but then as I was
writing a status I realized that this won’t do justice to these memories. So this
is how this post was born. Read on. I am quite sure all of you belonging to MY
generation can relate to each of these matches. This video does highlight most
of matches, but I wished they made a 1990 to 2015 one so that we don’t miss out
on the ones before that.
The best
part of the video was that I remembered not only the details about these
matches but even the back-story attached to each of these. Those were the days when I used to watch
matches right from the toss to the presentation ceremony. There are so many of
these matches! It’s difficult to choose a few out of those many matches but
then I have tried to list the most memorable one, in no specific order.
If I had to pick up one match or one performance that would definitely be Sachin Tendulkar at Sharjah. This one was an awesome knock. We had to score a specific number of runs to reach the finals and Sachin played a blinder of an innings. He simply bludgeoned the Australian bowlers, especially the Australian bowlers. What made the knock even more interesting was the commentary by Tony Greig. It was like the icing on the cake/ “sone pe suhaga”. It was also the first occasion I guess where the match was interrupted by a sandstorm.
The next one
is the Hero cup league match at Eden Gardens (the first match played in
floodlights there) and this time too India needed to win this one to reach the
final. Sachin has mesmerized all of us
by his batting but he has this uncanny knack of breaking partnerships. He could
bowl all sorts of deliveries. Medium pace, leg breaks , off spin. And he used
to move the ball quite a distance. This one over was special of course, South
Africa needed 6 runs from the last over. There were other main stream bowlers
like Srinath and Kapil Dev, but then Azhar gave the ball to Sachin, rather he
offered to bowl (History repeated itself when Dhoni gave the bowl to Joginder
Sharma, Can’t compare the two but an odd decision none the less). Run out, 0, 0, 0,1, 1. India win! True hero of the Hero cup!
The next
one is an interesting one and I doubt if many will remember this one. This was
the Titan cup in 1996, a tri-series between South Africa, Australia and India
just after the 1996 world cup. India played Australia at Bangalore and we were
47/4 chasing 216 (back then anything above 200 was a decent target). We did not have cable back then , I remember watching most of these 1993- 1996 wala matches at our neighbor’s place. This one I
watched with my family at home as we had got our own TV by then. Earlier the TV
coverage was not as statistics savvy as now and they did not show all stats at
all times like now. So I and my dad has this habit of calculating the required
run rate at the end of every over. We never used the calculator but we did all
the calculations on a slate and pencil (That helped me my math classes
eventually!). It used to be a fun family thing. Coming back to the match, as
always Sachin anchored the innings but then after he was out there were very
little hopes of India winning (which was the case during most of the matches at
that time.) But then Javagal Srinath (30 of 23) and Anil Kumble (16 of 19) were
the unexpected heroes who won the match for India. The visual of Kumble’s mom
cheering every run in the spectators is something I vividly remember.
The next is
Ajay Jadeja’s blitzkrieg 25 ball 45 against Pakistan in the quarter final of the 1996 world
cup.
There is
the other match of this world cup which we all remember but we wish we forgot.
The semifinal against which turned ugly because of the spectators and had to be abandoned. All of us still remember, Vinod Kambli
crying as he walked off the ground
Another
special ground was Toronto and that was the series I used to look forward to. The surprise package there was Sourav Ganguly who with his medium
pacers was quite successful at this ground.
Irfan
Pathan bowling against Pakistan was a pleasure to watch. The way he swung the
ball was brilliant. His hat-trick in the first over of this test match was very special. Just watch the Younis Khan getting bowled.
Natwest
Final against England!
The T20
triumph! I remember watching this at the KEM Naigaon Boy’s hostel. The atmosphere
in that small TV room was simply electric. There were people dancing stripping
and throwing all sorts of things here and there with excitement. It was the
last over, Misbah after doing all the hard work committed suicide and Joginder
Sharma was the unlikely her. Dhoni’s Midas touch had just begun!
Yuvraj and his six sixes!
India vs
Pakistan 2003 ! Who can forget the way
Sehwag and Sachin butchered the star Pakistani bowling line up (Wasim Akram,
Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akhtar)
2011 World Cup. I was at some conference and was not able to catch the match during the day. We were at the ITC Maratha ,Andheri. The conference got over at 8 and there was no way that we could watch the match if we travelled back. So we crash into this restaurant there where they were playing it on a huge screen and request them if we could watch the match. We ended up cheering, shouting and chanting “India! India!!” with random corporate guys at the restaurant as India triumphed. What followed that victory was even more crazy. People were on streets till late night carrying the national flag. Some of us even managed to gate crash Wankhede that night. Only to be beaten by the police but then that’s how crazy it gets.
There are a very few recent ones in the list. I don’t think that Indians have made a better comeback than this one, especially while defending a total. South Africa were placed comfortably at 188-1 and ended up losing the game (Losing a game from a comfortable position is India's forte but there are exceptions when tables turn). The brilliant catch was Yuvraj was the thing that triggered the downfall of the Chokers.
The
follow-on triumph at Eden Gardens! The Dravid-Laxman partnership was not the
only special thing in this test match. Watching Bhajji bowl during the entire series was simply
superb. With the ball doing so much and men in catching position around the batsman, every ball seemed to be
exciting.
There are
many more matches. Thanks to these great players for making our childhood special,
especially Sachin Tendulkar. There is always the never ending debate how he
played for stats and he didn’t win India matches. To silence the critics 53 out
of his 100 international centuries have come in winning matches (the only one
with a better record being Ricky Pointing with 55 centuries). Anyhow its not
his talent on field that I admire but the efforts he took to get there. The
hardworking gentlemen that he is (remember he walked off when he was caught
behind at Sharjah, even before the umpire declared him out). He has achieved so
much and yet he so humble. His autobiography, ‘Playing it my way’ is an excellent
read.
These days especially
with the IPL fever, there is oversaturation of cricket I feel. I don’t follow
it as regularly as I used to do. But then still there are ardent fans of the
game. The fans of the NEW generation. Cricket is still the most religiously followed
religion in India, but then probably it has lost some of its most worshipped deities.
Cricket will no longer be the same for me as it was back then when Sachin-Dravid-Laxman-Saurav-Kumble-Srinath
represented India.
