As you reach Leeds, you feel the temperature drop a couple of notches below that in London. There is a certain quiet about the place, and even the malls aren’t really crowded. It is a cold welcome of sorts. On the 20th, it is this challenge that awaits India. The pitch curator, in an exclusive chat with RevSportz, has already sounded the bugle, saying it will be a green wicket and batting will be challenging.
In all of this, the Indian batters can surely look back to 2002 and seek inspiration. The new millennium had brought new promise, and in the summer of 2002 in England, “Team India” witnessed a new resurgence. Led by Sourav Ganguly, India had two of her all-time best batsmen in Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid, two world-class spinners in Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh, and fast bowlers like Zaheer Khan in their ranks.
In the words of Tendulkar, as described in Playing it My Way, “At Headingley, 22-26 August 2002, the wicket was very damp at the start of the match. Despite this, however, we decided to bat first after winning the toss…Sehwag got out early but then Rahul Dravid and Sanjay Bangar, our makeshift opener for the game, put together an excellent partnership that swung the momentum our way. Batting wasn’t easy on a fresh wicket and both of them played exceptionally well leaving a lot of balls outside the off stump.
“In this innings, Flintoff bowled a hostile spell to me at the start and I just had to knuckle down and play him off. Quality swing is difficult to negotiate and I knew I had to be watchful. Sourav was batting with me at the other end and was going after Ashley Giles who was once again bowling the defensive line to me outside my leg stump. We shifted gears in the third session of the day and launched into the English bowlers who were gradually starting to get tired. At the end of the day, I was unbeaten on 185 and we had already put up a mammoth score on the board. We could not lose the Test match from there on and our bowlers had loads of runs to play with and put the English batsmen under pressure. Finally, we declared our first innings at 628-8, one of our highest ever scores on English soil.
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“Thereafter, the bowlers took over and from the start of the English innings managed to put them under pressure. Kumble and Harbhajan bowled beautifully in tandem in not so helpful conditions and both picked up three wickets each in the first innings and we enforced the follow on… When Andrew Flintoff got out for a pair caught by Dravid at slips off Zaheer Khan, we knew we were within striking distance of a famous victory. Anil did the rest of the job picking up four wickets and we bowled England out for 309 winning the match by an innings and 44 runs.”
Ask Ganguly, and he will also tell you batting first was one of the most challenging calls he has ever taken.
That’s what it will boil down to. Self-belief, courage and the ability to stay patient and look ugly. If ShubmanGill and company can do that, 2002 could well be revisited here at Headingley.