You ask any Indian above the age of 35 which was the greatest Test series of all time, and the chances are that they won’t even need to think twice. England and Australia may point, with some justification, to the epic 2005 Ashes, but for those that follow Indian cricket, no experience will come close to Australia’s visit in 2000-01.
Steve Waugh’s side were called The Invincibles for a reason, having racked up 15 Test wins on the bounce. That became 16 inside three days in Mumbai, despite Sachin Tendulkar playing two of the best knocks of his illustrious career. That was an Indian team in transition, less than a year on from a hugely damaging match-fixing scandal, and under a captain, Sourav Ganguly, who was still finding his feet as a leader.
The history books may tell you that everything changed on the fourth day at Eden Gardens, when VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid added 336 without too many alarms, but in reality, the torchpaper for India’s defiance was lit much earlier. On the eve of the Test, an Ian Chappell column in Calcuta’s Telegraph newspaper included some thinly veiled personal barbs at Ganguly, the hometown hero.
The Indian camp, which included several players who had grown up listening to Chappell’s commentary, and who had great respect for his cricketing acumen, was incensed. A younger set that included Harbhajan Singh swore by their captain, and Chappell’s comments, which related to matters off the field, served to charge them up.
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By the final afternoon, with Australia chasing an improbable 384 for victory, the atmosphere, both in the middle and up in the stands, was unlike anything a cricket venue had seen before. Picture La Bombanera in Buenos Aires the day of the derby against River Plate, and you’ll begin to get some idea of the noise and fervour.
With over 80,000 having crammed in, and Australia relatively safe at 161-3 at tea, the decibel level suddenly rose. In the years since, several Australian stalwarts who played that match have admitted that the tidal wave of human emotion intimidated them. By the time umpire SK Bansal handed down a dubious leg-before decision against Glenn McGrath, the Eden Gardens roof was ready to be blown off.
Most of that week, and the one that followed in Chennai, where India clinched the series with a nail-biting two-wicket win, people on the street and at home could talk of little else. Ganguly’s captaincy, Laxman’s batting and Harbhajan’s doosra trumped even the saas-bahu shows as the country’s leading obsession. If you didn’t live through it, it will be hard to fathom just how invested the entire country was in a Test series.
We saw glimpses of that again in 2017, when Virat Kohli stopped just short of accusing Steve Smith of cheating in the Bangalore Test. Again, India had been stung by a reverse in the first match, and when Australia took charge in Bangalore as well, India needed something to shake them out of their stupor.
Kohli’s angry-young-man captaincy provided it, backed up by some stunning ‘dry’ bowling that gave Australia just 197 runs on the second day. By the time R Ashwin bowled India to victory on the fourth afternoon, the Chinnaswamy Stadium was a tinderbox. It wasn’t quite as loud as Eden Gardens 2001, but each of the 40,000 that trooped in likely went back home with sore throats. The IPL may have been nearly a decade old by then, but that ill-tempered series got India talking about Test cricket again.
And now, we have Bazball. Whatever you think of it, or its suitability for Indian conditions, the fact is that the Stokes-McCullum template has created endless debates – in the stands, in TV studios and at tea stalls across the land. Again, England’s victory in the first Test helped, as did the ferocity of India’s Jasprit Bumrah-led response.
Every few years, we’re told that Test cricket is on life support and dying. Then, along comes a series like 2001 or 2017 or this one. It draws in a new generation of fans, and teaches them that no other format – perhaps no other sport – can build a narrative quite as complex and compelling as Test cricket.
England may well go on to lose this series 4-1. Or they may not. The result is incidental. That India is so enthralled by a Test series is what matters. And for that, we owe both Stokes and McCullum a big thank you.
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