Boria Majumdar at The Oval in London
England had raced away to 109-1 at lunch, and India fans at The Oval were all subdued. In fact, you could feel the pain. A few came to our show and some even asked if we expected a fightback. On the show, many said the game was over and England would get 500. When I answered that this was Test cricket, and one session didn’t define it, I was met with the choicest abuse. The thing is, none of them had taken into account Mohammed Siraj.
He has bowled more than 155 overs in the series, and yet, every ball bowled is all heart. You can fault him on execution at times, but you can never fault him for effort and hard work.
With Siraj, you always get 100 percent. That’s him. He might lose, but in terms of effort, there will never be any less push. And that’s what makes him special. He draws our attention to the fact that there is so much more to sport than winning or losing. That one team will win on a given day and one will lose, despite their best efforts, is only a surface reality. What is at times more important than the winning or losing, stuff that we don’t often see, may well convey the true significance of sport. The success of Siraj is such a story.
Here is a young man from Hyderabad who lost his father, but was unable to come back to his family. In grief, he was trying to bring smiles to millions of faces with his teammates cheering him on in Australia. He wasn’t Muslim or Hindu. He was Indian. This was the India of our dreams turning into reality. This was an India of hope and an India that dared to dream. Siraj isn’t the most eloquent. He need not be. What he is and will be is what our country is all about. Hard work and more hard work, with dignity and integrity, and the realisation that such effort does pay off. It did one more time this afternoon at The Oval.
Siraj is the perfect underdog story, which we so identify with in India, and that’s what makes him relevant. He has failed on multiple occasions in the past just like so many of us. But he dared to push and eventually win. Can he do it again? A little more discipline and self-restraint, and he could indeed win the battle one final time here in London. And if Siraj can, India can.
Take the eight-over spell that he bowled between lunch and tea. First, it was Ollie Pope. He called for the DRS, and it was taken in the very last second. The conviction was what forced Shubman Gill to take it. And it’s the conviction that defines Siraj. Pope was followed by Joe Root, and thereafter it was Jacob Bethel. It was a spell that, all of a sudden, changed everything. And it meant India were back and the game was wide open. Siraj has to do it one final time in the second innings. It will be a fitting finale to what has been a lion-hearted effort from a tireless performer.
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