A Song of Blood and Victory: The 2008 India-Australia Perth Test

It was correct once said that cricket is a great leveller and about test cricket, it’s not inaccurate to say that the format is almost akin to life. In life, there are battles that are to be fought, like in test cricket, but very often, we are able to emerge victorious from those. Also, like test cricket, life too at times gives us the opportunity to come back from adversity and become a champion. The Third Test of 2008 Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia at Perth was just such an example of this.

The Perth Test itself and the series as a whole, was hanging under a dark cloud, after the ugly scenes witnessed in the New Year’s Test at Sydney, which became infamous for the “Monkeygate” saga, where Harbhajan Singh was accused of having racially abused Andrew Symonds and in a hearing before match referee Mike Proctor, he had received a 3-test match ban, which had infuriated the Indian team, which was already incensed at the atrocious umpiring they had been subjected to in that test match by the duo of Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson. The subsequent press conference had seen the then-Indian test captain, Anil Kumble truly rise to the occasion and he quoted the venerable former Australian captain Bill Woodfull by saying about this test, “Only one team played in the spirit of the game”, echoing Woodfull’s words during the infamous Bodyline series of 1932-33. With the tensions running really high, the ICC took the step of removing Steve Bucknor from standing in the third test at Perth, allowing Harbhajan Singh & India to appeal against the ban with an appeals hearing scheduled at the end of the final test at Adelaide and then also sending senior Match Referee and former Sri Lankan cricketer Ranjan Madugalle to Perth in order to diffuse tensions between the two sides and he brought the two captains, Anil Kumble and Ricky Ponting for a peacekeeping talk. But despite all the show of the handshake between them, it was quite clear that the Third Test would be no less intense and possibly ill-tempered, than the Sydney Test.

Australia were on the verge of breaking their record of 17 consecutive test victories and now playing in the ground which is regarded as the graveyard of Asian teams over the years, Ponting decided to go for an all-out pace attack by including express pacer Shaun Tait for spinner Brad Hogg, while opener Matthew Hayden was out of the test due to injury and that resulted in a test debut for Chris Rogers, who would go on to attain success only post-2013, when he was recalled to the test side. India decided to reply in kind, with the under-fire Harbhajan Singh sitting out this test match for the left-arm pace-bowling all-rounder Irfan Pathan and a woefully out-of-form Yuvraj Singh being dropped in favour of maverick opener Virender Sehwag.

India won the toss and elected to bat first on a typical hard Perth wicket and Wasim Jaffer walked out to open the innings with Virender Sehwag and for the first time in the series, India got off to an assured start, with the opening pair raising a 57 run stand for the first wicket before both Sehwag and then Jaffer were dismissed in the space of just 2 runs being added to the total for 29 runs and 16 runs respectively. This brought the pair of Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar to the crease, each of whom were enjoying contrasting run of form in the series. Where Dravid was struggling to find his touch after being forced to open in the first two tests, but had a 53 and 38 in the Sydney Test while coming into Perth, Sachin walked into the WACA Ground in some sensational form, with a attractive half-century in the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne and then a customary daddy hundred, 154* to be precise in Sydney, so there certainly was a degree of confidence to his approach to the crease and the situation at hand, which read 59/2.

Immediately, the pair settled down into their groove, with Dravid regaining some of his fluency back with his customary cuts and flicks, while displaying his trademark forward defence, but Tendulkar was looking quite imperious, as he figured out the bouncy nature of the pitch at the WACA and employed the uppercut over the slips cordon to counter the bounce being generated by the Australian pace quartet of Brett Lee, Mitchell Johnson, Stuart Clark and Shaun Tait. One uppercut though, drew serious gasps of admiration from everyone on the ground, the bowler, fielders, spectators, umpires, everyone. Sachin was batting in his 30s and while facing an express bouncer from Brett Lee delivered at 144.8 kph aimed right at his throat, Sachin swayed out of the line and looked like he had ducked under that bouncer safely, but at the last moment, he adjusted himself by lifting his bat over his head like a periscope of a submarine and guided the ball over the slip cordon for a one-bounce four, which drew gasps of sheer admiration from the on-air commentator Mark Nicholas, who marvelled at the sheer technique and awareness that Sachin displayed while playing that shot, while having his eyes on the ball from the moment of its release to the time he saw it off his bat to the boundary.

Both Dravid & Sachin had passed their individual half-centuries and had taken the team to a score of 199/2 when Sachin, batting on a stroke-filled 71, played all over a Brett Lee delivery and the ball struck him high on the pad and to Sachin’s surprise, the umpire at the other end, Asad Rauf made a rare on-field error and ruled him out, despite the fact that the ball was going over the line of the stumps. That brought Sourav Ganguly on the crease, but he didn’t last long and was superbly caught at backward point by Michael Hussey off Mitchell Johnson for just 9 and India, from 199/2 were now 214/4. VVS Laxman, thus, stepped forward and with his old mate, started resettling the innings and raised a handy 64 runs for the 5^th wicket, when Rahul Dravid played an uncharacteristically ugly cross-bat hoick that found the fielder at cover off the bowling of Andrew Symonds and departed agonisingly, just 7 runs short of a century for 93 and India, at 278/5 were now in a battle to put up a competitive total in the first innings and those hopes were further hit when Laxman departed just 6 runs after Dravid’s dismissal, playing a similarly bad stroke off Brett Lee and India were now in a spot of bother at 284/6, when Irfan Pathan walked into bat and played a superb hand batting at no.8 and along with MS Dhoni, moved the score to 328 when Dhoni departed for 19 off Stuart Clark and then the Indian innings folded really quickly, with Pathan for a vital 28, captain Anil Kumble and pacer RP Singh departing in successive overs and India’s first innings total stood at a competitive 330.

Australia’s first innings started off on a rough note, as Irfan, clearly buoyed by his batting success, snapped up the openers Phil Jaques and Chris Rogers with his famed swing in play. Then RP Singh jumped on board immediately and sent back Michael Hussey for a duck, having him caught behind and reducing Australia for 14/3. Their troubles were further exacerbated when Aussie captain Ricky Ponting was dismissed by Ishant Sharma through a beautiful delivery that took Ponting’s outside edge, after bowling him a couple of deliveries which Ponting only uncomfortably kept out, and Australia were in some trouble now with the score reading 43/4 and it soon became 62/5 when Sharma snapped up Michael Clarke for 23, being caught-behind by Dhoni.

This crisis brought in Andrew Symonds and ‘keeper-bat Adam Gilchrist to the crease and they went about counterattacking the Indian bowlers fearlessly. They hit boundaries with absolute impunity and spared no bowler, even Anil Kumble wasn’t spared of their fury. In just 17 overs, the pair had put up a 100 runs together and were putting the Indian bowling line-up under a lot of pressure, but Kumble made history by becoming the first Indian bowler to take 600 test wickets, when he broke the Symonds-Gilchrist partnership by having Symonds edge Kumble to slips where Rahul Dravid expectedly took a regulation catch. That wicket saw Jumbo erupt in the most joyous and animated of celebrations that one’s everyone witnessed from him & was certainly a reward for his dogged persistence over the years gone by. With that wicket falling at the score of 163-6, the Australians were bundled out in a thrilling burst by RP Singh, who picked up 3 of the final four wickets to fall with Kumble taking the final wicket & the Australian innings in the first ask was wrapped up at 212, which gave India an invaluable 118 run lead to take into the second innings. RP Singh topped the bowling figures for India with a stupendous 4/68 with Irfan Pathan, Ishant Sharma & Anil Kumble each picking up 2 wickets.

When the Indian team walked out to bat in the second innings, the expectation from the Jaffer-Sehwag opening pair was that they needed to lay down a base for ensuring that a competitive target could be set for Australia to chase in the 4^th innings. The pair did raise 45 runs at a relatively quick pace in 9.3 overs, when Jaffer steered a Stuart Clark delivery straight into the hands of Michael Hussey for a score of 11, while Sehwag & the night-watchman Irfan Pathan closed out the 2^nd day in a flurry of boundaries, with India’s overall lead now standing at 170 runs & the scoreboard reading 52/1.

The third day brought with it a middle order collapse as Sehwag fell to Clark as well, for a rapid 43 off just 61 deliveries, while Brett Lee rocked the Indians further with the twin strikes of the first inning’s run-getters Dravid & Tendulkar for a score of 3 & 13 respectively and the left-arm pacer Mitchell Johnson took out Ganguly, with the score & the innings now finely poised at 125/5, which was when Laxman joined Pathan at the crease, who was looking in a really fine nick. Unfortunately though for Pathan, his stay at the crease was terminated by Clark for a superb 46 & now India was at 160/6 with a lead of 278 runs on them. Laxman then went about hurting the Aussies like was his wont in their own fort, with a range of delectable flicks & drives, while he received admirable support at the other end from Dhoni, who scored a very patient 38 & pacer RP Singh, who played with a resolutely straight bat for a critical 30 while batting at no.10. Laxman would go on to score a stunning & a potentially match-winning 79, as he steered India through to 294 all-out & helping set a target of 413 runs for Australia to chase down in the 4^th innings of the game. The pick of the bowlers would prove to be Stuart Clark, who bowled really well for his 4/61 & was supported by Brett Lee who picked 3/54 & Andrew Symonds, who picked up 2 late wickets for figures of 2/36.

A score of 413 was going to always be a tricky chase for Australia, which became even trickier when Irfan Pathan, who now quite clearly was in a great space, took out both the Aussie openers Phil Jacques & Chris Rogers inside the first 10 overs of the Australian chase & reduce them to 43/2, before Ponting & Hussey rolled off a streak of boundaries to end Day 3 on 65/2, with Australia still 348 runs away from the target.

Day 4 arrived with the expectation that this would be the last day of the game due to the 4^th innings already in motion & that a result was a definitive possibility on this day. While Ponting & Hussey kept getting runs from every other bowler in the morning, a very intriguing contest was starting to brew up in the cauldron of the WACA. A 19-year-old rookie Indian fast bowler going by the name of Ishant Sharma, who was playing just his 4^th test match was starting to generate appreciable pace, bounce and swing from a conducive pitch & was repeatedly putting the batsman and no less a batsman than the Aussie captain Ricky Ponting, who was in his thirteenth year of what was turning out to be a glorious international career and was being regarded as one of the greatest to have taken up the bat in the history of the game. Sharma kept targeting that off-stump channel and was gaining appreciable bounce and movement off the pitch, which was reducing one of the most impactful tunes of test batting to a mere funeral dirge. Ponting was struggling to even play Ishant off the square, due to the height at which he was hurling down at him & kept getting chopped into half by either the delivery that was coming back into him or was left wafting at thin air by the one going away.

For 7 consecutive overs that morning, Ishant was constantly bothering Ponting, who was neither able to play him away or get any kind of stroke-play going against him. After completing his 7^th over of the morning, captain Anil Kumble was thinking of taking Ishant out of the attack to allow him some rest after a relentless but a probably fruitless pursuit of Ponting, when Ishant’s Delhi captain & senior Virender Sehwag told Kumble about Ishant’s appetite for bowling long spells and Kumble in these exact words asked Ishant “Ek aur karega?” (Will you bowl one more?) and Ishant responded with just two words “Haan karoonga” (Yes, I will). Thus, Ishant was given the chance to have another go at the Australian captain who was constantly on the tenterhooks of returning to the pavilion while facing the young lanky Indian pacer. With the first ball of his new over, Ishant finally delivered the moment which instantly warmed the cockles of almost every Indian cricket fan & purists alike across the globe, by bowling a perfect delivery in that “corridor of uncertainty”, which sucked Ponting into edging the ball straight into the waiting hands of the super-safe Rahul Dravid in the first slip. That brought about a raucous celebration in the Indian team on the ground, as Ishant was justly rewarded for bowling a spell that only an innocent child who has the power to not be bothered about the vagaries of life could ever dream of.

Ponting’s dismissal reduced Australia to 117/3, which brought out Michael Clarke to the crease to join Hussey and they immediately set into trying to put together a commanding stand & they were starting to do just that, before RP Singh decide to rudely interject himself in this innings & bowl a corker at Hussey, which thudded into his pads right in line with the middle stump & had him play all over that incoming delivery from over the stumps & umpire Asad Rauf raised his finger, to send Hussey back for 46 & reduce Australia to 159/4. That wicket drew Andrew Symonds to the crease, but he didn’t stay long to bother the scorers as Kumble bowled a “Jumbo Special” at a surprisingly high pace of 102 kph, which stunned Symonds into submission & turned him into Kumble’s sitting duck in front of the stumps & umpire Billy Bowden had his crooked finger up in a jiffy to further reduce the Aussies to 177/5.

This now led to Adam Gilchrist walking out to the crease for the last time at his home ground & immediately he started to set about disrupting the bowling attack alongside Clarke and in just around 11 overs or so, the pair ratcheted up a 50 run stand, taking the score to 227/5, and many could’ve been forgiven if Gilly’s mood that day wasn’t reminding them of his epic blindsiding knock of 149* against Pakistan at Hobart in 1999, when he along with Justin Langer, whisked off an epic chase of slightly similar proportions (369 runs to be precise) against the Pakistani attack containing the likes of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Shoaib Akhtar, Saqlain Mushtaq & Azhar Mahmood. With ideas fast running out for Kumble, he decided to pull off a trump card off his sleeves, by introducing the part-time off-spin of Virender Sehwag into the attack. The change worked a treat as Sehwag, bowling from over-the-wicket to Gilchrist, got a ball to drift in from outside leg stump & getting Gilchrist to play all over an ugly sweep shot to be clean bowled around his legs & delivering a fatal blow to Australia’s chances to go 17 test wins in a row. There was double delight for Sehwag & India in just another couple of overs as Sehwag got Brett Lee to be caught off a bat-pad take from VVS Laxman at silly point to further crash the Aussies down to 229/7.

With Australia now starting to stare down the barrel, left-arm pacer Mitchell Johnson walked out to bat & with Michael Clarke still at the crease, battling it out for a superb half-century, started to pose a few questions for the Indian bowlers, but before this pair could further trouble the Indian bowlers, Anil Kumble delivered the good ol’ dummy trick by luring Clarke out of the crease with a delivery that spun away & across Clarke, who was placed in a no-man’s land position & was easily stumped out by Dhoni for a fabulous battling knock of 81 and Australia were now in abyss with 253/8, with 160 still to go for them to get 17 in a row.

Stuart Clark emerged out of the pavilion & the pair of Johnson-Clark started to attack the Indian bowlers from a nothing-to-lose position, with a flurry of fours & sixes now emerging from their bats. India’s old frailties with lower-order batsmen hurting them in test cricket was starting to come into stark focus yet again, with the pair raising a rapid 73 run partnership in just about 13 overs and Clark was hammering the ball around the park at a nearly run-a-ball rate when Irfan Pathan finally broke the partnership by angling a delivery across Clark, who edged it behind to Dhoni, for a blistering hand of 32 off just 35 deliveries, but Australia were now only 1 wicket away from seeing India break their winning streak for a second time in 7 years. Shaun Tait came to bat & supported Johnson just about enough for him to score his maiden test half-century, before RP Singh bowled a searing yorker to Tait, which crashed into the stumps and Australia were all-out for 340, handing India a historic 72-run victory at the ground regarded as the “Asian Test side graveyard” & the entire Indian team burst out in the most joyous celebrations of an overseas test victory that they’ve ever achieved. The sight of the beleaguered Harbhajan Singh waving the Indian tricolour with a furious pride on his face was a signal of the resolve that this Indian team had now built up & just how much this win meant to every single player out there that day. It was Irfan Pathan who picked up the Man-of-the-Match award for his superb all-round contributions in the test match with figures of 2/63 and 3/54 with the ball in both the innings to go with vital scores of 28 & 46 in both innings at critical junctures & thoroughly justified his inclusion for this test match.

Perth 2008 till date, ranks as one of India’s greatest-ever test match victories on foreign soil, purely because of the background to this game, the manner in which the team was being cornered by the less-than-friendly Australian media in the run-up to the test match & for the manner in which every player in the playing XI put up their hand to contribute in this victory, while also just establishing Kumble firmly in the pantheon of the great statesmen-like Captains of Indian cricket, if that ever needed to be established. This truly was a song of blood & victory thereafter.