Nagpur mugging won’t win hearts

SA's Faf du Plessis plays a shot during the third Test against India in Nagpur. The author writes that India tipped the scales heavily in their favour in this Test series. Picture: Amit Dave

SA's Faf du Plessis plays a shot during the third Test against India in Nagpur. The author writes that India tipped the scales heavily in their favour in this Test series. Picture: Amit Dave

Published Nov 29, 2015

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Jo’burg, Joburg, Joburg… If the city of gold was a person, its ears would be ringing now, from the number of times India’s ace spinner, Ravichandran Ashwin has mentioned it over the course of a series being played out on the other side of the world.

“This is not Joburg. We didn’t complain in Joburg.”

“South Africa do what they want in Joburg, and no one says anything.”

The rhetoric has been as consistently nagging as Ashwin’s line and length throughout his match-winning exploits. In fact, for a man thriving in the present, it is hard to understand why he looks back so often, and so ruefully at the events of The Wanderers Test, back in December 2013.

For one thing, everyone’s immediate recollection of that Test is that every result was still possible going into the last hour of the fifth day. It was gripping, intense and a fine test of mettle for combatants and captains. There were runs, and wickets, resistance and mutual respect. So, it is a world away from the current India-South Africa scrap, which has tapped out at the third day, tops.

That Wanderers affair – eventually drawn – is also fondly remembered for fine hundreds by Virat Kohli (who added 96 in the second dig), Cheteshwar Pujara, and then Faf du Plessis and AB de Villiers on a riveting final day.

Ashwin played too, though his figures of 0/25 and 0/83 suggested he had a bit-part, even on the final day.

That lack of penetration saw him dropped from the Indian side for a year, which clearly still rankles with the off-spinner.

It does seem a bit of an over-reaction, though, considering that India’s other skills – including fine stroke-play, swing bowling from Zaheer Khan and Mohammed Shami, and sheer pace from Ishant Sharma – were still on display, and more than matched South Africa.

Here in Nagpur, all those traits have just about been chucked aside as conditions narrowed it down to a shoot-out between spinners.

India’s lot, led by Ashwin, have trumped South Africa, and a series between two fine cricketing nations, blessed with many of the best bowlers and batsmen in modern cricket, has been decided on the basis of a singular discipline of a multi-faceted sport.

Kohli, bristling with indignation and bursting with pride, has insisted he doesn’t give a hoot about batsmen’s averages, as long as his side can take 20 wickets. It’s a shame the emphasis to win has come at the cost of every other skill India have at their disposal.

They have the fast bowlers, the batsmen and, of course, the range of spinners to have probably defeated South Africa anyway, in what could have been a series for the ages, much like their defeat of the all-conquering Australian side in 2001.

This series victory, historic as it was for Kohli and his team, will always have a tinge of regret, because they tipped the scales heavily in their favour.

They ensured victory instead of pursuing it, and one wonders if they will win hearts in the same manner as their predecessors.

VVS Laxman’s iconic 281 against Australia’s best, on a turning wicket, is ingrained in the memory of every Indian batsman. It was everything that dreams are made of, and it was borne of skill. Incidentally, Harbhajan Singh’s off-spin took a packet of wickets in that series, too, but they were not because of dust bowls.

The West Indies of the 1980s and 1990s, the millennial Australians, and the South Africans whose travelling colours were finally lowered this week, after nine years of foreign glory, all didn’t need convenient conditions to conquer their competitors; they simply found a way to get it done, through class and character, home or away.

The result was that their post-match tea parties were not spent explaining and defending their actions, as Kohli had to do on Saturday.

Nagpur; it’s no Joburg, for sure. And yet, 11 South Africans were mugged here this week.

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