Ind vs Aus: May this tour provide a hearthstone for Indian cricket

Rahul Dravid, Nehru and Bradman, Greg Chappell and Ganguly, history and cricket, Australia and India, cricket and captaincy, truth and consequences, insult and injuries – we have it all, as the series is underway in only six days… A very dear friend of mine – a true cricket fan, whose left-arm spin and right-arm memories make for many a fine evening of tales and talk told me as Greg Chappell made his inglorious exit from Indian cricket, that one day the Aussie would take his revenge, when we toured Down Under next. Sunil, from Nagpur to nasty, you have seen it all, and now we have Sourav Ganguly playing his own role in this Aussie assault on our cricketing psyche. But, just maybe, the truth coming out after all these years is healthy – just as Dravid said so much in that wonderful speech of his, maybe Ganguly’s biting tongue will clean out the festering poison still lingering, and make all of us realise that to play for India in this most beautiful of games can be as difficult off the pitch as on, and that if our players are left alone to do what they do best, with management providing support and planning and encouragement rather than politics and greed and ego, we can truly be the best in the world. [caption id=“attachment_160535” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Rahul Dravid, Gregg Chappell and Sourav Ganguly during a training session in 2007. Reuters”]  [/caption] In Dravid’s articulate, almost poetic speech, it was fascinating to hear him speak about KN Prabhu, a name and a legend which has become almost as outdated as a ‘rest-day’ in Test cricket. But Prabhu wrote about cricket in the rich vein of his ‘guru’, Neville Cardus, and his putting Nehru and Bradman together as champions of the fight against British imperialism may have been stretching both history and the truth a little, but it is a fascinating thought, and is such a fine insight into both the mind of Prabhu, and the place that cricket once held in the identity of a nation. Dravid also spoke of how the Tour Down Under of 1947 was India’s first tour as a free country – another fascinating thought – and it takes one back to India’s next tour, twenty years later, when Prasanna was deemed the best off-spinner in the world, and Pataudi on one-leg and with one-eye flayed the Aussies, and Jaisimha came out from India to perform immediate heroics on the pitch, and then the team went on to New Zealand to record the first overseas tour victory in the history of Indian Test cricket – and how this tour and this victory were the stepping stones to the amazing year of 1971. Pataudi would be gone, of course, and Wadekar would be the winner, but that time down under in 1967 – 68 was the hearthstone upon which the future of Indian cricket would be built. I remember following that tour on my transistor as a group of us toured South India during our winter school holidays – romance and regrets and early morning commentary made for a heady and sensual time, and Borde and Surti and Bedi all made cricket-listening a poetic pleasure. May this tour, all of 44 years later, also provide a hearthstone for Indian cricket – and for Test cricket as an art. May Dravid’s word of warning and warming be heeded, and may the ghosts of Cardus and Prabhu awake to witness cricket of the highest quality and quantity. And may Chappell and Ganguly both realise that the game is about them, and yet so much bigger than them.