Milestone around our necks

Karun Nair, the first Indian triple centurion in over a decade, treated the Chennai crowd to an array of delectable strokes — three powerful, near-identical sweeps off Liam Dawson, a Laxman-esque square drive off Ben Stokes and a stunning upper-cut that sailed over the slip cordon for a six. However, the shot that took him from 299 to 303 was the product of a somewhat scrambled mind; the half-hoick, half-cut was ungainly and risk-fraught — not all that far from the leaping Alastair Cook. Had Cook managed to get his fingers underneath that ball, India would’ve become the only side to feature a 199 (KL Rahul’s heroic innings on the third day) and a 299 on the same scorecard. And what would that have done to the team’s morale? Remember Rahul’s distraught face, as he slumped down to his haunches, shortly after ballooning a simple catch to Joe Root on 199?

Remember, also, that captain Virat Kohli had initially wanted to declare about 45 minutes before this moment, when Nair had just reached 250 and the lead had crossed 200. It was then that Nair cut loose and raced from 250 to 300 in 30-odd deliveries. Kohli later clarified that while the prospect of the youngster reaching 300 was a factor in the delayed declaration, Nair’s last-session plundering ensured that England would have absolutely no chance of making India bat again.

For a while, though, the amount of flak Kohli was copping on fan forums was remarkable. The narrative was a familiar one for cricket lovers: Indians do not have ‘team spirit’, we place too high a premium on personal milestones, this is why we will never dominate consistently like the Australians, and so on. This is a captain who has not lost a single Test since August 2015. After Ravindra Jadeja completed the demolition job with seven wickets on day five, there was no questioning the declaration, of course. But had Moeen Ali’s brain-freeze of a stroke not triggered off an English collapse, you can be sure that the knives would’ve been out, despite the emphatic 3-0 scoreline.

Why do fans still believe in this mythical Indian trait of being ‘selfish’? To be more precise, why do we think that we are any more or less selfish than your average Aussie, Englishman, or South African? Is it because of all those centuries Tendulkar scored in losing causes? (Hint: Occam’s razor will tell you the simpler explanation for this — Tendulkar, being a monstrous ton-plunderer, is likely to end up on any list involving international centuries.) As a recent fact-checking article published by cricketcountry.com revealed, Australia, England and Pakistan have declared immediately after a batsman’s milestone more number of times than India has. And yet, not just fans but cricketers, too, have bought this story at face value.

In January, full-time blabbermouth and T20 fluke-meister Glenn Maxwell took a cheap shot at the Indian team, claiming that Australia’s success against them (4-1 in the one-day series) could be explained by the Indian batsmen — Kohli was the example he cited — being “milestone-driven”. Maxwell might as well have waved a red rag in front of a bull. In the week after that comment, the Indian skipper embarked on the purple patch of his life, and Australia was the first team to suffer at his hands, losing three matches on the trot; Kohli made blistering half-centuries in all of them. He would go on to make more than 2,000 international runs in 2016, including seven centuries, three of them double tons, like the 235 that buried England a fortnight ago in Mumbai.

Recently, when asked the secret of India’s dream run in Tests, Kohli said that the team had managed to keep “personal milestones out of the system”. The captain’s choice of words was hardly a coincidence: not only does Kohli remember Maxwell’s taunt, he also remembers the decades where the Indians were perceived as being likely to achieve personal glory, but stopping well short of becoming a threatening unit. Kohli did not want to upset the poker table — he wished to send it flying across the room, the guests shrieking, scrambling, howling, and getting out of the way for dear life.

And what of Maxwell the team player? Since January, he has found himself out of the playing eleven in both Tests (where he was never an automatic selection) and one-day internationals (where he always was). From targeting opponents, he has segued smoothly to slagging off teammates. His comments against Matthew Wade, his Victoria captain and Australia teammate, did not go down well with captain Steve Smith and coach Darren Lehmann. Australia had just been hammered — that too at home, and by a South African side missing Dale Steyn and AB De Villiers, their premier bowler and batsman, respectively. Maxwell suggested that perhaps the management had erred by not giving him a shot in the Test team. The answer Maxwell received was nothing short of poetic justice.

Lehmann said, “Are you going to pick a bloke without a 100 for the last two years?” He then promptly dropped Maxwell from the one-day international eleven as well, replacing him with Travis Head. Head went on to smash an aggressive 57 (32) as Australia defeated New Zealand rather easily. In the next game, Head picked up two crucial wickets and scored 37 to boot.

It seems Maxwell will have plenty of time to think about the significance of three figures, as he continues to warm the bench.

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