Perhaps the gods themselves couldn't bear to see the heart-stopping tension foretold for the last day of the Chennai Test. They therefore broke up the heavens and poured streams of rain on the Chepauk turf so as to make us all abandon the most engrossing Test as a draw -- a hung jury verdict that satisfies no one except the believers in fate and destiny. How cruel even the gods can be!
It was just as well, perhaps, that the rains came.
For a defeat for either of the two teams would not have been just.
Both India and Australia had risen so magnificently from the ashes.
Both had, over four days, defied the tide of the moment with displays of tenacity and skills that make for a great game of cricket.
Some members from each team had toiled unbelievably in mind and body to overcome variously the odds confronting them: imps in the pitch, the broad bats of élan and patience, and the dehydrating heat of Chennai in October.
Yet, the pitch itself was neither an angel nor a devil for the batsmen, with Damien Martyn getting his century on day four.
The match created a new world record -- Shane Warne's haul of the highest number ever of Test wickets. But that our tyro Pathan and tailender Harbhajan hit him for a six showed what a great leveler cricket is when youth and the adventurous spirit decide to make their impress on the scene.
No adventurous spirit in recent times has quite matched that shown by in the Chennai contest by our Virendra Sehwag.
His 155 in the first innings was a combination of the bold, the beautiful and the providential. The man has spunk all right; even in the dying moments of the fourth day, he smote McGrath's new ball for three sparkling boundaries as though the match was to end in another three hours or so.
In contrast was the clever, cultured and neatly harvested 104 of Damien Martyn. These contrasting styles of Sehwag and Martyn showed, yet again, that unlike the bang bang refrain of one-day cricket, a five-day Test match had space for the cultured as well as for the cavalier.
A Test match puts no artificial leash on the spin bowler -- the essential charm of cricket. And so, at Chepauk, Kumble, Harbhajan and Warne gave breathtaking, enticing exhibitions of that art-cum-science which lies all but killed in the one-night stands of 50 overs.
The oohs and the aahs that spinners utter as they beguile their adversary in the air or off the pitch were aplenty in Chennai as the three greats of contemporary cricket turned their arms over hundreds of times in a superb demonstration of physical stamina. And what is one to say of the raw courage that close-in fielders display as they clutch at the flying ball and shout appeals while standing just two handshakes away from the bludgeoning bats?
Thank god, then, that three Australian batsmen and one of ours chose to 'walk' to the dressing room instead of waiting for harassed and hustled decision of the two judges in neck ties -- imagine neck ties in 35 degrees Centigrade with thousands exhaling carbon dioxide from the concrete stands all round. Only the quaint dignity of cricket can impose the 'walk' on the batsmen and the closed collars on the umpires.
As though to match the cricketing virtues of the players, the pitch and the crowds, the two, Sheppard and Koersten, reciprocated with a performance that was truly impeccable.
Test cricket encourages the doggedness of the human spirit. However visually boring the blocking of balls by an obdurate bat may be, Pathan first and Gillespie later showed that a Test match has plenty of room for stodginess too -- that stodginess demanded by the cause of self-preservation and team-preservation.
A five-day contest of international cricket is also a ruthless expose of human frailties. Imagine the great Australian team missing some half a dozen catches in just one innings!
Parthiv Patel's sins and sufferings behind the wicket outdid the Australians in this matter. It was the only slur at Chepauk which otherwise was a classic advertisement for Test cricket. But here too, the saving grace was Patel's clean and stoic batting in tandem with Mohammed Kaif's determination to capitalise the chance that Tendulkar's absence had conferred on him. A similar saving grace to Yuvraj Singh's dismal technique as an opening batsman was his fielding -- without many tumbles and falls this time around.
That Patel and Yuvraj should have been retained for the next Test at Nagpur is, one supposes, a testimony of sorts to another facet of Test cricket: its glorious uncertainty
