It’s also very easy to spend an entire career and life playing for a draw. In other words, playing safe; waiting for the day to end, the year to end, for the sun to set, to punch out.
One of my favourite test matches ever is one which India lost.
For the longest time, the Indian cricket team never won when they toured abroad. They lacked the belief to win and most away tours were foregone conclusions. The team’s approach, beginning from selection, all veered towards creating a squad that won when they played in India. The pitches were tailor-made for spinners and the batsman piled up the runs on flat tracks.
Things began to change when Sourav Ganguly was thrust into captaincy in 2000. For the first time, the team got a foreign coach in John Wright and they went about changing status quo. One of their main goals was to begin winning matches abroad and then convert those into series wins abroad.
From 2002 to 2010, the team secured famous victories on foreign soil and even won series in England and West Indies. As the decade wore on, key players in the squad and legends in their own right, began to fade away. Javagal Srinath, Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble, VVS Laxman, Rahul Dravid and finally Sachin Tendulkar, retired. In 2011, the team traveled to England and lost 0–4. A few months later, they traveled to Australia and again got whitewashed 0–4. It seemed as if all the hard work of the previous decade had been erased and that the side was back to square one.
Victories abroad again became a needle in the haystack.
In 2014–15, India toured Australia.
In the first test match, MS Dhoni sat out, courtesy an injured thumb and Virat Kohli donned the captain’s hat, a role that would come to him full-time after Dhoni shocked everyone by announcing his retirement from test cricket in the same series.
During his tenure, MS Dhoni had seen a golden generation of cricketers retire and also experienced going from the high of being the Number 1 test team to getting white-washed in series.
This also meant that at some point, tired of losing, he became more defensive in his approach, a stark contrast to how he plays in limited-overs cricket.
On the other hand, Virat Kohli was still young and restless. Not burdened by history, his approach was to fight or lose trying, and this resulted in the most scintillating match of the series being played at Adelaide.
In their second innings, India required to chase a mammoth 364.
Test cricket allows a team to play for a draw. Most times, this becomes very boring to watch as it involves a lot of defence and playing safe. On the other hand, a draw is better than a loss.
Virat Kohli threw caution to the winds and began a surge towards an improbable victory. After lunch, the team needed 159 runs and with Kohli in sublime form, an impossible victory was actually within sight.
Unfortunately, the team lost its way and a collapse ensued. Eventually, they lost the match by 48 runs. Many critics had their knives out saying Kohli’s quest for an improbable win converted a draw into a loss.
These things happen in sport.
A player chokes.
A team falls like ninepins after coasting.
A team loses a game by one point or one run.
What was different about this match was the fact that had Kohli decided to play for a draw, it could have turned out very differently as it wasn’t a close match in the first place. He converted a tepid affair into an exciting one by going for victory.
It was the intent that was a breath of fresh air. After constantly seeing the team play defensively in order to avoid losing, seeing a side dive headlong in their quest for an improbable victory pulled everyone out of their collective stupor.
For some reason, this match is one that always stays with me.
Sometimes, it makes sense to play for a draw.
If a team is leading a test series and has to merely draw a match to seal a series victory, it doesn’t make sense for them to be reckless, go for a win and lose. Winning a series is much better than sharing a trophy with the opponent.
At the same time, it’s also very easy to spend an entire career and life playing for a draw. In other words, playing safe; waiting for the day to end, the year to end, for the sun to set, to punch out.
Every day, we are privy to people who have chosen not to play for a draw and who have fear and leaped.
At some point, all of us have fallen into this trap of playing for a draw. Many of us have also got mired in it.
It’s a lot easier to play for a draw than it is to risk failure.
But it’s also a choice.
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