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Gautam Gambhir’s torment a painful symbol of India’s cricketing decline Gautam Gambhir’s torment a painful symbol of India’s cricketing decline
(about 1 hour later)
All sports tend towards their own distinct type of emotion. Football retains an indissoluble capacity to generate rage. Tennis has its gasps and giggles. Rugby can make apparently sensible human beings dissolve into hot brave husky tears. Test cricket has perhaps the broadest emotional palette. Mainly, and perhaps uniquely, it does the more nuanced kinds of human agony: awkwardness, embarrassment, fine-point humiliation. All sports tend towards their own distinct type of emotion. Football retains an indissoluble capacity to generate rage. Tennis has its gasps and giggles. Rugby can make apparently sensible human beings dissolve into hot, brave, husky tears. Test cricket has perhaps the broadest emotional palette. Mainly, and perhaps uniquely, it does the more nuanced kinds of human agony: awkwardness, embarrassment, fine-point humiliation.
Such has been the trajectory of India’s tour of England, completed here with another alarmingly brittle performance in defeat by an innings and 244 runs, that their batsmen have had plenty of chances to explore the full range of cricketing discomfort. At The Oval a day that unspooled unstoppably in England’s favour also offered before lunch a half hour that seemed to capture unerringly India’s painful air of absences in the last three Tests, that sense of a team who are both there but not there, flannelled ghosts, cricketer-shaped holes.Such has been the trajectory of India’s tour of England, completed here with another alarmingly brittle performance in defeat by an innings and 244 runs, that their batsmen have had plenty of chances to explore the full range of cricketing discomfort. At The Oval a day that unspooled unstoppably in England’s favour also offered before lunch a half hour that seemed to capture unerringly India’s painful air of absences in the last three Tests, that sense of a team who are both there but not there, flannelled ghosts, cricketer-shaped holes.
Enter: Gautam Gambhir. Dismissed for a golden duck in the first innings, here Gambhir produced one the of the most painful innings by a top-order batsmen you could ever wish to see, a 19-ball miscellany of arthritic little jabs and flinches and made all the more painful by the tale it told of wider ineptitude, the rotten core of this disintegrating Indian tour. Enter: Gautam Gambhir. Dismissed for a golden duck in the first innings, here Gambhir produced one of the most painful innings by a top-order batsmen you could ever wish to see, a 19-ball miscellany of arthritic little jabs and flinches and made all the more painful by the tale it told of wider ineptitude, the rotten core of this disintegrating Indian tour.
Walking out to open the innings with India facing a third successive annihilation Gambhir looked like a man still bemused to find himself on a cricket tour of England. Which, fair to say, he has been ever since being called up inexplicably as part of a bulging 18-man squad and then thrust here into only his second first-class match since last November. Walking out to open the innings with India facing a third successive annihilation, Gambhir looked like a man still bemused to find himself on a cricket tour of England. Which, fair to say, he has been ever since being called up inexplicably as part of a bulging 18-man squad and then thrust here into only his second first-class match since last November.
Some are born into sporting ineptitude, some achieve ineptitude, and some have ineptitude thrust on them. And frankly Gambhir never had a chance here, a proud and feisty opening batsman reduced to priding and poking like an aged amnesiac desperately trying to remember how to play chopsticks on a baby grand. I used to be able to do this you know. Now, how did it go? Some are born into sporting ineptitude, some achieve ineptitude, and some have ineptitude thrust on them. And frankly Gambhir never had a chance here, a proud and feisty opening batsman reduced to prodding and poking like an aged amnesiac desperately trying to remember how to play chopsticks on a baby grand. I used to be able to do this you know. Now, how did it go?
There were ironic cheers as Gambhir successfully blocked his first ball from Jimmy Anderson. The next over from Stuart Broad was horrible thing, featuring a rickety duck beneath short ball, an edge short of second slip and then a pair of lunging wafts. There were more fiddles and lbw shouts before Gambhir was bent double by an inside edge into the lower abdomen. He sat down for a second or two. Miraculously, he even stood up again. This is the problem with cricking agonies of this type. You can’t be substituted. You can’t hide. You just have to stand there and suffer. There were ironic cheers as Gambhir successfully blocked his first ball from Jimmy Anderson. The next over from Stuart Broad was a horrible thing, featuring a rickety duck beneath a short ball, an edge short of second slip and then a pair of lunging wafts. There were more fiddles and lbw shouts before Gambhir was bent double by an inside edge into the lower abdomen. He sat down for a second or two. Miraculously, he even stood up again. This is the problem with cricketing agonies of this type. You can’t be substituted. You can’t hide. You just have to stand there and suffer.
We have of course been here before. Philip Hughes made a particularly painful one off 21 balls at Lord’s last summer. Devon Smith was tortured at the top of the order by Graeme Swann. This was Gambhir though, a decelerating force but a mini-galáctico in his own time, the world’s third richest cricketer, but always a baffling pick given his abject tour of England in 2011 (six innings for 102 runs) and a terminally dwindling Test career that has brought no hundred in his last 28 matches. Gambhir even had a terrible IPL this year: his first four scores were 0, 0, 0 and 1. We have of course been here before. Phillip Hughes made a particularly painful one off 21 balls at Lord’s last summer. Devon Smith was tortured at the top of the order by Graeme Swann. This was Gambhir, though, a decelerating force but a mini-galáctico in his own time, the world’s third richest cricketer, but always a baffling pick given his abject tour of England in 2011 (six innings for 102 runs) and a terminally dwindling Test career that has brought no hundred in his last 28 matches. Gambhir even had a terrible IPL this year: his first four scores were 0, 0, 0 and 1.
Here he made it to three before being euthanised from the crease by a comical dismissal. Nudging the ball into the onside, Gambhir set off for a doomed single and saw Chris Woakes throw down the stumps just as the heavens opened above The Oval. The sight of Gambhir, soaked and humiliated, stomping back to the dressing room as umpire Kumar Dharmasena simultaneously signalled for the a third-umpire referral and urged on the covers, like a man in a storm desperately semaphoring a 999 call, will live long in the memory. Although, hopefully not too long.Here he made it to three before being euthanised from the crease by a comical dismissal. Nudging the ball into the onside, Gambhir set off for a doomed single and saw Chris Woakes throw down the stumps just as the heavens opened above The Oval. The sight of Gambhir, soaked and humiliated, stomping back to the dressing room as umpire Kumar Dharmasena simultaneously signalled for the a third-umpire referral and urged on the covers, like a man in a storm desperately semaphoring a 999 call, will live long in the memory. Although, hopefully not too long.
Because the fact is for all the jubilation at England’s victory, there has been a kind of sadness about India’s disintegration. This was Test cricket only in name, and another batting display of almost alarming ineptness. There will be an urge to blame the Indian Premier League, and Twenty20 generally for this, but cricket everywhere is being stretched in peculiar places right now. At The Oval it was Gambhir’s turn to fall between the gaps, his 19-ball humiliation capturing most clearly the sense of two cricketing nations moving, for now, in rather separate directions. Because the fact is for all the jubilation at England’s victory, there has been a kind of sadness about India’s disintegration. This was Test cricket only in name, and another batting display of almost alarming ineptness. There will be an urge to blame the Indian Premier League, and Twenty20 generally for this, but cricket everywhere is being stretched in peculiar places right now. At The Oval it was Gambhir’s turn to fall between the gaps, his 19-ball humiliation capturing most clearly the sense of two cricketing nations moving, for now, in rather separate directions.