The Fire Burns Blue : The final sprint
‘Phod daal unko. Jo unhone kara hai, hum bhi karenge. Hum kisi se kam nahi. Tu kuch mat soch, bas apna game khel.’ Veda Krishnamurthy was padding up in the innings break of the first. T20I in Adelaide when Jhulan walked up to her and told her to play her natural game.
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6 January 2016 - India’s Republic Day and Australia Day as well. The Adelaide Oval stands were slowly filling up. The main attraction of the evening was the men’s T20I between the two sides. The women were playing on the same ground before them. It was the first double-header for the Indian women. They were all charged up. The match was being shown live back home. R. Sridhar, the men’s fielding coach, had told the girls, ‘Show intent and be aggressive like Australia. Don’t back off.’ Virat Kohli spoke to them about batting on Australian pitches.
Taking it all in, they opted to field and conceded less than 6 runs an over for the first 17 overs of the match. The fielding was superb. Only Alyssa Healy’s unbeaten 15-ball 41 as No. 7 took Australia to 140 for 5.
The mood in the Indian dressing room was upbeat when Jhulan gave her pep talk to Veda. This was India’s first match in Australia since the 2009 World Cup, when India had beaten Australia twice to finish third. Back in the country after seven years, they had started well but now had to script their highest-ever T20I chase.
India had lost Mithali and were 7 for 1 by the 2nd over when Veda walked out. Never before in her seventeen T20I innings had she batted so high. It was the reward for her matchwinning 19-ball 34 against New Zealand at her home ground in Bengaluru six months earlier.
Veda had first stormed the circuit for her fielding in 2011 but had been in the wilderness for three years before returning for the New Zealand series. Her hitting prowess was what India was interested in ahead of the 2016 World T20. She made the promotion count with a neat 35 and a second-wicket stand of 55 with Smriti Mandhana. Her three consecutive fours off Grace Harris, the medium-pacer, pushed Australia back. It put India on course for a 5-wicket win with seven balls to spare. Later, M.S. Dhoni’s men replicated the feat of the women with a 37-run win.
Never had India walked into a multi-nation tournament carrying the tag of favourites. Automatically, the pressure was on. The media called it another chance for the women to break into national consciousness.
The Fire Burns Blue
Buoyed by time spent with Suresh Raina, who bowled to Smriti in the nets, and Harbhajan Singh, India put up another clinical show in another double-header at Melbourne Cricket Ground three days later for a 10-wicket win in a rain-affected game. It was India’s first-ever series win over Australia in any format - what a way to mark their debut at the historic venue!
‘We just signed our central contracts. And the girls are quite happy. I am very happy that we proved that we are worth it and deserve them (the contracts),’ Mithali told a group of Indian journalists after hitting the winning runs. ‘I wanted them to showcase their best on television. They have done way beyond that to win the series.’
Smriti’s century and Mithali’s match-winning 89 in the 1-2 ODI series loss were the other takeaways from a moderately successful trip down under. India now had wins against England, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia across different formats in less than two years. They returned home to whitewash Sri Lanka in ODIs and T20Is in Ranchi.
Purnima, captain of the 1995 Centenary Cup-winning team, found herself in the middle of another golden stretch in Indian cricket.
‘They are a bunch of self-confident, assured and aggressive girls,’ she assessed the team’s strength ahead of the 2016 World T20 at home. ‘They have self-belief. It’s a very relaxed atmosphere in the dressing room.’
Never had India walked into a multi-nation tournament carrying the tag of favourites. Automatically, the pressure was on. The media called it another chance for the women to break into national consciousness. Even if the media hadn’t hyped it, the women themselves were already carrying the baggage of history and were eager to prove themselves worthy of their new riches.
(Excerpted with permission from ‘The Fire Burns Blue: A History of Women’s Cricket in India’ by Karunya Keshav and Sidhanta Patnaik. Westland Sport will publish the book on 30 November 2018. You can pre-order the book: https://amzn.to/2Q8YY6S)
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