Its Only Cricket

3rd Test: Australia wins Sydney Test (scorecard), South Africa won Test Series 2-1.. T20 & ODI series follows.
Current Cricket Series : South Africa vs Australia, West Indies vs New Zealand. Coming Up : India in NZ 2009.

Filed under cricket tips

My memory goes back to October 2004 when Australian team came to India, calling the tour as 'final frontier'. They had won everywhere, beaten one n all, but somehow Team India had escaped the Aussie blitz in 2001 through Kolkatta win (Dravid-Laxman partnership) after following on..

Come October 2004, Aussies had 4 test match Border Gawaskar series to try n stamp their authority once again. First move ~ captain Ricky Ponting (who has terrible record against spin bowling) didn't arrive in India. Adam Gilchrist captained the side, with soft hand Michael Clarke & Demien Martyn taking batting responsibilities.

First test match at Bangalore - Aussies won. Thrilled with joy, Adam Gilchrist ran all the way to one corner of M Chinnaswamy stadium to THANK handful of Aussie fans. 2nd test at Chennai brought much harder comeback from home team, yet Australia managed to end it on a draw.. Gilchrist again ran all the way to a small corner of Chepauk stadium to THANK that same small bunch of Aussie fans..

3rd test match at Nagpur saw Australian team dominate from the start, to finally win it by 342 runs... yet, Adam Gilchrist again ran to another small part of Vidarbha cricket stadium to THANK his Aussie fans. Same pattern continued for 4th Mumbai test (which Aussie lost) but Gilchrist was there to THANK his countrymen following his team on that 'final frontier' tour.

My point is ~ an overseas cricket tour, spanning over 2 months or more, can be extremely harsh on cricketers from totally different continent. Winning a test match is not about one good bowling spell, or just a century. Its about playing well regularly for 5 running days, which is a tough ask specially when 50 thousand home crowd is booing against you. You take a wicket n pin-drop silence follows.. you hit a classic boundary, yet no clapping. Situation is much more harder, when you aren't doing that well at that moment of that overseas test match..

At that time, THAT small bunch of crazy cricket fans from your home country can be enormous source of motivation. Getting nothing in return, around 100 of those fans follow you all around, hoping you'll do well.

I demand, every International captain & teams learn something from Adam Gilchrist, n start giving them the respect those fans are honestly due for.

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