mcgillianaire (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mcgillianaire) wrote2008-01-20 01:00 pm
mcgillianaire) wrote2008-01-20 01:00 pm
Entry tags:
Where Were You When India Became The First Asian Team to Defeat Australia at Perth?
I was in Heathrow's Terminal 4 and it's a moment I'll never forget. We hadn't won the World Cup or the Test series, but we'd defeated the Aussies, in their backyard, in Perth of all places and most of all, prevented them from capturing that elusive 17th consecutive Test victory!
In hindsight, I have learnt that next time a family member plans on flying through London, I will make sure it doesn't conflict with the cricket! My sister's flight was to arrive around 7am, which meant I had to leave for the airport at least a couple hours earlier. That meant I would miss two full sessions of play after lunch. Considering how fast the Aussies score their runs, that meant missing the rest of the match. And when I left home just after the post-lunch session began, the match was pretty even. Australia had lost the lone wicket in the morning and scored 100 more runs. That meant 100 less runs to win and still 7 wickets to take. I was nervous but hopeful.
The previous day at work, I had made contingency plans to make sure I was kept abreast of all score developments. Two employees cover the night and weekend shifts. I got one of my workmates to give me a wakeup call at 4:30am (which he duly didn't, lol) and asked the other chap to give me score updates (which he didn't either)! Luckily, the mate who got on the 7am shift asked me to give him a missed call after which he would keep me updated. When I called him at 7:15am while waiting for my sister in the arrivals terminal, he shared the good news: the Aussies were 7/243 at Tea! By then I knew we had the match in the bag. When I finished talking, the English chap next to me asked me what the score was. I wasn't sure if he knew I'd been talking about cricket but when I told him the kind of dire straits Australia were in, he too let out a yelp of glee. According to him, everybody but Australia want India to win this match. It was nice to hear, particularly after what happened in the last game and its aftermath. The only problem with the cricket was the fact that Michael Clarke was going well with 70+. Surely not? India will win regardless of how much he scores. Little was I to know what would happen next!
My sis took a while to come out after which we grabbed some brekkie from Terminal 4's Caffe Italia. During the meal, my mate at work called me with an update. Initially he tried scaring me about how close the Aussies were getting to our score, but then he gave in when he needed to get back to work and told me Clarke was out to Kumble. W00T!!!! As I was to soon realize, it wasn't over yet!
Sometime later my dad and I exchanged some texts, in the last of which he told me the Aussies were 9/339. WTF?! How did they manage to score so many runs? Why can't they just york the bloody tailenders?! As I waited for my sis to return from the washrooms, I couldn't resist from using the £1/10mins internet terminal in front of me. As I logged into Cricinfo's scorecard, RP Swingh clean bowled Shaun Tait with a yorker. YEAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I didn't have much time so I just made a quick LJ post and spent the rest of the morning and afternoon with my sis. She had to be back in the airport for a 4pm flight to Bwastan. By the time I got home, exactly 12 hours after I left for the airport, I was exhausted. But somehow I found the energy to watch as many of the highlights as I could. Pappubahry's unflattering statistics on kapitankraut's journal temporarily threatened to dampen the spirits and I had the instinctive urge to respond, and even make a post similar to this one. Luckily for you, I concluded that it was a waste of time given all the other work I needed to do. Let's just leave it at yet another Indian Test victory outside of home, this time in the bastion of menacing Australian pace-bowling. JAI HIND!!!
To Adelaide! Australia 2 - 1 India. (If only Sydney had been a draw... imagine going 1-1 to Adelaide...)
In hindsight, I have learnt that next time a family member plans on flying through London, I will make sure it doesn't conflict with the cricket! My sister's flight was to arrive around 7am, which meant I had to leave for the airport at least a couple hours earlier. That meant I would miss two full sessions of play after lunch. Considering how fast the Aussies score their runs, that meant missing the rest of the match. And when I left home just after the post-lunch session began, the match was pretty even. Australia had lost the lone wicket in the morning and scored 100 more runs. That meant 100 less runs to win and still 7 wickets to take. I was nervous but hopeful.
The previous day at work, I had made contingency plans to make sure I was kept abreast of all score developments. Two employees cover the night and weekend shifts. I got one of my workmates to give me a wakeup call at 4:30am (which he duly didn't, lol) and asked the other chap to give me score updates (which he didn't either)! Luckily, the mate who got on the 7am shift asked me to give him a missed call after which he would keep me updated. When I called him at 7:15am while waiting for my sister in the arrivals terminal, he shared the good news: the Aussies were 7/243 at Tea! By then I knew we had the match in the bag. When I finished talking, the English chap next to me asked me what the score was. I wasn't sure if he knew I'd been talking about cricket but when I told him the kind of dire straits Australia were in, he too let out a yelp of glee. According to him, everybody but Australia want India to win this match. It was nice to hear, particularly after what happened in the last game and its aftermath. The only problem with the cricket was the fact that Michael Clarke was going well with 70+. Surely not? India will win regardless of how much he scores. Little was I to know what would happen next!
My sis took a while to come out after which we grabbed some brekkie from Terminal 4's Caffe Italia. During the meal, my mate at work called me with an update. Initially he tried scaring me about how close the Aussies were getting to our score, but then he gave in when he needed to get back to work and told me Clarke was out to Kumble. W00T!!!! As I was to soon realize, it wasn't over yet!
Sometime later my dad and I exchanged some texts, in the last of which he told me the Aussies were 9/339. WTF?! How did they manage to score so many runs? Why can't they just york the bloody tailenders?! As I waited for my sis to return from the washrooms, I couldn't resist from using the £1/10mins internet terminal in front of me. As I logged into Cricinfo's scorecard, RP Swingh clean bowled Shaun Tait with a yorker. YEAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I didn't have much time so I just made a quick LJ post and spent the rest of the morning and afternoon with my sis. She had to be back in the airport for a 4pm flight to Bwastan. By the time I got home, exactly 12 hours after I left for the airport, I was exhausted. But somehow I found the energy to watch as many of the highlights as I could. Pappubahry's unflattering statistics on kapitankraut's journal temporarily threatened to dampen the spirits and I had the instinctive urge to respond, and even make a post similar to this one. Luckily for you, I concluded that it was a waste of time given all the other work I needed to do. Let's just leave it at yet another Indian Test victory outside of home, this time in the bastion of menacing Australian pace-bowling. JAI HIND!!!
To Adelaide! Australia 2 - 1 India. (If only Sydney had been a draw... imagine going 1-1 to Adelaide...)