The Anatomy Of KL Rahul’s 66 off 107
Not to be scoffed at. Rahul’s was a knock of grit and sense that tested Australia’s “tactical brilliance”.
“Pata hai.. Yahaan se bahut door. Galat aur sahi ke paar. Ek maidaan hai.. Main wahaan milunga tujhe”
(Out beyond the ideas of wrong-doings and right-doings, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. — Rumi)
If you set yourself free, cinema has the power to transform you. It hugs you, holds your hand and travels miles together. To a field where there are no wrong-doings and right-doings, but you, the story, the character and the journey it defines. Have you been there? Just stayed with a film and let it grow on you? That’s been ‘Rockstar’ for me.
“Be, and it is”. Kun Faya Kun.
It’s as if the universe had conspired me to watch it. When it re-released in select theatres recently, it presented an opportunity I couldn’t have let go. Ranbir’s finest ever work, Imtiaz Ali’s most overwhelming directorial and an AR Rahman-Irshad Kamil collaboration for the ages.. the experience is too soulful, sufi and magical not to immerse with.
Hardly ever imagined that my first solo theatre visit would be Janardhan Jakar aka ‘Jordan’ and his journey from jovially seeking pain and heartbreak associated with all great artists to reaching a place where it’s only love, longing, anger and perpetual grief that he is left with. Where it’s no longer the greatness that is sought, fame and money are immaterial, where he has the streets but no friend to give him a hug and one where music triumphs through an artist’s sorrow upon losing his lover, his only hope.
Jordan’s ache and cry at the end pains you, it leaves you with a heaviness that stays and makes you feel what the eyes can’t see, transcending the mind which tries to remind you it’s only a film. It stayed with me from PVR in Raj Nagar Extension at the outskirts of Shaheed Sthal till the time I reached home an hour or so later on May 30. Because as I embraced this feeling and let myself be with the emotion, I understood and connected with the film this time more than any other. Sitting alone quietly inside the metro and lost in my thoughts, it struck me that I am also completing a journey within. Back when it released on 11.11.11, I was just over two weeks shy of turning 15, the year I first developed feelings for someone. Back then, however, I didn’t know what it was or how to channelise it. It’s not that it was love, or even if it were I didn’t understand it. We were 10th standard kids both of us. That understanding and love in its best and worst form knocked upon me in the mid twenties only.
Life works out in mysterious ways. In retrospect, it was good that having gone through it all, love, longing, heartbreak, sadness, loneliness and grief, my first theatre experience, and the most overpowering one, of Rockstar happened at 27. Not 15. Or else it wouldn’t have ‘felt’ something. And would’ve been easy to overcome.. which it isn’t. Today I can explain it. The heaviness has stayed because of the relatability. It’s not the algorithm. I know you open ‘for you’ on Twitter and Instagram and see even the self-destructive GenZ, who are too caught up with their dating apps, the hook-up culture and situationships, claiming themselves to be Jordan and Heer in the past few days. But this heaviness.. it has stayed because it happened to me. I’ve loved, longed, seen the dreadful pain, loss and heartbreak coming from a distance and couldn’t do anything.
“Mujhe ye sab kuch nahi chahiye.. Mujhe nahi banna bada. Mera dil nahi tutna chahiye, Khatana bhai, Mera dil nahi tutna chahiye…”
It did.
The heartbreak, pain, anger and this palpable helplessness is intrinsic to not just life but sport also. The bitter defeat stings harder and leaves you despaired when it’s hope that drove you to the brink. Life is unfair and Sport feels the same on such days. The taste of victories and joy makes the ride worth it. But some losses leave an irreparable dent and trauma. November 19th traumatized a generation of Indian cricket fans. The loss in the final to Australia has left scars running so deep that a fan would dare to believe and hope the next time the Indian team marches through a tournament in indomitable fashion and stands on the verge of glory. It was an occasion set-up perfectly to end the painstaking trophy jinx, only for it to end with doom and gloom and leave a nation distraught, forever again refusing to believe.
Rohit Sharma barely controlled his tears. Mohammad Siraj couldn’t. Jasprit Bumrah still gathered courage and strength to control his sobbing teammate. Virat Kohli was shaken and grieving. Rahul Dravid wore the sombre on his face and then held his nerves through what would’ve the hardest press conference of his coaching stint. After achieving unprecedented dominance, it took one decisive toss, conditions that altered completely in the second half and a bowling attack which exploited them ruthlessly for the dream to be over for India’s invincibles. If you think your pain as a fan is paramount, it was only worse for the players and the coaches, who had planned and prepared earnestly for two years, played enthralling cricket, cricket of the very highest quality in an all-conquering campaign. Only for their dream to be shattered into pieces at the very end.
Sympathy and love is what they deserved at that point. Instead, the blame game followed, “reports” swelled the fire on how India asked for the conditions they lost in, when all through, the pre-game coverage had an independent ICC curator looking after the pitch preparation. Hurt souls bought that up. Dravid faced the angst. Rohit, the harshest jeering and trolling. Kohli was name-called. The nauseating fanwars ravaged the social media space. You see the immature is lucky, it can vent out the frustration, the vitriol and the noise. Those who truly cared were left quiet, shocked and speechless, unable to process and express what’s hit them. The heaviness of the defeat consumed them. Their mourning never digressed to disrespect for individuals and the team. For the immature, it became an opportune moment to unleash the devil inside him, to hurl the worst abuses, to make memes, clips and mock our best for cheap views, likes and retweets.
It is this lot which turned KL Rahul into the most crucified villain and the nation’s scapegoat.
This is an anatomy of Rahul’s 66 off 107.
In early 2000s, a popular Hindi news channel unravelled a cricket show provocatively and toxically titled ‘Match Ka Mujrim’. The blatant motive was to curse the match-loser, the guy they compared to a “criminal”, and encash through TRPs the unhealed wounds and frustration of the emotionally driven and angry Indian cricket fan, who followed under Ganguly, and later Dravid, an inexperienced, in-transition Indian side with an unrealistic desire for it not to play like inexperienced, in-transition sides do. The coverage was sickening, horrific for the cricketing discourse. And who else but the players bore the brunt of it. They were villainized in offices, local buses, on sofa sets and dining tables for losing a game of cricket. It was not fandom, but tamashaa encouraged by the venomous Indian media, which let years of anger brewing and piling, only to play watchdogs, in fact, enablers, when it unleashed in its most cruel form on our players at the height of 2007, where effigies were burnt and houses were pelted with stones after India’s group stage exit in the Caribbean.
Over time, the affect of television based Hindi belt sports news coverage may have lost its grip on our minds, but the standards of cricket journalism continue to plumb to lower heights with each fake news, report, and manipulated pro and against player tweets and narratives. And the mob that once burnt the players’ statues on roads has now shifted to the social media platforms, who refute to establish age limits and proper identification rules for easy traffic on these timelines, giving this lot a direct access to players and their families.
The sane voices resist this culture and make time spent on Twitter worthy, but a higher proportion of angry Indian fan now indulges in abuse, trolling of players, name-calls them, turns them into sacrificial goats with no respite shown even to their loved ones, especially their wives and the girlfriends, throwing misogynistic garbage down their comments section. A player got racially abused recently for becoming the next captain of an IPL team because its fanbase couldn’t digest the sight of someone else taking over. These people are scumbags of the worst form, operating at levels lower than the deepest mud.
KL Rahul has taken the stick of this culture in the most brutal, harshest possible way. Since his has been a career of undoubted class but also largely unfulfilled talent and promise, the perennial ups and downs, untimely injuries, the perpetual state of overthinking at the crease, especially in T20s when he needs to free himself up in the mind, Rahul has taken consistent brickbats without ever enjoying the garlands that some of his best feat deserve. A quiet, unruffled personality, who hardly smiles, he often comes across ‘timid’ to his naysayers and is forever susceptible to the online mob. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that six months later, Rahul is the only Indian player the angry lynch gang hasn’t forgiven. The violent hate the calm. They dislike him even in the best of times, so were bound to puke their hate out when things went downhill in Ahmedabad. And this is when he deserves it the least of all Indian players who batted that pivotal afternoon.
Rahul’s 66 off 107 is not to be scoffed at. It was perhaps his most sensible and measured act in an India shirt. I’ll stand firm on this to my grave. Rahul was playing a very tactful and potentially impactful knock on November 19 with the surface progressively getting worse and India’s batting ending at 7. All the jeering and trolling he’s faced from hurt souls after the result is uncalled for. The innings is chastised for its end strike-rate and eventual fate, when the advent of the ‘bowling era’ in Tests and the rise of specialist attacks with greater depth in ODIs have told us, if a surface is getting progressively tougher and bowling is unrelenting, and you know that one high-risk shot will expose a long tail, intent becomes an immaterial thing. It’s simply not possible to execute big shots when you know yours is a wicket the game could be over with. It would be dehumanising the circumstances to expect Rahul to have batted any other way.
Nothing happens in isolation with our game. The seeds of Ahmedabad were sown for India a month earlier in Pune versus Bangladesh when Hardik Pandya went for a save against Litton Das’ straight drive off his bowling and twisted his ankle so badly he couldn’t recover on his feet for two months. As Pandya limped off the ground, India’s Plan A to field six proper bowling options without compromising their batting depth also jumped out of the window. Pitches after Chennai had already compelled India to drop R Ashwin, their third spinner, and with Shardul Thakur no qualitative substitute to Pandya’s allround impact, Dravid and Rohit took the wise and attacking option and brought Mohammad Shami in their five-man attack while beefing up the batting with a specialist in Suryakumar Yadav at No.6. India batted oppositions out of the contest and Shami and Bumrah ran through batting line-ups. Shami for once bowled like the world-beater envisioned about him.
Winning is contagious, it spills past the field and leaves a nation basking in a team’s glory. Winning also creates a vibe of immortality about a cricket team. This irrational belief that a team that can’t be conquered and will fall over no roadblocks in its path to ultimate vindication of its greatness. But that’s a trap. Even when they were winning, India’s balance remained shaky and susceptible with Jadeja at 7 and a long tail following him. When you’re a traumatised Indian fan who has seen a decade full of final stumbles and exposition of weaknesses when your side could least afford to, you can’t help but dread the nightmare playing out all over again at the worst possible time. Leading into the final, Suryakumar had batted six times for 88 runs, Jadeja four times with a highest of 39*. India’s tail was the weakest among the top sides. Despite a feeble 6–11, Rohit’s men kept delaying their worst date. Only for them to watch it despairingly play out in the final.
When Rahul walked in, India were already reduced to 81/3 inside the 11th over despite a signature counterattacking knock from Rohit. While the surface was still fresh and new ball skidding, Rohit maximised the first powerplay with an excellent 47 off 31. That it ended with one hitting the outer splice of his willow shouldn’t blur sight to the fact that the Indian captain was only continuing with the method that had taken him there. It wasn’t Rohit’s fault that despite being handed an ideal platform to counter Zampa and anchor the innings from there, Shreyas Iyer got out cheaply. Rohit batted under the knowledge of the situation and conditions he walked in. As did Rahul when he was left in a decisive stand with Kohli, a partnership which is heavily criticised now for the rate at which it came while seldom given due credit for keeping India alive when all hell could’ve broken loose and it would’ve ceased to be a contest by the second half.
From the third ball of the 11th over to the third of the 29th, Kohli and Rahul added 67 off 109 deliveries. A strike-rate of 85.11 was more a reflection of the conditions, not his intent, but Kohli had a headstart inside the first 10 and was playing a calculative aggressor while Rahul sensible donned the anchor’s hat. Whilst he was there, Kohli played a fine knock in conditions that were designed for his frontfoot dominant self to be tamed by the low bounce. Plus the grip the Australians extracted from outside off while still finishing their cross-seamers and off-cutters at the stumps. His were the most delightful strokes after biding through a phase where they offered him and Rahul nothing on a platter to hit. It was an attempt for one other frontfoot push that got rid of Kohli at the end but no one could fault the great man’s idea of what he needed to do to keep India in hunt, knowing they had to recover but also budget for the dew in the second half. All that while the surface was only getting worse under the scorching Ahmedabad sun. Kohli was as much playing the surface as trying to overcome it and the overall conditions when he got out, having found signs of true rhythm at the crease. He was playing for a score. The myth is that Rahul should’ve also. But he couldn’t afford to. Once Kohli departed, he had to drop gears and play in the present before anything else.
Rahul had in fact played the conditions and the present right from the very beginning of his innings. He respected Cummins’ finest spell of the tournament and bide caution against Zampa, who used the pressure created by his skipper at the other end to try and force both Kohli and Rahul to attack the stump line he bowled at high speeds with a lowish trajectory. Rahul opted not to take the bait for his team’s sake. He kept playing out the phase to restore calm and stability, in hope that things will ease. That they did not was a tribute to Cummins’ class and pedigree and terrific field-placings. R Ashwin, who was watching on the sidelines, marvelled at Cummins’ fields, his team’s relentless execution and accepted that India were undone by some ruthless “tactical brilliance”.
“Pat Cummins was struggling as an ODI bowler heading into the World Cup. But in the last four or five games leading into the final, nearly 50% of the balls he bowled were cutters,” Ashwin said on his Youtube channel.
“In the final — I don’t know how many people explained it on TV — Cummins bowled to a four-five leg-side field like an offspinner, bowling the stump line. But he bowled only three balls in the six-meter mark or further up on the pitch in his entire ten-over spell. [He] knocked off crucial wickets in the final. The five fielders on the on side were square leg, midwicket, mid-on, deep square leg and long leg, and he bowled his ten overs without a mid-off.”
Cummins ran in with a predominantly leg-side field and still bowled a length so perfect that Indian batters couldn’t cut and drive through the off-side. He didn’t concede a single boundary during his 2 for 34. It was him who accounted for an in-form Iyer with one that kept low and still carried with the edge and forced Kohli to open the bat face just a fraction of a second earlier on a fatal off-cutter from the good length region. It’s easier in Tests to bowl this line with a leg-side field, for you don’t risk the standing umpire calling wides; in One-Day cricket, to bowl the same and still not err once on the line while forcing the batters to hit against the curve to fetch the vacant off-side was tactical mastery and execution for the ages. It was spell that could’ve easily ran through India on its own and ended the contest at say 170 all out. That it didn’t was down to Rahul still holding fort and playing for the long haul.
Even as the pressure-easing boundary didn’t come, Rahul kept faith in his game and range to eventually bail out India. That he played a knock worth a control percentage of 90 is suggestive of a batter who had grasp of the conditions and the bowling quality in play but respected them, abandoning risks and keeping his instincts in check for the larger good. He had no option really. Rahul may have still taken a few extra calculative risks post Kohli’s dismissal if not for the lack of solidity and irregular strike-rotation from the ‘other end’. MS Dhoni used to feed off aggressors when anchoring chases and playing deep. But Rahul had no Suresh Raina to ease his life here. The conditions didn’t allow anyone to. Both Jadeja and Suryakumar batted without any sort of control on a surface where it was paramount to retain a solid base to find connection and elevation on strokes. The grip and turn was alarming and to time the ball square off the wicket to the ropes was out of equation. Suryakumar found that out when Hazlewood banged it in short of length and he still had no bounce and pace on offer to access the space behind square for his trademark upper cuts, the scoops and the lap.
It took seven overs for the Rahul-Jadeja partnership to fetch 30 runs and another six for the Rahul-Suryakumar stand to add 25. India’s parade had been derailed and they were held back decisively against the ideal scoring rate. But even during that phase Rahul never gave up. In his head, Rahul was still playing for a reassessed score that would give India an outside chance with their bowling attack. Rahul’s fifty was less of a tame effort that caved under pressure but more of a pragmatic and yet courageous display in a situation where he was willing to walk the hard yards and be the one to take responsibility. It takes a brave man to take the center stage for he knows the criticism, the insult and outrage would also be reserved for him only. Rahul would’ve known at the back of the mind the repercussions of a loss but he kept believing in the light inside the tunnel and fought for it. It’s easier to go hell for leather in such situations and come out unscathed with public sympathy, much harder to stay there long enough and fight, fight for your team like a hero when you could easily be portrayed a villain.
Rahul batted with a singleminded pursuit to maximise 50 overs when he could afford no aggression at his end. That he was out defending in the 42nd over wasn’t a reflection of a selfish or coward batter but a player who showed grit and stood resolute, tactfully batting for the last four overs when the ‘death-overs’ pressure against a set batter could’ve played funny tricks even with an Australian attack that had not overpitched for 40 overs. That he was out to an unplayable Mitchell Starc outswinger only underlined the control with which Rahul had batted leading into it. It was Rahul’s only lapse, and self-admittedly, a rare moment of unclarity.
“The World Cup final against Australia, I was stuck in the moment, whether to take down Starc or just play him as it was reversing, bowling in tough angle — in that confusion I ended up nicking it — if I could have played till the end, it could have been 30–40 more runs & probably World Cup in our hands — that is what I regret.”
Even the feisty Australians would admit it, it’s only when they got rid of Rahul with eight overs to go would they have felt absolute control over proceedings. His India teammates would have respect for the fight Rahul had shown, for it was him who gave them 240 when the hosts could’ve easily been bundled out for 180. It’s easier to sit on the comfort of your sofa and suggest India should’ve attacked and be fine with 180 if the intent didn’t pay off. Cricket doesn’t work that way. Teams who are fine accepting an under-par score to justify an onslaught in the name of bravery and optics often fail to reach there and then the same voices criticise their inability to bat out the quota. Only the most ignorant and stupefied believe Rahul should’ve attacked regardless of the situation he played in.
The dramatics are good for the media to lap up, there is no true substance to such things. In conditions where luck determines the survival of the aggressor, it’s the solid anchor who has dig in and kept you in the contest that deserves praise. Not the jeering. Travis Head had compliments flocking from all directions but he enjoyed significant fortune on his outside edge against Bumrah and fetched 137 off 120 with a lower control percentage than the supposed ‘match-loser’ did. And despite the dew, Labuschagne’s 58 came of a strike-rate nearly 10 runs lower than India’s slow-goer. If Labuschagne was batting the situation from 47 for 3, so was he. If anything, it was easier for Labuschagne to overcome with India’s spinners completely neutralized. At 47 for 3, Rahul’s innings was looking increasingly brighter than the dramatics would care to acknowledge now.
When we give Rahul’s innings the flak, it reflects more on us than him. It doesn’t paint the brightest image of us as a fanbase if only the fight that is lost is remembered and the man who fought is rebuked disdainfully. It should be easier for us the perennial life-strugglers to identify with the struggler the most, to empathize with the one who didn’t give up when the light was fading and the tunnel seemed the darkest. Only those who survive can excel. People celebrate excellence, when it’s harder to survive long enough to reach there. If life had justice, it would give Rahul a moment of redemption. Or even if it didn’t, always remember that the greater heroic is not to be the guy who wins, but the one who persists and fights when it all seems lost.
“Not all battles are fought for victory. Some are fought simply to tell the world that someone was there on the battlefield.”
For one Rahul. For another.
Cricket. Life. And beyond..
