On most weeks, sport exists to be analysed, critiqued, dissected, and examined.
But not this week. Not since the ill-fated 3 July.
This week, sport — and all of its triumphs — is meant to be cherished. To be celebrated, not measured. To be felt, not debated.
For, what purpose does it serve to dismember every single delivery of the second England-India Test, played at Edgbaston in Birmingham, when merely 24 miles away, hundreds have gathered in mourning? What value lies in tearing apart England and India’s underwhelming bowling displays, or probing into Shubman Gill and Jamie Smith’s batting techniques, when the nation, and far beyond, is cloaked in profound grief?
Not very far from the Edgbaston — an hour’s drive — is the Molineux Stadium, home to Premier League club Wolverhampton Wanderers. And since 3 July, home to the heartbroken. Further up north is Anfield, home to Liverpool.
At both grounds, like elsewhere in England, Portugal, and other nations, sports fans had gathered to commemorate the life and times of Diogo Jota. With flowers. With pictures. With scarves and jerseys. The Portuguese footballer, alongside his brother Andre Jota, had lost his life to a tragic road accident on 3 July.
And since then, all of sports’ mechanics have seemed futile. What weight do numbers, records, wins, and defeats truly hold when we are reminded, in the harshest way, of life’s fragility?
Wimbledon has had a stringent dress code ever since its inception. For 148 years, the All England Club had enforced its all-white dress code with an almost religious fervour. You could have been the best player to have ever wielded a tennis racket, and you still would not be able to afford the audacity of breaking Wimbledon’s dress code.
Yet, to stand in solidarity with the footballing world’s loss, the restrictions were lifted, and players were allowed to wear black ribbons — a colour long forbidden at Wimbledon, now worn for someone who had no ties with the sport whatsoever.
At the FIFA World Cup, Jota’s Portugal teammates, Ruben Neves and Joao Cancelo were reduced to tears prior to their club Al Hilal’s quarter-final clash with Fluminense. Footballers, who are media-trained enough to wear their armour in front of every sly journalist, breaking their walls with the world watching.
With life in itself being fleeting, all that human beings are restricted to is the product of their memories. Moments that they cherished. And at Edgbaston, cricket fans got such moments aplenty, courtesy of three mercurial batting performances — led by Shubman Gill, and followed by Harry Brook and Jamie Smith.
A Special Knock From Shubman
Gill’s knock was special, not because of the mountain of records he scaled, but because of the context that enveloped it. Despite scoring a century on his Test captaincy debut, he had to cop flak for the team’s defeat. If a captain is as good as his team, the team is as good as the captain. And in the cauldron that is Test cricket, being 25 was not getting Gill any leeway.
The scrutiny was only aggravated by the start of the second Test, and not because of any fault of his own. Irrespective of where India currently find themselves in — an advantageous position, it has to be admitted — there are glaring issues in the team selection rationale.
Why is Kuldeep Yadav not being given a game? Why has Jasprit Bumrah been rested immediately after a defeat, and after seven days of rest? Why has Sai Sudharsan been dropped after his debut?
The questions came relentlessly and mercilessly. Michael Atherton asked them at the toss. Experts echoed them throughout the ground. Gill bore the scrutiny with a measured grace. Poise has always been one of his skills. But the singular skill he maximised in Birmingham is what has propelled him to the pedestal he finds himself in today — batting.
Gill did not walk amid flowers and rainbows. India were 95/2, which might seem like a good score, until you factor in the road of a pitch at Edgbaston. Soon, the team found itself reeling at 211/5, wherein many assumed India needed close to 500 to be in the ascendancy.
Like Virat Kohli in his pomp, Gill paced his innings to perfection. The first 50 deliveries, with circumstances not being in the team’s favour, yielded 18 runs. The next 50 yielded 20, while the following 100 deliveries produced 64 runs.
That hundred placed him in rarefied air — among Indian captains who have struck centuries in their first two Tests as leader. Only Virat Kohli, Vijay Hazare, and Sunil Gavaskar had achieved that before him. Narrow the lens to Indian captains scoring back-to-back hundreds in England, and the names shrink to just Hazare, Mohammad Azharuddin, and now Gill.
Beyond the records, what also stands as a highlight of Gill’s knock was his control percentage of 96.5% for the first 100, which came of 199 deliveries, and while he took more risks for the second 100 and took only 112 deliveries, his control percentage was still over 90%.
At one stage, it felt Gill was at one with his bat and the crease. As if the entities have merged into something colossal and unbreakable. Mohammed Siraj admitted that the Indian dressing room felt as if their latest leader will go on to bat forever.
Honestly, it never felt like he was going to get out during this innings. He played a brilliant knock. There’s absolutely no sign in his batting that he’s carrying the burden of captaincy or any added responsibility. He’s handling it all so smoothly. It doesn’t reflect at all in his batting.Mohammed Siraj
A half-hearted pull — evidently labored — brought about his downfall, but the buck did not stop with Gill in this match. Come England’s turn, Ben Stokes’ team found themselves at 84/5. Follow on loomed large, and eventually, defeat.
Brook & Smith's Counter-Punch
This piece could have much rather been a report on how India won the second Test, had Jamie Smith and Harry Brook not been phenomenal. The former remained unbeaten on 184 whilst the latter scored 158, as together, they built a 303-run stand for the sixth-wicket. The highlight, in this case, was not the control percentage, but that of leaves — zero, for the most part.
Smith now has the highest Test score for an English wicketkeeper, surpassing Alec Stewart. It is also the second-highest by an English pair for a sixth-or-lower partnership, and third highest against India.
Harry Brook became the third youngest English cricketer to get to nine Test centuries, in terms of number of innings (44). Only Denis Compton and Herbert Sutcliffe are ahead of him.
Then you get to Gill, and you’ll be inundated with records. Highest score by an Indian captain in Test cricket. Highest by an Indian batter in a Test outside Asia. This. That. And some more.
Dissection Can Wait
As things stand prior to Day 4, all three batting displays might accumulate to nothing more than a draw. Or, we might have a winner. That dissection can wait for once we have the result.
For now, in a week like this, the only thing that truly matters is to celebrate the moments. To hold them close.
While we still can.