28 years is a long time, no? Three daunting years, with outcries of fans and critics. The Big Four couldn’t do it. The younger crop was struggling. They called them ‘paper tigers’, that roared in in their own backyard, but mewed meekly on foreign soil. For 28 years, The Lords was a battleground that seemed impossible to win over. 28 years later, the impossible happened. Life came a full circle for the Indians, for they banished the British twice — once from the own soil, once from theirs.
The Indians made the English team kneel down and accept defeat. Not by a run or two, mind you, but by 95 runs in the second Test match of the Investec Series. That’s a big margin, for any match. The English team just buckled under the heaps of pressure and the Indians emerged a triumphant bunch. They discovered unexpected heroes — the ones who were hidden in the folds of time, and ones, who were made the butt of ridicule. Together, they stood up and showed what real tigers are made of. They aren’t paper tigers, but tigers that were injured and tigers that made the kill.
It was just a matter of 5 wickets. Difficult, but not entirely impossible. With that kind of an equation, MS Dhoni took a gamble and unearthed what he thought would be his best weapon — Ishant Sharma. The fans looked shocked; the critics mocked. The English team took it rather easily. But then, Ishant had found his perfect chance for glory. He ripped into the middle order, clawed his way to the lower order and finished things up by licking the plate clean. With seven wickets, the man with the locks was happy.
The Indians just had their fill; a fill that wouldn’t have been possible without the leaders — Ajinkya Rahane, Murali Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvaneshwar Kumar and Ishant Sharma. 319 looked way off; England just about limped to 223. It was like the tigers feasted after a long, long time. They relished it. After all, 28 years is a long time, no?