Almost 48 hours have passed, but Day Five at Sydney still hasn't sunk in.
Cricket Australia's official highlight video from the last day is eight minutes and thirty seconds long. A quick glance through the Cricinfo scorecard will give you the surface-level picture of India's second innings - the number of balls Pujara blunted, the runs Pant scored, and the minutes Vihari and Ashwin spent in the middle.
Highlight videos and scorecards do as much justice to the experience of this day as a pamphlet for a roller coaster. To understand the audacity of Pant's knock, you need to sit through the nervousness of the first 30 balls he faced. Pujara hit twelve fours in his innings. Three of them came in consecutive deliveries against a ferocious Pat Cummins. Highlight reels won't tell you that Hanuma Vihari, an adept technician who never gets an easy gig, was batting for his career. Or that Ravichandran Ashwin couldn't tie his shoelaces in the morning, but handled Nathan Lyon with the footwork of a top-order batsman.
The Aussies replied in kind. Cummins, Hazlewood, and Starc asked every possible question on a benign surface. Lyon pitched most of his 276 deliveries on a shoebox, but made them bounce, duck, and skid as if a different bowler was bowling each of them.
This was a day when Test cricket unfurled all her acrobatics. She made us gasp and sigh and jump and scream. This was a day when, sat with the evening's glass of single malt, lovers would write letters to this game. The emotional journey of Monday lasted seven hours but was worth seven seasons. You can explain Day Five of Sydney through a blood-pressure graph, not loud commentary or numbers.
I have waited for such a day. Test cricket in Australia had a hallowed air about it when I was growing up. The lush fields, the colour of their pitches, their bowling, their batting, their fielding, their crowds, and Richie Benaud's voice on the Channel 9 broadcast. It was cricket heaven.
The time difference added an extra layer of charm. To watch the tense first over of a day's play, you needed to wake up while the sun was still finding its way to your sky. You would tap the alarm clock, wash off crust from your eyes, and switch on the television to read a score that felt like a rude joke: 10/3 or 200/2, depending on which team is batting.
The Australian cricket season is played across December and January, which is a tricky time for an Indian student. One India tour happened while I was preparing for my Class XII board exams. Another in my last year of undergraduate college, with placements and final examinations to fret over, as MS Dhoni's team wandered about in Australia with the comfort of a vegetarian at KFC.
The version of Indian cricket team I grew up with wasn’t built to compete in Australia. I had to wait until I was thirteen to watch India win a Test in Australia, twenty-eight to win two and a series. Like video games that we got attached to for the increased challenge of crossing every level, cricket in Australia was addictive. You couldn't take your eyes off, even if it was Simon Katich bowling to Akash Chopra (no disrespect to either).
In that context, Day Five at SCG, as indeed this series, has been cathartic. Far more gifted batsmen have come to these grounds and crumbled under lesser inquisition. There were many moments across the day when the conditioning kicked in and you expected a collapse. India had five wickets in hand with five overs to go, but a slew of wickets seemed to be lurking. And every time, there was someone with a bat, and many sore muscles, braving the elements.
If 2020 has taught us anything, it is collective patience through a dark storm. This Australian bowling attack must sometimes feel like one. They are relentless. To see through their barrage of body-blows and back-of-the-length interrogations, you need to buy into the idea of dawn after a freezing night. In the first Test of the new year, Pujara, Pant, Ashwin and Vihari batted for that dawn. Their bodies didn't have enough to complete a run at one point, but they refused to break.
It is funny to write this because just a couple of weeks back, the same batsmen were shot out for 36. Are they different people and cricketers now? Most definitely not. Maybe a little grittier, toughened by the rude shock of Adelaide, but inherently the same people. The same bunch who have competed hard in almost every away Test over the last five years.
I have waited long, stayed up till and woken up at odd hours, in the hope of finding an Indian team that can marry skill with steel. Sitting in the purple afterglow of Sydney 2021, I think I have finally found one.
The next match starts in two days. This quick turn-around is cruel on the players wrestling with injuries and sub-optimal conditioning. It is unfair on us fans too, because we would like a bit more time to savour a day of sport that was so raw and visceral, you wish every day of cricket was like this.