Delhi: This story of Indian cricket’s dressing room during the Multan Test against Pakistan in 2004 is such that it gets mentioned in some context or the other every few days. Although this Test is generally remembered for the record-breaking 309 runs of Virender Sehwag, titled ‘Sultan of Multan’ (the first Test 300 of any Indian), but in the same Test, another incident happened which was very interesting. Was popular. It was good that the characters of this story forgot it and started playing ‘for the team’ again and did not let it affect their mutual friendship, otherwise its bitterness would have had a greater impact.
Let’s first see what happened? In that Multan Test, India batted first and Sehwag made 300 but when Sachin Tendulkar was on 194* i.e. just 6 runs behind his 200, then Rahul Dravid, who was captaining in that Test, declared the innings. Be it any batsman, even if Tendulkar, who has many runs and 100 records to his name, is so close to his 200, it would be surprising if he is not given this opportunity. Anger will also come along with it. It is important to keep in mind that this was the second day of the Test, that is, the Test was not yet at such a stage that it was becoming difficult to keep batting for one more minute.
That’s why everyone in the team dressing room was surprised, the media was surprised, the spectators who were in the stadium were surprised and for those who were watching the live telecast of the Test in India and other countries, the words of Sanjay Manjrekar, who was doing the commentary, added fuel to the fire. Did. Therefore, rather than celebrating India’s big score in the Test, the atmosphere became more of a discussion about Dravid’s decision. When Tendulkar returned to the pavilion, he was very angry but unlike most of today’s batsmen, he neither broke decency nor created any drama.
It was later revealed that in the dressing room, most of the players of the team were expecting that as soon as Sachin entered the dressing room in frustration and anger, he would throw his belongings and create a ruckus. Believe me, Sachin did nothing and even though he made a big score of 194*, he did not say anything to anyone and sat quietly. Forget about the youth of the team, none of the senior players and support staff had the courage to say anything to Sachin or give any kind of clarification on this decision. Sachin just said – ‘Leave me alone.’ There was not much time as after Pakistan finished the innings at 675/5 for batting, the team had to take the ground. Sachin asked the coach for permission not to go to the ground for some time.
On this decision of declaring the innings, in general, it can be said that it was not a deliberate decision to stop Tendulkar from making the record and it was decided after seeing the situation of the match so that the tired Pakistani team and the deteriorating pitch could take advantage. . Dravid wanted to give full time to his bowlers to bowl out Pakistan and hence this surprising decision was taken. Aakash Chopra, who played in that Test, told in an interview many years later that even he did not know who took such a decision through mutual discussion. Generally, the team’s ‘think tank’ can be held responsible for this but in those few minutes, something else happened in the dressing room.
It was clear that Tendulkar was ‘unhappy’ with this call and it seemed that something ‘wasn’t right’. The interesting thing is that when Tendulkar went to the bathroom after a few minutes, two seniors of that ‘think tank’, coach John Wright and regular series captain Sourav Ganguly, followed him one by one and both of them asked Tendulkar about what happened. Apologized. Not only this, both of them also said that they were not involved in this decision. So after consulting whom did Captain Dravid take such a decision that Tendulkar was not even given a chance to complete 200?
Tendulkar later wrote that during the tea interval he had been told that he would try to make Pakistan bat for 15 overs by declaring the innings over early. Not only this, he also sent a message to the ground twice to complete his 200 quickly so that he could declare the innings. Tendulkar was angry that after the second such message, the innings was declared without giving him a chance to play even one more ball.
However, after a few minutes Tendulkar’s anger cooled down. Dravid himself told him that whatever happened would neither affect the team’s efforts to win the Test nor their mutual friendship. The same thing happened and India won the test.