Orbiting Perth

ORBITAL, Samantha Harvey’s recent Booker Prize-winning novel, is about a team of astronauts aboard the International Space Station that constantly orbits the Earth; not once, but 16 times in a single day. Which essentially means that for these men and women located in space, every 24-hour period contains 16 days and 16 nights. Or 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets, all in one Earth day. It is supposed to evoke a strong sense of extremes, of rapid and overbearing change: black followed by white followed by black again, high followed by low followed by high again.

The writing, as well as the plot, is designed to overwhelm,

given that there are such sudden and consistent oscillations between contradictions. But if you are a follower of Indian cricket, the background fluctuations of Orbital will seem all too familiar.

Within the space of exactly a year, the Indian team has lost a World Cup final and won a World Cup final, lost tours that were not meant to be lost and won matches that were not meant to be won. Black followed by white, high followed by low, on loop. The lowest of those points came just weeks ago, when they were blanked at home by New Zealand. But just as unexpectedly, India went to Australia and began the five-match series with a win in Perth, continuing this seemingly orbital cycle.

And what a win it was, smaller oscillations within larger ones. The Indian team entered this tour without captain Rohit Sharma, whose deputy, Jasprit Bumrah, took a radical call of not playing R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, men with 850 wickets between them. They were replaced by two debutant-allrounders, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Harshit Rana: zero Tests between them. Then Bumrah raised more eyebrows by batting first on a pacey wicket, and promptly India were bowled out for 150 runs.

Yet, they won by 295 runs!

This monumental turnaround had as much to do with great individual performances in the collective, as it did with Bumrah’s style of leadership: calm, borderline laidback and void of any kind of panic. If his hunch of handing a cap to Reddy worked (he was India’s top-scorer with 41 in the first innings), then his other suspicion of playing Rana had in immediate impact with the ball, the pacer claiming three Aussie wickets to restrict Australia to 104. But it was Bumrah the bowler, easily the greatest all-format player today, who broke the resistance with a 5-for, his 11th in a short career. Going into the second innings, India were ahead by a proverbial nose, which their openers would soon stretch into a country mile.

Yashasvi Jaiswal, 22, is already seen as the heir to the Gavaskar-Tendulkar-Kohli lineage. But the lefty had a quietish series against New Zealand and a mute first show in Perth. Form, however, is no metric to measure the true greats and Jaiswal proved yet again that he truly is one with a knock for the ages—161 runs that his captain believes to be the finest innings of his nascent career. By the time Jaiswal crossed 150, he was in partnership with Virat Kohli, who too managed to reverse his dipping form.

Kohli hadn’t hit a Test hundred since July 2023 and was out for just 5 runs in the first innings. Beginning his essay following a match-winning partnership helped, but he still had to grit it out, allowing the runs to come to him. Then, so did his confidence. It was exactly what Australia did not want, a Kohli that was not second-guessing his genius at the start of a long tour.

In some regards, a tricky Test tour of a foreign land is not all that different from a manned expedition to space— months of isolation, cycles of mental fatigue and the fears of having to perform under severe scrutiny. But sometimes, when the stars align and the sun rises around the bend, washing away a spell of darkness, their kind in helmets and white uniforms really do feel on top of the world.

About The Author

Aditya Iyer

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