Since the dawn of the Michael Slater era, who threw his bat
with little fear of losing his wicket, and the resurgence of a bullying Matthew
Hayden accompanied by a flamboyant Ricky Ponting, it was the Australians who
were known for taking a Test match forward irrespective of the situation. They
dared to lose and eventually ended up winning most times.
The manner in which Baz
& Co. reinvigorated themselves and came hard at England after their
defeat at Lord’s in the first Test would tempt one to say that this Black Caps
unit looks like on par with the good old Aussie teams under Mark Taylor, Steve
Waugh and Ricky Ponting.
Wait a minute. Has McCullum done something new and out of
the box that his predecessors failed to do? That is pushing for a result all
the time, even from hopeless situations.
History says not. Let’s go back to November 12, 2001.
It was the ‘Gabba’. Stephen Fleming and his men were up against the mighty
Aussies on their own backyard for a three-Test series. Brisbane happened to be
the first. Australia had piled on 486 spanning two days. And wet weather got
the better of the third and fourth day’s play.
The climax of the movie was heading towards a dull draw.
Unless the director of the play happened to be Fleming!
How many captains of the Steve Waugh generation would dare
to come out of their comfort zone and declare at the stroke of avoiding a
follow on against Australia? And in numbers Australia were 199 runs ahead on
the final day with just over two sessions to play. NZ declared at 287/8.
Out came the Aussies; smash 84 runs in 14 overs in their
second innings and set the visitors a target of 284 in close to 60 odd overs.
The Aussies, as mentioned earlier, were ready to lose. Kiwis threatened and
came as close as 274 when day five had to be ended.
What seemed a dull draw turned out to be a thrilling draw
only because of two men – Fleming and Waugh, who again dared to lose!
Fleming and McCullum - with attributes of The Moon and The
Sun, respectively - have always led their team with the ‘same’ approach.
From an Indian fan’s point of view, maybe had one among the
two led India against West Indies at the Caribbean in 2011 then India could
probably have won the series 2-0 instead of 1-0. The probability of a
McCullum-type of skipper going after a target of 180 was higher than MSD, who
opted for a 1-0 series win.
Maybe a McCullum-type leader would have preferred to go down
losing 0-2 than 0-1 had he and his men faced a target of 435 in the last two
and a half sessions of the last Test match. But MSD & his boys opted to go
down 0-1 against New Zealand last year.
