"If I am seen with Dhoni, that does not mean I am going to marry him," that was the tongue-in-cheek comment of Shah Rukh Khan to a media girl when he was asked about the speculation of something going on between the super Ds — Dhoni and Deepika.
Even Deepika Padukone's repeated assertions — both pre-match and post-match — that she had come to see the whole team and was happy for the whole team cut no ice. There were repeated cuts galore – from Deepika's smiling face to Dhoni's (shy or sly!) smile and vice versa – almost looking on the verge of being deliberately made scandalous.
Nothing but Scandalous
In fact, scandalous is what this Australian series has happened. The minor on-field tussles and heated words exchanged were made to look like a mini-Mahabharata, while players applauding good performances were deliberately ignored and those showing sportsman spirit of the highest order did not get the footage they deserved.
What Symonds did is what every Australian is doing for ages. What Sreesanth did is what many Indian players have been doing for the last few years. That is fighting aggression with aggression. How can it be otherwise in a battle between two World Champions?
But with dearth of news in the intervening days between the matches, media was having a field day creating and recreating war-like situations, adding fuel to the fire with disturbing regularity.
If Ponting did make some innocuous comments about some aspects of Dhoni's captaincy, the conspiratorial tones of the anchors and writers almost turned it into a foreign hand trying to play a dirty game with Indian players' psyche.
In the run-up to the eight-match showdown, the Australians did their image no good by showing themselves as a rampaging army out there to blast the Indians 7-0 in the ODIs and 1-0 in the twenty20. They saw the Indian celebrations, and were determined not to allow a repetition.
But the Australians forgot that theirs too is an aging outfit and with McGrath no longer there to make the initial inroads, the Aussies are no longer the West Indies of the 80s, who thrashed India 5-0 in ODIs to avenge their defeat in the 1983 World Cup final.
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The series was also the biggest advertisement for Blogging. Bloggers from both the sides had a field day, with neutrals too chipping in with not-so-neutral comments. No holds barred aggression was visible from all the sides. You could simply not afford to be a neutral in the battle between the two superpowers, who have between them the Championships of Test Cricket, ODI and Twenty20.
Series Dictionary
Probably the three most used and/or abused words in the action packed series were Age, Kartik and Monkey.
Age was the word heard most in this battle in the initial days and on the D-day, their were smirks on many faces when they saw Tendulkar sitting (though smiling and applauding) at Brabourne.
Called midway through the series, Kartik turned out to be India’s trumpcard, helping them with a memorable chase with both bat and ball. His bowling analysis was much much better than his game analysis. He did not walk at Wankhede! But neither did Haddin at Brabourne!!
And some mindless spectators, doing a shameful display, forgot that Monkey is one of the most sacred and revered figures of Hindu Mythology. They were insulting a terrific all-rounder as well as a deity. They forgot that they were making a monkey out of the Indian values.
The attempts to generate some really hostile reactions was the legacy of the '80s and '90s when India and Pakistan fought so many memorable battles in the Gulf as well as the World Cups. One thought such bickering were dead, but the Australian series gave a new life to it.
The winners in the end were the two teams for their tremendous cricketing show, and their ruthless skippers. While Ponting acknowledged that the Indians played like World Champions, Dhoni’s Devils again showed that winning the twenty20 was no fluke. The eventual 4-3 verdict in favour of Australia in seven completed matches was a fair result – fair to both set of terrific individuals.
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