Latest news with #India-AustraliaTest
Mint
08-08-2025
- Sport
- Mint
On land and in water, a shining summer of striving
July sweats and bleeds and vomits into August. In Toulouse, during the Tour de France, Jonas Abrahamsen, who starts the race 10 days after fracturing his collarbone, wins a stage. In Singapore, in a draining heat, 10km open water swimmers at the world aquatics championships are handed mid-race feeds and then regurgitate part of this gruel into the water. 'It's not pretty,' says Australian swimmer Moesha Johnson. Yet they go and on and on, just like Mohammed Siraj charging in at the Oval, cheeky, grinning, prickly, transparent, and finally everyone can see who he really is, a study in endeavour, a bearded foot soldier who gives weight to all those words you tried to teach your kid. Unswerving. Wholehearted. Unstinting. Siraj, like the cyclist and the swimmer, must be always asking himself an ancient, elemental question. Winning is wonderful, but it's the striving to get there which seizes us, isn't it? The bloody-mindedness, the vigorous application of skill, the aching tilting at limits in search of something more profound than medals chucked into cupboards. It's one-armed Chris Woakes, like Anil Kumble with his strapped broken jaw, every wincing step an act of resoluteness. It's Tour riders falling and then taking abraded bodies down slick slopes at filthy speeds. 'You play with your life,' former rider Fabian Cancellara tells The New York Times. The legendary climber George Mallory spoke of responding to the challenge of the mountain. The struggle, he said, 'is the struggle of life itself, upward and forever upward'. Every athlete has their mountain. For high-divers in Singapore, it's 144 steps up into the sky, 20m for the women, 27m for the men, more storeys than you can imagine from where they fall elegantly. Below, scuba divers wait. Shohei Ohtani throws a baseball at roughly 160 kmph, these high-diving bodies can hit the water at 85 kmph. '(The fear) just never goes away,' says Rhiannan Iffland, the multiple-time world high-diving champion. Her tribe is her echo and so their daily striving lies in managing fear, wearing it, overcoming it. This striving by athletes is a search, a finding of all of themselves, not just on good days but bad ones, when the body feels unsure, unready, hurting, or their rival is flicking them aside, but still they push because it's who they are or want to be. Mohammed Siraj during the India-Australia Test in London, on 3 August. Long before the Oval, this is who Siraj was, this was always his guarantee, his compensation for any perceived lack of skill, his promise to his shirt to bring effort and all its cousins—suffering, pride, desire—to every one of his 185.3 summer overs. Like the 3,338km Tour rider and the 10km swimmer, he's a long-form hero. Striving isn't as obviously sexy as hand-eye skill (for example, the sublime Jasprit Bumrah) and so it takes longer to appreciate, like a museum piece which requires considered study. But rivals recognise this quality faster, they respect it, for they know 100% is an easy quote but a hard life, and Ben Stokes perfectly encapsulated the nagging, harassing force that Siraj has been by saying he keeps 'coming and coming and coming'. Athletes empty themselves, day after day, which is why there is a bin at the swimming world championships. A bin which an official takes me to see, just a few strides away from the mixed zone, and below some stairs, sitting on a chair, plastic bag inside. A bin that acknowledges effort, salutes pain, reflects madness and invites release. A bin into which athletes can vomit. I'm somewhat unfamiliar with water tribes and in Singapore I receive an overdue education. One Australian talks about her national trials where she vomits into a bag while still in the pool after the 1,500m. Her teammate, Johnson, competes in the 10km, 5km, 3km, 1,500m relay in open water, then the 1,500m heats and final in the pool, and in the end stands with hands on hips, proud, and says, 'I'm absolutely ruined'. These swimmers talk about headaches, ears ringing, hands shaking, with a shrug. As if pain is intoxication. On a car ride, an open water swimmer from Singapore tells me that leading up to the Tokyo Olympics her 'periods were so irregular because my body was just under so much stress all the time'. The route to greatness wanders through suffering. Striving is an attitude, a compulsion, a habit honed at practices. Like the 22x100m set Hungarian backstroker Hubert Kos once used to do. It's mostly hard to measure striving though, for there's no gauge to establish percentage of effort given, but of all the things I heard in the late summer, it's a diver I never met who put everything in perspective. Oleksii Sereda is Ukrainian and had to go to Hungary and Poland to train, somewhere, he said, 'to prepare normally, physically and mentally to not hear rockets, shelters and stuff like this. To sleep normally, to just live normally'. And as he dived in Singapore, his father was on his mind, his father who is 'almost on the front line', his father who was the reason why he was 'feeling stressed every single day... trying to call him as much as possible, because it's really dangerous to be there'. There's pressure everywhere, on the cycling Tour, at the Oval as Siraj begins his run up, but also on this diving board where a 19-year-old Ukrainian stands wondering about his dad. Still these athletes march on, turning striving into a sweaty, shining hymn. Sereda won silver in the 10m platform and then his thoughts wandered to the man who could not be there. 'I think today he watched me,' said the teenager. Rohit Brijnath is an assistant sports editor at The Straits Times, Singapore, and a co-author of Abhinav Bindra's book A Shot At History: My Obsessive Journey To Olympic Gold. He posts @rohitdbrijnath.
Indian Express
13-05-2025
- Sport
- Indian Express
From U-19 to 8,000 runs and 100th Test: How PCA stadium saw Kohli Test career unfold
While former Indian captain Virat Kohli announced his Test retirement after a 123-Test match career on Monday, the 36-year-old played his 100th Test match at IS Bindra PCA International Stadium at Mohali in March 2022. While Kohli has scored 30 Test centuries in his Test career, the Indian batsman played four Test matches at the Mohali stadium in his Test career spanning 14 years with his highest score being an unbeaten 67 against Australia in 2013. Overall, Kohli scored a total of 244 runs in seven innings in four Test matches at Mohali during his career. With his 100th Test match being played in March 2022 amid Covid-19 restrictions against Sri Lanka, the then PCA secretary R P Singla remembered the special Test for the Mohali stadium. 'When BCCI announced Mohali as the venue for Virat Kohli's 100th Test match, it was a moment of pride for PCA. The stadium had hosted some iconic matches like India-Australia Test in 2008, which saw Sachin Tendulkar crossing Brian Lara's then record of most number of runs in Test cricket, and to host Virat Kohli's 100th Test was special for all of us. Amid Covid-19 restrictions, we made all the arrangements and also got special memorabilia made for Virat Kohli for the historic feat,' said Singla. With a total of 9,230 runs in 210 Test innings, Kohli stands fourth in the all-time list of Indian batsmen with most runs only behind Sachin Tendulkar (15,921 runs), Rahul Dravid (13,265 runs) and Sunil Gavaskar (10,122). During his knock of 45 runs against Sri Lanka in his 100th Test, Kohli also crossed the 8,000-run mark in Test matches during his knock of 45 runs making him 16th fastest in the world to score 8,000 runs in Test cricket. Kohli's wife Anushka Sharma and brother Vikas Kohli too were in attendance to see him achieve the historic feat of playing in his 100th Test. 'Fans were allowed to watch the historic Test match only three days prior to the Test match. So, we had to make special counters for tickets. There was a lot of craze to watch Virat Kohli play his 100th Test match here and Virat Kohli crossing the 8,000 run mark in Test cricket made the Test more special,' recalled Singla. BCCI's former chief curator Daljit Singh too remembered the times Kohli played in Test matches at Mohali stadium. 'I had first seen him when he had come as part of the U-19 side for a tournament at Mohali. He has grown to be one of the stalwarts of Indian cricket. First there was Sunil Gavaskar, then Sachin Tendulkar and then came Virat Kohli. His fitness was supreme all these years and all the youngsters should take a leaf out of Virat's fitness and dedication to excel in future,' said Singh. Nitin Sharma is an Assistant Editor with the sports team of The Indian Express. Based out of Chandigarh, Nitin works with the print sports desk while also breaking news stories for the online sports team. A Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award recipient for the year 2017 for his story 'Harmans of Moga', Nitin has also been a two-time recipient of the UNFPA-supported Laadli Media Awards for Gender Sensitivity for the years 2022 and 2023 respectively. Nitin mainly covers Olympics sports disciplines with his main interests in shooting, boxing, wrestling, athletics and much more. The last 17 years with The Indian Express has seen him unearthing stories across India from as far as Andaman and Nicobar to the North East. Nitin also covers cricket apart from women's cricket with a keen interest. Nitin has covered events like the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the 2011 ODI World Cup, 2016 T20 World Cup and the 2017 AIBA World Youth Boxing Championships. An alumnus of School of Communication Studies, Panjab University, from where he completed his Masters in Mass Communications degree, Nitin has been an avid quizzer too. A Guru Nanak Dev University Colour holder, Nitin's interest in quizzing began in the town of Talwara Township, a small town near the Punjab-Himachal Pradesh border. When not reporting, Nitin's interests lie in discovering new treks in the mountains or spending time near the river Beas at his hometown. ... Read More
