Life Changing Lessons from the India Australia Series (Pun Intended)

We won...! We won...! We won...! For kids like me who grew up in the 90s the thought of India beating Australia in Australia was as inconceivable as dating a Ms. World or a Ms. Universe (but yours truly did think of... ahem! ahem! let's not go there). Yeah, stars have to be seriously aligned for a victory such as this to happen and stars were indeed aligned when Warner, Cameron and Steve were all sent off on a vacation for playing around with a certain tape. That vacation helped the Indian Team succeed in their triennial vocation. Mantra for Steve/Warner/Cameron: If you use tape your team will scrape. The above mantra was just the beginning, I set out on a journey where I personally uncovered several such lessons while watching this coma inducing, patience numbing, sometimes nerve wracking but ultimately gratifying series. Let's take a look at all the lessons I've grasped one by one:

• Players with rock solid and dependable techniques don't get IPL contracts. It sucks to be Cheteshwar Pujara, Hashim Amla or Joe Root, on one hand you could be piling tons of runs and saving your country from the rut every time you come to bat but on the other hand you keep losing millions of dollars just because a certain billionaire franchise owner doesn't find you entertaining enough. This is akin to doing all the hard work in a relationship and still being jilted by your beloved who finds your honesty boring. Mantra for Life: You can't win them all so stay the course and stand tall!

• Beard is the secret of India's success. Every player in the Indian Team must sport a stubble and if you don't sport one your are out of the playing XI like Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Hardik Pandya. I get it now, it must be that nauseating smell of the gingelly oil in the Indian Team beards that got the Aussies out. Dammit! If only Ganguly or Azhar knew this secret, we would have won in Australia a long time ago.  Mantra for the Series: If you are not a beardo then you are a weirdo. 

  

  We are the beardos, move out you weirdos (Courtesy: Rishab Pant's tweet)

• Cheteshwar Pujara is a Jedi in disguise. While Cheteshwar Pujara was busy batting himself out of an IPL contract, several memes came up in social media to describe his herculean batting efforts. I have come up with one too. I will liken Chesteshwar Pujara to Kylo Ren in Star Wars. Just as Kylo Ren destroyed my childhood heroes Hans Solo and Luke Skywalker and quashed everything I liked about the Star Wars franchise, Pujara too blocked, bludgeoned and battered every expectation that an Australian has of an Indian Tour. There were no batting collapses (save for Perth), no instances of wayward bowling, not even the ceremonial dropped catch (save for Hanuma Vihari) and above all not a single Aussie century (if that is not Jedi power than what is it). For an Aussie the memory of this series would be as painful as my remembrance of watching the 'The Last Jedi'. Mantra for Cheteshwar: You are not a Jedi, you are a Sith, bat on until you knock off their pith. 

  

  Pujara the Jedi for India and Sith for Australia (Courtesy: TimesNow)

• Hyperboles are the flavor of the season. As soon as you score a century you immediately become the next Dravid/Sachin/Laxman, as soon as you take some wickets and score some runs you become the next Kapil, as soon as you drop a catch you become the next Kamran Akmal and as soon as you fail you become the next Vinod Kambli. It takes decades, literally decades to become yourself (for many it takes many lives), now imagine the amount of time it's going to take to become 'The Next Someone Else'. Having established this fact let's quell some hyberboles, this is not the greatest Indian Team to ever tour Australia, this is not India's greatest victory, Ravi Shastri is not the greatest cricketing brain ever and Rishab Pant is not the most destructive wicket keeper batsman since Adam Gilchrist (at least not yet). We have a talented set up and the team deserves a lot of credit for this win. Let's leave it at that! Mantra for the Indian Team: Less is more for now, focus and return with the World Cup in tow.

• KL Rahul is using the Australian series to prepare for the upcoming IPL season. It's very important for cricketers like Rahul to get sufficient practice on overseas tours in order to justify their million dollar price tag in IPL. Rahul, we are sad that you didn't get enough of practice and recommend BCCI to send you on a tour of Zanzibar, the coconuts there will give you some food for thought. Mantra for Rahul: Leave what you want to hit and hit what you want to leave. You have a bat in hand and not a sieve.   

• Rishab Pant loves to be a babysitter: A lot of hullabaloo has been made up of the conversation between Rishab Pant and Tim Paine, where Tim suggested that Rishab should help him out in his pain by babysitting his children. I am all for the collaboration between wicket keepers as long as it doesn't involve a tape. But I definitely would want Rishab to utilize his time in the Paine household well and source some glamorous contacts from the Aussie Captain's mobile and personal dairies. Mantra for Pant: Who knows what might be hiding in the bushes, do let it out. You are a babysitter now but become a babe-sitter in the future, use your clout.

So there you go my friends, I hope you are all already experiencing a change in your lives thanks to the lessons I've put forth. Don't thank me, thank India's batting. The pace at which things moved allowed plenty of room for thoughtful rumor and untactful humor.

Until Next Time,

Your Cricket Expert,

J.J. Chaitanya