R Ashwin recalled how former India coach Ravi Shastri helped lift the morale of the Indian team during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2020-21 tour of Australia. This was after India lost the first Test in Adelaide after being bowled for 36 runs.
India's tour Down Under has been remarkable, with victories in the previous two series in 2018/19 and 2020/21 by a 2-1 score. This time, however, the difficulty increases dramatically, with five Tests compared to four in earlier outings.
The 2020/21 series is still remembered by cricket fans, not just for India's amazing victory, but also for the team's unwavering spirit. Virat Kohli, India's captain at the time, had exited the series following the first Test.
The team subsequently suffered serious blows, with key players including Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, and KL Rahul, among others, being ruled out for the entire series.
But new players like Shubman Gill, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Siraj, Washington Sundar, and T Natarajan stepped up.
However, the 36 all-out in the Adelaide Test had proved to be quite a setback for the Indian team, and to add to it, captain Virat Kohli was returning home for paternal reasons.
Ravichandran Ashwin, one of India's main performers in that series, has explained how he tried to improve the attitude in the camp. Ashwin revealed that Shastri hosted a dinner for the team on the same day it lost the game, turned on the karaoke in the evening, and began singing.
“We weren't thinking of a series win at all, because the whole team atmosphere was down. But in the evening, Ravi bhai organized a team dinner, and he sang as well. He switched on the karaoke and started singing. Slowly, others followed too.
Virat was leaving the team. So, we intended to be positive, go to Melbourne, and win. We didn't think of series, we kept small targets, we took each match individually after that,” Ashwin told journalist Vimal Kumar on his YouTube channel.
India will return to Australia aiming to continue their winning run down under when the BGT 2024 begins on November 22 with the first Test in Perth.
