While the country was still feeling overwhelmed by the emotion of India's greatest resurrection act, the coming from behind victory over the mighty Australian side in Kolkata, the team knew the importance of keeping its head and approaching the next Test in Chennai afresh, with the Border-Gavaskar Trophy on the line.
That's where, Kolkata's hero VVS Laxman recalls, the then head coach John Wright's unflappable temperament came to good use as he reminded the Sourav Ganguly-led side the work still ahead at Chepauk.
“It was very clear that the whole country was talking about Kolkata, but as a team, it was important that we didn’t get carried away," Firstpost quoted Laxman as saying.
"At the team meeting, John lauded our Kolkata heroics, with a caveat, ‘That Test will go down in history as an epic, but our aim is to win the series. Let’s not dwell on Kolkata, this is a fresh game and we need to start afresh. People will remind you about that Test, but you have to forget about it now. Australia will come hard at us, we need to stay strong and aggressive’. Whatever complacency might have lingered quickly disappeared."
As it turned out, crucial half-centuries from Shiv Sunder Das, Sadagoppan Ramesh, Laxman, Rahul Dravid and an outstanding hundred from Sachin Tendulkar followed by Harbhajan Singh's magnificent match-haul of 15 wickets, allowed Indians to prevail by just two wickets in a closely-fought encounter and win the series 2-1, an unimaginable result until Day 4 of the second Test in Kolkata where it took a once-in-a-lifetime partnership from Dravid and Laxman to turn the whole thing around.
“What happened in Kolkata was extraordinary, it won’t happen very frequently,” Laxman said. “What happened in Chennai will happen often in Tests. The Chennai win (by two wickets) gave us a lot of satisfaction, it showed that Kolkata was not an aberration. Here too, our character was severely tested."
"As the match progressed, fortunes fluctuated with each session. Chennai was a more competitive Test than Kolkata, with its constant ebbs and flows," he added.
"It was brilliant; there were contributions from almost everyone, it was more of a team effort than Kolkata. That wasn’t surprising – coming into the game, each of us had tuned ourselves to be at their best for us to win."
Having made a legendary 281 at the Eden Gardens, Laxman felt he was watching "the ball like a football" in Chennai. “Even though I was desperately trying not to think of the previous innings, I was actually seeing the ball like a football," he said. “I was hitting it so easily, the ball was flying off the bat, the bat-flow was surreal. I was in the ‘zone’, everything was just flowing. It was a case of the sub-conscious taking over, and for the first time in my life, I knew what it was to get used to a bowler."
"I almost knew with certainty, as they were running in, what ball (Glenn) McGrath or (Jason) Gillespie or (Shane) Warne were going to bowl, I had got used to them so much in Kolkata that I could pick up cues from the way they ran in, how they held the ball," Laxman added.
“Being in the zone is the ultimate form of being in the present and following the diktat of the sub-conscious. Often, in that frame, you can get sucked in by the flow and play a shot that you will regret in future, like I did in the first innings when I chased a widish ball. When you are not in the zone, which is most of the time, you get tips from the conscious mind – leave the ball, it’s too wide."
(Inputs from Firstpost)
