What is it when India take on Australia that it gets marketed as a best-seller? Is it the quality of cricket, or verbal warfare that becomes soup for the media? Perhaps it is all of this and something more.Indians have started to appreciate the many facets that make Australia the team they are: how the Australian media is an extension of the national side; how despite their mind-games they are the first to appreciate "good cricket" even if you are the opponent."Australia have taken the game to such a level that it has caught the frenzy of our aspiring cricketers," says Kiran More. "Now our boys talk about Glenn McGrath’s pitching, Matthew Hayden’s walk down the wicket, they want to emulate the feats of Ricky Ponting and Shane Warne. And it delights them no end to see the Indian team give them the jitters."Jitters may be the apt word. To stand level with the world champions session after session, game after game takes some doing. Not many teams, barring India in 2001 and 2003 and England in the 2005 Ashes, have managed to do that.As the great Glenn McGrath once told an Indian reporter: "What makes you think we are arrogant? We do what we say. Haughty are those who don't execute what they say."For long the Indian supporter has been pining to see that streak of fallibility in "the execution.""There was a time when we could silence them with cricket," emphasises Karsan Ghavri. "Greg Chappell and Co. let loose a string of swearwords on us in the Melbourne Test (81). We outsmarted him (Chappell) when he came to bat. I bowled a few short ones and noticed his exaggerated shuffle. I pitched in a short one on the leg stick knowing that the ball wouldn't bounce much. It didn't and down went the stumps. We won the Test and squared the series."Such fables have seared into the next generation's consciousness. Former cricketers have some splendid stories to tell.Sadagoppan Ramesh recalls the pull shot he played off Shane Warne in the Mumbai Test, 2001. The Tamil Nadu opener had hit the ball with such might that it rebounded off Justine Langer's shoulder at short leg."I thought Langer was dead," Ramesh recalls. "You would expect any other mortal to break down but Langer just looked right through me and remarked, 'Is that all you have you weak pussy? Come on, pack some power in your shots.' That was enough for Adam Gilchrist and Mark Waugh, who was standing at slips, to have a dig at me.'"Till to date Ramesh regrets having asked Gilchrist why Australians prefer using bats with thin blades. Believe me Ramesh, it goes," Gilchrist said.Gilly, as he is popularly called, thought it instructive to demonstrate the thin blade's effect when Australia were tottering at 90-odd runs, in that same Mumbai Test, with half the side back in the shack.Bending on one knee he walloped Harbhajan Singh between long on and mid-wicket. And then he turned to Ramesh and pronounced, "Saw that Ramesh? It goes."That day Gilchrist sent the ball flying to all corners of the Wankhede Stadium. Every time the ball took leave of his blade, he reiterated, "Aren't you convinced Ramesh? It goes."Of such thrills are India-Australia stories spun. More will be added to the lot in the next 90 days; you bet.
