Holi special: A colourful story of recent times in Indian cricket

Men in blue were thrown into a black hole and got blue when the white men visited. Victory was seeing pink elephants. The kith and kin of Indian cricket got gray hair (Well, you know, only the skipper was brave enough to openly display these!) not knowing what to do. When the management thought about giving pink slip to Dhoni, Mr. Srini (Mama) was one of very few persons who looked at him through rose-coloured glasses and the selection team (were forced to) gave green light for the captain to continue. Skipper was very impressed with this red-carpet treatment and decided that he will make the baggy greens wave a white flag.

Indian team got browned off with criticism and started putting more green into their practice. Before the series started, Aussies were the great white hope of the series. But things were not as black and white as everyone thought. Fans tickled pink with the red-hot double ton from MS and then came the most awaited victory in the first Test match at Chennai. And that marked the beginning of yet another purple patch for the blue brigade. Out of the blue, (disappointing all the cartoonists and satirists), Sir Ravindra Jadeja started performing with the ball and gave his team important wickets in very crucial times and an astonishing victory was on Indians side in Hyderabad.

Time for selecting the team for second half of the series had arrived. This time, nobody could give a red light to the selection panel from blackballing Viru. This saw Dada in red. But Arthur’s red tape issues caught more attention and Sourav (luckily) escaped the limelight. On the other hand, Michael Clarke, the lone warrior of his team, started getting more and more off-colour with his back pain. (Could it be possible that sitting for long hours without a break to make colourful power points had caused this?) Without much change in colours, India won the Mohali Test too. In the last Test match, the Oz looked very close in their rainbow chase but they were still beyond the black stump. With everybody contributing, Indian team ended the series with flying colours.

Now that the war in the white attire is successfully over, players are ready to paint the country red with the most exciting domestic tournament. Nine colours will fight with each other for more than a month to prove their dominance in the spectrum of Twenty-20. But then, white remains the purest and most beautiful of all. Whatever the number of colours may be, white is the source of all. Raising the tri-coloured flag in South Africa at the end of year would give the real essence of winning and will put this home series victory in shade. Till then, the battle is on.