On this day: India’s miracle in Kolkata

Perhaps more than at any other time before or since, the Australian Test team under Stephen Waugh was a Baggy Green machine.

Waugh took the reins in 1999 from Mark Taylor, a shrewd tactician and a fine batsman whose team reflected his own amiable personality.

The twin, who had fought his way through the miserable 1980s under the tutelage of Allan Border, had a harder edge than Taylor and most players in the game; a ruthless streak running through him that largely defined him as a cricketer.

It too, was reflected in his charges.

Under Waugh, and with the ambitious John Buchanan as coach, Australia reached heights of dominance no Test team had scaled previously.

It was the makings of a champion team. One that could be taken to the aforementioned heights.

Defeats, and draws for that matter, were simply not an option.

Between August 1999 and February 2001, Australia won 16 straight Tests.

The best the great West Indies side of the 1980s had managed was 11 on the trot.

Waug

So when Australia headed to India and thrashed their hosts by 10 wickets in the first Test in Mumbai, having beaten them three-nil on home soil in the summer of 1999-2000, more of the same was expected 10 days later in Kolkata.

What happened instead was arguably the greatest fightback in Test history.

Australia made 445 in their first innings on the back of the skipper’s 110 and 97 from Matthew Hayden, however it was teenage spinner Harbhajan Singh who stole the headlines, claiming 7-123 including the first hat-trick in India’s Test history.

h, with his foot-on-the-throat mentality, had upped the ante with astonishing effect.

Source: Cricket.com.au