{"id":1446,"date":"2016-03-14T01:53:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T01:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=1446"},"modified":"2016-03-20T03:58:48","modified_gmt":"2016-03-20T03:58:48","slug":"on-this-day-indias-miracle-in-kolkata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=1446","title":{"rendered":"On this day: India&#8217;s miracle in Kolkata"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/on-this.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1447\" src=\"http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/on-this-300x195.jpg\" alt=\"on this\" width=\"300\" height=\"195\" srcset=\"http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/on-this-300x195.jpg 300w, http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/on-this.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Perhaps more than at any other time before or since, the Australian Test team under Stephen Waugh was a Baggy Green machine.<\/p>\n<p>Waugh took the reins in 1999 from Mark Taylor, a shrewd tactician and a fine batsman whose team reflected his own amiable personality.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>It too, was reflected in his charges.<\/p>\n<p>Under Waugh, and with the ambitious John Buchanan as coach, Australia reached heights of dominance no Test team had scaled previously.<\/p>\n<p>It was the makings of a champion team. One that could be taken to the aforementioned heights.<\/p>\n<p>Defeats, and draws for that matter, were simply not an option.<\/p>\n<p>Between August 1999 and February 2001, Australia won 16 straight Tests.<\/p>\n<p>The best the great West Indies side of the 1980s had managed was 11 on the trot.<\/p>\n<p>Waug<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>What happened instead was arguably the greatest fightback in Test history.<\/p>\n<p>Australia made 445 in their first innings on the back of the skipper&#8217;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&#8217;s Test history.<\/p>\n<figure><\/figure>\n<p>h, with his foot-on-the-throat mentality, had upped the ante with astonishing effect.<\/p>\n<p>Source: Cricket.com.au<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps more than at any other time before or since, the Australian Test team under&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1447,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[5,9,3,33],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/on-this.jpg",768,498,false],"thumbnail":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/on-this-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/on-this-300x195.jpg",300,195,true],"medium_large":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/on-this.jpg",640,415,false],"large":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/on-this.jpg",640,415,false],"1536x1536":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/on-this.jpg",768,498,false],"2048x2048":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/on-this.jpg",768,498,false],"enternews-featured":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/on-this.jpg",768,498,false],"enternews-medium":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/on-this.jpg",720,467,false],"enternews-thumbnail":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/on-this.jpg",480,311,false]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?author=1"},"category_info":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?cat=4\" rel=\"category\">Stories<\/a>","tag_info":"Stories","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1446"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1448,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1446\/revisions\/1448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}