Vivek Razdan on calling India's 2021 Gabba win: 'They weren't words, they were a feeling and an emotion'
The commentator’s iconic five-word summation of the Brisbane Test captured the essence of India’s victory against all odds
Karthik Krishnaswamy13-Dec-2024What’s your favourite commentary moment? Is it a moment of great commentary, or is it simply a great moment commentated upon? Sometimes the moment is big enough that the words don’t need to say all that much. Ravi Shastri and Ian Smith weren’t telling you anything you didn’t know when they told you that Dhoni had finished it off in style, and that England had won by the barest of margins, but the weight of the moments they described transfigured their words, turning them iconic. You probably didn’t just read them now; you heard them, in those voices.You could argue that the voices count for more than the words themselves, and that, in a job where you’re merely the garnish to what viewers can see for themselves, there’s nothing quite as valuable as the ability to convey emotion. It’s why the stints of Shastri and Smith always seem to coincide with the big finishes.Sometimes, though, a commentator goes above and beyond, and unearths a line that plays with the possibilities of language while capturing a moment’s zeitgeist. Vivek Razdan did this on January 19, 2021, when Rishabh Pant drove Josh Hazlewood down the ground at the Gabba and completed one of Test cricket’s greatest turnarounds.Related
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If you were watching the Hindi feed, this is what you heard when the ball rolled into the boundary cushion at long-off: Gabba Seldom have five words said so much.No one had beaten Australia at the Gabba in 31 Tests over 32 years. In the closing stages of the previous Test match, in Sydney, Australia captain Tim Paine had shown his frustration at his team’s inability to turn 1-1 into 2-1 by reminding India’s match-saving sixth-wicket pair that they had to come to this fortress next. “See you at the Gabba, mate.”Poetry in emotion: Razdan’s years of study paid off with the perfect denouement is a weighty, richly textured Urdu-Hindi word whose meaning lies somewhere between – and somewhere outside, too – arrogance, conceit, condescension, disdain, pride and vanity. With that one bit of alliteration, Razdan took in both the gravitas of Australia’s Gabba record and the hubris of Paine’s taunt: the Gabba’s now lay shattered.Razdan says the words came to him spontaneously, in the release of all the emotion built up over the preceding weeks: 36 all out in Adelaide followed by the departure of India’s captain; the comeback in Melbourne; the draw in Sydney sealed by a pair battling a torn hamstring and a bad back; the decimation of India’s bowling attack by injury, and the improbable competitiveness of the ragtag unit that took the field in Brisbane.”Each and every day, each and every game, there were so many different people who were coming up and raising their hand and showing that sort of character, and what they were made of,” Razdan says. “So these emotions were building over time, over all those days and Test matches. By the time we got to the fifth day of that final Test match, needing more than 300 runs, with so many things said against that team, the emotions were so high.”The way everything transpired, it was as if we were living on a different planet. And this was a time when the entire world was going through the Covid pandemic, so those emotions were also somewhere inside that. People are suffering, you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. In that sort of environment, when somebody comes up like this and does what they did, it was unbelievable.”I am a big believer in destiny and I’m so grateful that I was doing that stint and I was there on the mic on that day, and luckily, with the blessing of the almighty, those particular words came to me. They weren’t words, they were a feeling and an emotion.”An unheralded Pant became the hero of India’s unlikely win•Patrick Hamilton/AFP/Getty ImagesMoments later, Razdan let himself go once more as the producers cut to shots of India’s players embracing the hero of their run chase. It’s hard to imagine, now, that Pant started the series out of India’s XI, with Wriddhiman Saha preferred in Adelaide. It’s even more unimaginable that it was a reasonable choice then, given the challenge of the pink ball under lights and how far ahead Saha was of Pant as a pure keeper. Pant faced severe scrutiny over his keeping once he came into the side, and for all the runs he scored, his methods came in for widespread criticism whenever he was dismissed, even when he made 97 in Sydney.As Pant soaked in the winning feeling, Razdan ventriloquised: “There are virtues within me, shortcomings too. Ask yourself, seeker, what is it you want from me?”Lines like this speak of the decades of work Razdan put in to carve a niche for himself in a career he fell into, in some ways. He speaks English with an easy fluency that betrays his education at Delhi’s St Columba’s School, which includes Rahul Gandhi and Shahrukh Khan among its alumni. Hindi commentary wasn’t necessarily the obvious career path after Razdan’s fast-bowling days were done.”I’m a Kashmiri Pandit, and Hindi is my mother tongue,” Razdan says. “And my mom comes from UP, she comes from Lucknow. As a child, there were certain lines she always used to throw at me, you know? ” – you are telling someone to do certain things in a certain way, and you yourself are not able to do it. So my mom used to throw these lines at me, and I was always fascinated.”When I grew up, I never knew I’ll get into this line [of work], so once I started commentary, and then Hindi commentary came in in a big way, I started trying to speak to my mom – ‘Tell me all these lines that you heard as a child growing up in Lucknow.’ And it got me more interested in it.Into the breach: after India’s 2021 triumph, West Indies tore down Fortress Gabba earlier this year•Chris Hyde/Cricket Australia/Getty Images”Then I started reading, reading a lot. The poets of repute during that time, Mirza Ghalib, [Allama] Iqbal, all of them. The other thing that excited me was, these are certain lines or certain phrases being used over the years for portraying different emotions. How can I relate it to my sport? That is where the challenge came. So then I had to really go deep, study it, make my own adjustments, make my own lines, make my own rhymes. And over a period of time I kept writing them, kept writing them.”And that day, you know, the situation was such that it just brought out the best, because once you start studying it, you start saying these lines, you keep remembering them. Then you know when is the apt moment to use which line.”Razdan’s most famous line has gone on to transcend its moment in unimaginable ways. It has even been voiced by Shamar Joseph, that other recent stormer of Australia’s citadel. The line also portended a downgrade in the status of Brisbane, which was for so long the intimidating first port of call for visiting teams; it is now no longer Australia’s preferred venue for the start of their home season.As another Gabba Test begins, then, one thing is certain. Whether Australia win or lose, the is gone.