Given a canvas, the players painted themselves heroes: Bharat Arun

Bowling coach Bharat Arun reveals how Team India overcame unimaginable odds on injury-hit tour
MUMBAI: December 14, three days before the start of the first Test, India's bowling coach Bharat Arun landed in Adelaide and checked into his hotel room for a quiet dinner to bring in his birthday.
Things hadn't really gone the way he would have liked that weekend. The Indian team, playing a warm-up match against Australia 'A', had allowed the opposition to score 300-plus in the second innings for the loss of four wickets, at almost four runs an over. The Indians had gone into that match with four pacers - Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Navdeep Saini and Mohammed Siraj - clearly expecting better returns.

Three days later, Arun would have to pick a combination of these pacers, along with R Ashwin, to field the 'best possible XI' at the Adelaide Oval. But, at 57 going on 58, Arun wasn't really beginning to lose sleep. Between pacers and spinners, he had an array of 14 bowlers to choose from. The bowling coach would have laughed his gut out if someone told him then that he'd be left with just five of those 14 bowlers, four of them debuting in that very series, by the time of the fourth Test.
"Who would've thought," he says, the hindsight lingering like a bad dream. On Wednesday evening, Brisbane time, as he walked to the aircraft to fly out of Australia, he bid goodbye to a country that tested every nerve that week. "A pacer is like a racehorse. A stallion," is how he always likes to put it. That prized possession, his pace bowling attack - one that was being carefully knit since the start of 2018 - had taken a hit.

To watch one bowler after another bow out, to keep picking from the available resources, to worry about the extent of their injuries, to know that there was no replacement to fly in...it seemed like India had a mountain to climb after the Adelaide debacle.
"If I have to keep coming to Australia again and again for such demanding tours, I would pick this same set each and every time. They were given a canvas and they painted themselves heroes," he says.
On the eve of the Gabba Test, India, for the first time in the series, restrained from announcing the playing XI. Head coach Ravi Shastri, captain Ajinkya Rahane, Bharat Arun and physiotherapist Nitin Patel had locked themselves in a room, figuring out the next morning's strategy.

The task was to assemble the best possible XI straight out of a hospital ward. Mohammed Siraj was the first pick, without doubt. He was bowling quick, getting the ball to move, and was fired up after the racist abuse in Sydney. Shardul Thakur would also play. The Gabba had bounce and Thakur would fit in, of course apart from being the only bowler to have played at least one Test before the team had landed in Australia.
Saini and Natarajan both would be roped in, because four pacers suited the conditions and there were simply no other options available. Washington Sundar would step in, if Ashwin had to rest, simply because the 21-year-old could bat, along with bowling some 'intelligent' off-spin.
Between Wriddhiman Saha and Mayank Agarwal, it would be the latter because he was hitting the ball in the nets. The knock he took on the wrist at practice wasn't bad.

Inside the room, the XI was being assembled, and a strategy being laid out. "Imagine the horror when Saini too ran the risk of injury. But not once did these boys flinch. They woke up each morning and strode out like champions. They were determined to prove themselves. We all knew there was nothing to lose. It's their determined spirit and resolve that saw India through," he says.
Between January 2018 in South Africa and January 2021 in Australia, India's bowling has come full circle. The attack has proved itself everywhere.
Like Troy Cooley's England attack that won them the historic 2005 Ashes series, this one - a bunch of go-getters who won't stop at anything - is Bharat Arun's legacy.