The mystique of Kolkata 2001 is still unbeatable

What defines a great Test match? Comebacks? Close finishes? Underdog triumphs? The platonic ideal of the final session of the final day starting with all four results still in play?

Yes, all that, sure, but the collective wisdom in our shortlist to find the Greatest Test of the 21st century, and the collective wisdom of our readers, have given us another answer. Eighteen of the 32 Tests that lined up at the start of this exercise involved Australia, and 12 of them ended in Australian defeat. The three that reached the final round of voting, ended, in chronological order, with Australia losing by 171 runs, Australia losing by one wicket, and Australia losing by three wickets.

Sorry, Australia. Cricket fans (as events at Lord's last week no doubt showed you) love to see you lose. In times of despair and ennui, we seek solace in your heartbreaks, streaming them play by play on our devices or minds' eyes.

It is, of course, the ultimate backhanded compliment. Australia have lost fewer Tests in this century than any of the other teams that compete in the World Test Championship - this despite playing more Tests than anyone other than England. It's precisely because Australia have been so hard to beat that their defeats have featured some of the most stirring individual and team performances of our time. This is why 12 of Australia's 66 Test defeats in the 21st century - that's more than one in six - are ESPNcricinfo-certified classics.

While other candidates were unlucky to miss out on a spot in the final round - Birmingham 2005, for instance, received a surprisingly small share of your votes despite its place in Ashes folklore - the three Tests that made it - Kolkata 2001, Leeds 2019, Brisbane 2021 - fully deserved their places. They weren't just great Test matches; they all had that transcendent quality that puts them among the greatest sporting contests of their time. Even as they unfolded before our eyes, they gave the feeling that they existed outside reality, that the field of play was inhabited by beings governed by physical laws different to those that constrain the rest of us.

Any of the three finalists could have won, and the chances are that you might have chosen a different winner if the poll was designed a little differently, or conducted it a week earlier or later, or if the gods of internet algorithms had brought it to your notice in a different way, or if the demographics of our audience were a little different, or if cricket's political economy had a different look. While voters on ESPNcricinfo - who made up nearly 68% of the total count - overwhelmingly backed the winner, Kolkata, results went differently elsewhere: voters on our X and YouTube handles put Leeds in first place, for instance, and those on our WhatsApp channel plumped for Brisbane.

All three Tests made equally strong cases, so it's apt to wonder how one of them ended up with over 49% of the votes and the other two with roughly 25% each. What did Eden Gardens have that Headingley and Gabba did not?

The answer, of course, is that it's all subjective. So let's talk about the subjective. I was a class IX student in March 2001, and my consumption of that Test match and that series was often indirect, restricted during school hours to terse dispatches from classmates sent to the audio-visual room at intervals proportional to the teacher's interest in cricket and generosity of spirit.

"Laxman and Dravid still batting. 398 for 4." Cheering in the classroom. Half an hour later: "431 for 4, Laxman 196." Pandemonium. Until I got home to catch the last half hour or so, and then the highlights, it was up to my imagination to fill in the gaps.

Part of the beauty of Test cricket comes from how much of it lives in our imaginations, how intensely we feel even the bits that we aren't in a position to watch, and while this is still true today, it was truer in 2001 than in 2019 or 2021. So much of Kolkata 2001 took place in our imaginations, and so much of it, in the aftermath, has existed in the reliving, the retelling, the little tricks of memory. The drama contained in the highlights packages - Harbhajan Singh's offbreaks spitting like cobras from a length, VVS Laxman's feet dancing one way to whip against the turn and another to drive inside-out, Rahul Dravid gesturing angrily to the press box, the look on Shane Warne's face when he's duped by Sachin Tendulkar's wrong'un - ennoble the bits that got left out. How well must Glenn McGrath have bowled, ball after ball, to finish with 14-8-18-4 in India's first innings? Even ESPNcricinfo's ball-by-ball can't help - it's all scoring and no commentary.

Leeds and Brisbane contained cricket just as breathtaking as Kolkata, but mystique? If you ask on X and reach the right eyes, someone with access to ball-tracking data might DM you the line and length co-ordinates of the Mohammed Siraj ball that Steven Smith fended to gully.

But mystique isn't the only reason Kolkata got your vote. Mystique can only get you so far when you're up against epics that everyone, including kids who weren't even around in 2001, followed breathlessly, like, yesterday. Mystique can only do so much when it's up against recency bias. And it's perfectly okay to be biased towards India's dismantling of the Gabba's ghamand, with an attack that had bowled all of 10 balls in Test cricket before that series taking 20 wickets and paving the way for an unforgettable fourth-innings chase. It's perfectly okay to be biased towards England winning after being bowled out for 67, towards Ben Stokes going from 3* off 73 balls to 135* off 219, and the drama of a last-wicket stand that survived, off successive balls, a fluffed run-out chance and an lbw that would have been dead if the bowling team hadn't run out of reviews.

It's some achievement, then, to beat Leeds 2019 and Brisbane 2021 in a poll in the year 2025 - an achievement, you might say, not unlike following on and beating an Australia team with 16 successive wins under its belt.

There have been other Tests with hat-tricks, and other Tests featuring partnerships that batted through a full day's play. There have been other Tests won by injury-ravaged underdogs, other spectacular takedowns of all-timer XIs, other Tests won from hopeless positions, and other results that snapped formidable winning streaks. Other teams have found ways to win with time running out, and other teams have won Tests with startling interventions from part-timers. Other Tests have been played on true pitches that encouraged strokeplay, other Tests on pitches with something in them for fast and spin bowlers, and other Tests on lightning outfields that rewarded wristy artistry. Other great, twisty Test matches have sat in the middle of great, twisty series. Crowds of 90,000 and more have lent an electric air to other Tests at other stadiums.

Kolkata 2001 contained all those ingredients. Which other Test match - from the 21st or any other century - can make the same claim?