What a difference time makes!!! The last time India toured Australia, it was Steve Waugh’s last outing and therefore, the series was hard-fought but with an off-field warmth that might have misled you into thinking India were playing England sometime back in the 60s. ..not Australia in 03-04. The only discordant note at all came in fact from an Indian – Parthiv Patel – who taunted Steven for shelving his slog-sweep in the 2nd innings at Sydney. Steve Waugh finally succumbed and went for it only to hole out at the deep and miss out on a fitting century.
Right from the time this series started however, a palpable over-zealousness was all too evident in the demeanour of the Australian team. They were – in one word – DESPO, as they say in Bombay. Desperate to beat their own record of sixteen consecutive wins, desperate to retain the trophy and clean-sweep the Indian team, desperate to prove they didn’t need Martyn, Langer, McGrath, Warne…and so on.
Commentators have observed that the Melbourne Test was played in the right spirit. This was because the Indian team was underprepared and – barring the spiriting counter-attack by the bowlers on the first day – couldn’t muster a semblance of a fight. Au contraire, at Sydney, they had Australia on the mat and then seemed to overcome all obstacles on the way to a slender first innings lead. Not only were they not succumbing easily, they looked dangerously close to beating Australia. And it was here that the desperation revealed itself in its fully ugly splendour. Set up the hot-headed, brash, arrogant Harbhajan Singh for the racism-trap. Not a soul barring Symonds heard what Harbhajan really said and yet, Bhajji was immediately circled by ‘angry’ Australian players saying “you’ve crossed the line” or whatever. Fit for a Broadway production, I say. You deserve an Oscar for this, Ponting!!!!
But, obviously, the hearing would be after the Test. In the meantime, work the umpires furiously, abuse the catching agreement to claim grounded catches, don’t walk even when the ball has travelled to first slip…it didn’t help that unlike previous Indian teams, this one refused to wilt easily..although succumb they did, with a little over 2 overs left in the match.
Ponting & Co could have easily salvaged the aftermath if they had not committed the cardinal sin most champions do at one or other stage – underestimate the opponent. Chris Rogers and Shaun Tait were supremely confident they could knock the Indians over in Perth – that’s right, knock Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid and Laxman just like that. They lost the toss but at that time, Ponting was probably pleased as punch that Kumble elected to bat. 2 days on, they had allowed India to reach a respectable 330 and furthermore collapsed for 212. Their bowlers had failed to read the conditions in all their infinite experience of playing in Australia. When the bowlers couldn’t ‘knock’ the Indian batting for below 200, which was the least they needed to do, the match was over, though Australia resisted bravely and gave a scare to the inexperienced Indian pacers.
One would have expected Australia to bounce back with a vengeance at Adelaide. Far from it…the bowlers once again allowed India to build a few big and many useful partnerships. After that, the Australian batsmen gave a fine demonstration of a virtue that might have helped them avoid defeat at Perth – grafting. Crawling along at sub-continental run-rates, they took two full days to get merely a flimsy lead over India, which was not enough to force victory on the final day.
After all that, the self-righteous cursing and finger-pointing at BCCI’s muscle-flexing….hmm, perhaps, it was the only thing left for Australia to do. Their collective ego had been dealt a huge blow….the visitors had refused to submit to their dirty games, they had been conquered in their hitherto impregnable fortress and the world now knew that even Australia preferred to save a match rather than win it.
All this is not to justify holding the threat of a walkout even when matters are in independent hands. Indeed, the moral high ground the Indian captain claimed triumphantly after Sydney stands well and truly squandered. Problem is, it is hard to convince sub-continental teams that independent hands are necessarily unbiased as the ICC hasn’t exactly supported India or Pakistan or Sri Lanka on numerous occasions when we stood upright for what is right. Hansen on his part gave one and all a scare by talking of new evidence, of re-hearing the case. The mistrust, however, is not directed at Hansen, but at ICC. Remember Mike Deness?? Remember how ICC superiorly refused to change the match referee ..even when the South African Cricket Board backed us???
Again, all this hardly absolves Harbhajan of blame. The adage “barking dogs don’t bite” never rung truer. Australians may not play spin quite as fluently as Indians, but they are no push-overs. You won’t give it air, you won’t get your loop right, you insist on pushing it through, how do you hope to get wickets?? By saying “Teri maa ki” to Australian players and getting into a soup??? It’s time to -perhaps late in the day – give Murali Kartik and Ramesh Powar their due.
Kumble, after the Sydney Test, said only one team played in the spirit of the game. Well, one Indian player certainly played the game in its finest tradition – Ishant Sharma. He got Ponting in a soup, got some deliveries to snort viciously at right-handers, hit 140-plus consistently and resisted Brett Lee & Co – all without uttering a word. Sreesanth, watch out, your place in the team is in danger.
This piece will not be complete without a word about Sachin Tendulkar. I supported the idea of dropping him after his dismal performance in the ODI World Cup. Not anymore, he can play as long as he wishes to…and I am sure he will choose the right moment to quit. It appears now that his shelving the pull shot, the cover drive on the up, the paddle sweep, the dance down the pitch and loft over long-off, had less to do with his “new role” in the team and more to do with creeping self-doubt. He charged Saqlain twice in the ‘99 Chennai Test and miscued on both occasions. Out goes the lofted drive. He pulled McGrath to his end in the World Cup final. Out goes the pull shot. He was trapped plumb to Monty Panesar manufacturing a paddle sweep. Out goes the paddle sweep. He was getting out driving at away-swinging deliveries early in the innings. Out goes the expansive cover drive. Boss, how do you score if you cut out all your strokes even if you are Tendulkar the great??
A good performance in back-to-back ODI series against Australia and Pakistan seems to have given him the confidence he needs to attack. The cover drives are back, the disdainful loft off Brad Hoggg is back, the paddle sweep too. The pull shot hopefully will, too. Notice one little detail – in all his big half-centuries and centuries in this series, he was poking tentatively at Brett Lee’s deliveries early in the innings but didn’t nick it. He won’t – because he will be too far away from the ball and it will be travelling too fast for him to reach it. This, more than anything else, is proof that the Sachin of old is back. Remember how in his peak, the late 90s, we all used to watch with bated breath whether he would survive the early nerves and go on to make a big innings?? We are doing that again – because he has to poke, explore and attack to get his eye in and get the measure of the conditions. Everybody plays and misses at the start of the innings, you can’t make your luck unless you make an attempt to ride it. Purists can go to hell!!!
February 28, 2008 at 2:50 am |
no offence but indians nevr walk either, so how about u stop giving the australian team shit, its a friggin game they should have the balls to just play on, stop sooking, we are the best team by far, if the big 4 of india were the legends everyone say they are they would have been a dominant team at one stage in their career, but never were, yes they may have won some tests but rarely won test series, and never against australia, maybe once in their whole career, check how many steve waugh or ricky ponting have. batting stats mean nothing its wins that count
February 28, 2008 at 5:38 am |
Mate, no batsman walks for LBW decisions but most batsmen in the world do walk when there is a big nick as opposed to a faint inside edge, it is the most natural thing to do. I would like to know whether Symonds would wait for the umpire’s decision if he was clean bowled or caught out in the outfield, what’s he trying to prove anyway.
In the past four Test series played against Australia (whether in India or Australia), India have lost two, levelled one and won one. So, Aussies have the upper hand, which nobody for your information has denied, but dominating???? Pah, I don’t wanna hear about your definition of dominating, the victory margins and win-loss ratios will show you that all four series were hard-fought. By the way, India have in the past few years beaten Pakistan, England and West Indies in the latter countries’ home grounds, so you are clearly out of the loop.
By the way, I wasn’t even referring to win-loss records in the article, do you guys ever think about anything other than win-loss because cricket is much, much more than all that. In fact, we Indians know Australia is the best team in the world and are happy to take a few matches off you guys once in a while. I was comparing your own’s team behaviour in the series against Steve Waugh’s team in 03-04 with the current one. Too bad you got so pissed off that you didn’t even read the thing properly. You are idioteque of metal-archives, aren’t you?? Switch off that metal music and calm down before you read articles on contentious issues like these.