Fall from Grace

An extended Test series of 4 – 5 matches, that rare event in today’s crowded international calendar, serves as a great illustration of a cricketer’s or cricket team’s ebbs and flows in fortune. There is sufficient time for a storyline to develop, several, in fact. One batsman emerges as a bulwark for his team, another finds he can’t score a run to save his life, a bowler discovers a new bunny, strengths and weaknesses are compared, patterns emerge. Sometimes, when the pattern becomes obvious pretty early on, the rest of the series just grinds on remorselessly to the obvious conclusion, demonstrating how cruel the Test arena can be with no place to hide. As it was with the India-England Test series.

This was a highly awaited series between two evenly matched sides at the top of the rankings, but it ended up as one of the most lop-sided in recent times. To be honest, they were never evenly matched, but no one knew that to begin with, and hence the initial matches had more than a semblance of a contest, with both teams playing in ignorance of the other’s relative strengths and weaknesses. But once they realised the gulf between the two teams, the Indian team fell away disastrously, and there was just no coming back. And the increasingly divergent paths taken by the two teams through the series was watched with a sense of incredulity, irrespective of who you were supporting.

1st Test, Lords: Teams ranked 1 and 2 are fighting it out, with 2 playing host. There’s excitement in the air, the series is too close to call, and the teams oblige by playing some hard-fought cricket. The partnership between Broad and Prior in the England second innings turns out to be pivotal, proving to be the difference between a target of 460 and a target of 340. Even the latter might have been too much for India, but that rubbing-your-nose-in partnership provides some much needed momentum for England.

2nd Test, Nottingham: England have been the better side in the first side, but the series is still balanced. India has a recent history of always playing catch-up and playing it well, say the experts. So the world waits and watches. And we watch open-mouthed as India actually seems to turn it on, taking a first innings lead with 6 wickets in hand. This is really champaigne stuff, we begin telling ourselves. Till Broad runs in to take a devastating hat-trick, and keep the Indian lead down to 67. For me, the hat-trick was the key event in the entire series, given the match circumstances and the stage of the series it came in. And a hat-trick, almost by definition, seems to be always associated with a winning side, providing that enormous boost in team morale and confidence. How many hat-tricks have been taken in a losing cause, I wonder? The England batsmen immediately follow it up with the first of what would be a recurring feature in the series – a 500 plus score, and a pattern begins to emerge.

3rd Test, Edgbaston: Saurav Ganguly’s confidence in the Indian team coming back to square the series 2-2 begins to sound like one of his erstwhile team pep talks, rather than the balanced view of a cricket analyst. But the determined Indian fan continues to watch with hope in his heart, only to see his worst nightmare come true. The batsmen are worked over, the bowlers look club-level, the fielders look insipid, the freshly arrived Sehwag gathers a king pair, and India crashes to a defeat by an innings and a whopping margin. It’s hard and brutal Test cricket, with only one team in the match right through. We realise the concept of ‘key moments’ no longer apply to this series, because one way traffic has commenced. An interesting aspect is the lack of runs from Dravid in this match, the only match with meagre returns for him, in a series which he otherwise dominated. And this might be the truest, and saddest, picture painted of Dravid’s immense contribution to the series. For all his batting heroics and commendable pride shown right through, his exploits only served to lessen the margin of defeats for India, nothing else. And that is just a statement on the nature of the game, and not on the individual brilliance he exhibited all through the series, except Edgbaston.

4th Test, The Oval: Do we really need to extend this farce, seems to be the predominant thought. At least, the Indians seem to think so, jaded in their mind, and exposed by the cruelty of Test cricket. They plod on, Dravid continues to dig in, Bell makes perhaps the easiest double hundred ever, and even rain intervening for a major portion of one day cannot stop England from completing another innings defeat. Tendulkar comes within 9 runs of completing ‘that’ landmark, which thankfully will now not be remembered as having been achieved in one of the worst Test series for India ever. Small mercy! Team 1 slips to 3, while looking far worse. Team 2 moves up to 1. England are surprised at the margin, but delighted. India are just tired, and relieved it’s all over.

Things can change dramatically in a Test series which spans across months. Drastic momentum shifts happen, perspectives change, reputations are made and lost, rankings are squandered and attained. During the second Test, commentator Ravi Shastri made an ill-advised remark on how England were jealous of India’s No.1 ranking, which led to a minor furore of its own. A couple of years down the line, it’ll be hard to imagine this kind of comment was made in the middle of a humiliating 0-4 whitewash of India. It’s been that kind of series.

A Day at the Ground

I am at the entrance to the Oval in South London, peering through the iron-wrought gates, trying to figure out if a match is indeed happening. It is fifteen minutes to start time, according to both my watch and the Cricinfo schedules page I had checked in the morning, but the completely deserted look about the place makes me wonder if I have got the date wrong. A security man suddenly appears out of nowhere and allays my fears. Yes, the match is indeed on! The hosts Surrey take on Leicestershire in the weekend’s Clydesdale Bank 40 fixture in ten minutes!

I am directed to a quiet booth around the corner, where a pretty girl sells me a ticket for ten pounds. “Err…which stand is this for? Is it free seating?” I ask, rather foolishly. She beams at me with all the grace reserved for a first-timer and says, “Anywhere.” I beam back, half suspecting she is fooling around with me.

I am now at the entrance to the ground itself, and catch my first glimpse of the Oval turf. It is quite a large cricket ground, much larger than what I remember from TV when Murali ran through the English batting line-up a dozen years ago. It is also one of those typically ‘open’ grounds, where you have a lot of scope to get some sun on yourself while watching the cricket. I stand at the entrance scanning for a good spot to do exactly that, keeping in mind the ticket-girl’s encouraging words. A burly security woman makes my decision quicker by insisting I seat myself before play begins. This isn’t Wimbledon, I grumble behind her, making my way to a nice sunny seat, six rows from the boundary.

Surrey bat first, and as the batsmen walk out, there is scattered applause from the smattering of a crowd that has turned up. My nearest neighbour is two rows ahead of me. He is from New Zealand, judging by the All Blacks cap that he has on. He also has a scoresheet with him, which he proceeds to dutifully fill up at the end of every over. I build the Kiwi image further in my mind, thinking of how he resembles a younger John Wright.

Steve Davies opens the batting, and the local Surrey spectators greet him warmly. A middle aged couple to my right lead the cheers. I take a liking to the couple instantly. They are obviously married for a long time, and they have obviously been watching county matches for an equally long time. They watch the game quietly, occasionally chat amongst themselves, and generally relax. They have the comfortable feel of being regulars here. Maybe it’s even their favourite seats.

The general atmosphere is one of peace and calm, even as the batsmen are going at it hammer-and-tongs at a rate of more than six per over. I marvel at the impact that the environment can have on a live sporting experience. I also marvel at the glass of cider I have just bought at the stall for an exorbitant price. My opinion is reinforced today that a cold glass outdoors on a warm day can do wonders for a sunny disposition. I aim to capture the mood for posterity, and attempt a fancy photo of the action in the centre with the cider in the foreground. But balancing the glass on my thigh, while fiddling with the camera and applauding a silky cover drive to the boundary at the same time is a task too arduous for me, and I give up.

Surrey, after a dash and a stutter, end on 206 in 40 overs. The announcer in his formal understated tone declares that the public can access the playing area during the interval, as long as they keep off the pitch. I am delighted at this piece of news, and make my way down to the boundary line, wondering if the grass really is as smooth as it looked when the fielder at the boundary dived all around it. I find that it is, and it’s a pleasure to just walk on the green carpet. I see that everyone else seems to have come prepared for this. A father and his young toddler son are having a practice session with their pink plastic bat and ball. There are couples sprawled out on the grass, making the most of the half hour they have. I feel I have walked into a garden tea party, but for some reason, I feel blissfully happy.

Leicestershire’s reply begins, as more spectators now trickle into the grounds. We cheer for quirky reasons. A pigeon near the playing area has a problem with its wings, and hobbles about pitifully. The wicket-keeper proceeds to gently gather the pigeon in his gloves and carries it to the boundary line, and we cheer. The sun suddenly comes out from behind a cloud and bathes the ground in the kind of late evening brightness that makes me reach for my non-existent pair of sunglasses, and we cheer. A short, sharp and loud blast resonates from what sounds suspiciously like a vuvuzela. A murmur runs through the crowd, we all turn in the general direction, and we cheer.

I like the sight of Yasir Arafat. The strong run into the crease, the well-directed yorkers, the positive body language. What is it with these Pakistani pacemen? How do they keep generating this kind of talent? A pair of young boys, not more than sixteen, have taken up the seats directly behind me. They carry on a continuous conversation, of which I hear every word. They seem to have met today after sometime, and are catching up on mutual acquaintances, football, girls, football, academics and football. One of them whips out his iphone at regular intervals and provides the other with the latest updates on the football premiership match in progress. They start off on a passionate discussion on Carlos Tevez, and I lose interest. I look around, and I see that John Wright has lost interest too. He is nodding off, with his cap providing good protection against the drowsy sun.

The match is heading for a close finish. Mathew Hoggard, of all people, blasts a six into the stands to revive Leicestershire’s hopes. The connection of cork on willow makes a pleasing sound, and gets the spectators cheering. Even a few placards with ‘6’ written on it are whipped out and displayed. But the excitement doesn’t last long. Surrey blast out the last remaining Leicestershire tail-enders, and they win by 15 odd runs. At the stroke of the last wicket, the few remaining spectators start packing up their picnic hampers, putting on their coats, and making their way out.

The announcer makes the formal declaration of Surrey’s victory, and the boys behind me are jolted from their personal discussion. “Oh, I thought there was one more wicket left” they say, before they get up and join the departing crowd, immersed in their football conversation once more. They were never here for only the cricket, I think to myself. And I realise that might actually be a general truth. Cricket isn’t something that evokes passion here, in its birthplace. Instead, it chooses to relax. Even its most ardent fans wouldn’t go rabid over their team’s (mis)fortunes. Instead, a game is where you head to on a lazy weekend, when you want to clear your head and get some sun. In that sense, it remains a quietly dignified game, a throwback to an earlier age when time was slower and things were rarely as important as they seemed. And I think to myself, that can’t be all bad.

Full Stop to the World Cup

The day finally dawned, to a lack of buzz which I found excruciating. People were out for their morning jogs, breakfast was being made, the traffic was steady. It was, for all purposes, just another day in everyone’s lives here. And that’s when it struck me how far away from home I was, and I felt what can only be described as home-sick.

But deciding to make the best of the situation, and also to avoid the trials of unpredictable live streams from dodgy websites, I, along with a couple of  equally buzz-seeking companions, decided to spend the ‘red-letter day’ of our cricket watching lives in that great British establishment, the sports pub. And this place was promising. Not only did it have the usual suspects of Indian expats with British accents, it had a couple of young Sri Lankan female supporters who could pass off as WAGs for their national team. Throw in a couple of members of that hard-to-find species – the British cricket fan, Sky Sports in high definition (and therefore, without Sidhu), and some good cider, I was ready for the grand finale, comfortable in my surroundings, and confident with Team India.

Being confident with the Indian cricket team doesn’t come naturally to me. All those years of experiencing disappointment and frustration do leave their scars, I guess. And that’s why I’ve felt surprised at how easily the tag of favourites rests on the shoulders of the current bunch. The much famed batting line-up actually delivered consistently through the tournament (notwithstanding their inability to take on the Batting Powerplay), the fielding improved gradually right through, and the bowling managed to keep things together. But most importantly, the team seems to be confident of its ability to manoeuvre itself out of tight corners, it seems to believe that it is the best team out there, and the feeling is gradually percolating to me, the normal Indian spectator. Is this how the Aussie cricket fan used to feel in the last decade?

After the fiasco of the toss which reminded you of gully cricket between ten-year olds, the first innings started sedately enough. Zaheer seemed intent on exorcising the ghosts of 2003 and came up with the stingiest possible opening spell. The Lankan top order batsmen played their part by being demure in their attempts at strokeplay. In fact, for a match in which around 550 runs were scored, there were no real explosive phases where the batsmen went ballistic. This again goes to prove that there are so many ways in which the game can flow in the 50-over format, in which lies its appeal.

Jayawardene’s silky-smooth century brought hearty cheers from everyone at the pub, especially the Lankan WAGs. And at the half-way stage, a target of 275 in a World Cup final seemed to put the Lankans firmly in front. But even then, I found myself quietly confident about the run-chase. India’s bastmen were in form, this was Sri Lanka against whom they enjoy a mental edge in recent times, and above all, there was this new found confidence (for me) in the team. Maybe it comes down to the skipper, Captain Cool himself. MSD’s style of captaincy can be eccentric at times. You can see he is an intuitive captain, much like Dada, and he really backs himself. So much so, that if one radical move of his doesn’t come off, the only way he feels he should react to it is with another radical move! Case in point would be Sreesanth’s inclusion in the playing 11 ahead of Ashwin, a move that ultimately did not work out. The best way to redeem himself, he decides in his own wise way, is to promote an out-of-sorts bastman (himself) up the order at a critical juncture ahead of a batsman who is the frontrunner for the Man of the Tournament. And the amazing part of the ploy is, it works! Time and again! The detractors and doubters and proponents of the ‘lucky captain’ theme are still waiting for MSD to fall flat on his face, but this latest addition to his glittering CV makes you wonder if he has actually cracked the captaincy code. One thing is for sure, his evolution as a player and captain in the years to come is going to be fascinating to watch.

Despite all this, India’s run-chase ran into choppy waters early on. Sehwag ended the tournament with a performance that was the polar opposite of his opening-match blitzkreig, and then….Sachin edged behind to slinga Malinga. Sachin, for whom the stars seemed to be coming together, for whom the fairytale script was in readiness to be enacted, for whom the 100th ton in a World Cup winning cause seemed so predestined as to be blatantly obvious, for whom I had manipulated my Fantasy Team to make him my trump. And he edged behind to slinga Malinga. You could have heard a pin drop in the pub at that moment. So naturally, we were able to hear the Lankan WAGs shrieking in joy and hugging each other. And that was the closest I felt to my conviction in the Great Indian Run Chase being shaken that day. But even as Gambhir and Kohli went about steadying the ship, you knew it was just a matter of time before things were back to normal. The Indian batting line-up just could not flop in this tournament! MSD came in at the fall of Kohli, much to my consternation, and promptly went about crafting a masterpiece of an innings. And as time went by, Sri Lanka’s highly experimental bowling line-up headed by a maestro literally on his last legs, withered against the steady onslaught of the Indians.

MSD’s tournament-clinching six, which was the closest he has come to delighting the cola sponsors with his helicoptor shot, was lost in the pub in a delirium of cries, hugs and high-fives. For a place used to shouts of ‘Rooney’ and ‘Goal!’, we satisfactorily managed to bring the roof down with chants of ‘India’, ‘Dhoni’ and ‘Sachin’. A little bit of ‘Sreesanth’ too, for good measure. But we were happy. The Cup that Counts had been won by India, by the pre-tournament favourites, by the team most confident in its abilities, by the best cricket team around. That’s how it should be, and that’s what made it so satisfying.

MSD’s six also served to enlighten me on an earlier typically cryptic comment of his at a press conference

” Till the full stop doesn’t come the sentence is not complete”

Reading past the ambiguous use of the double negative there, MSD chose to end the sentence himself, and not with a full stop, but with an exclamation.

One Shot Wonder

He walks in to bat with 14 runs required off the last over. He strides into the middle of the raucous experience he’s always been told to expect in the World Cup, and be in awe of – ‘a mad Indian crowd backing the Indian cricket team’. And this is a crowd which has danced to the tune of a zillion runs being scored already that day, and are now smelling blood with India making an improbable comeback into the game.

He does the running for the first couple of deliveries in the final over, before he gets strike. He is now nicely warmed up, and England require 11 runs off 4 balls. With the number of runs scored that day, he knows the match already has its place in history. He takes strike. The floodlights beat down. The crowd roars. The bowler sends down a juicy full length delivery. He clears his feet, swings purposefully without a hint of exaggerated strokeplay, and sends the ball sailing over the long-on fielder for six!

Ajmal ‘Shazam’ Shahzad had just contributed hugely towards the final outcome of the game. In the process, he also walked into my list of favourite cricketers. This was eye-popping stuff! The fact that it was such a delightfully clean strike, that it came off the first ball he faced, that it came from a player with next-to-nothing international credentials, and that it came under those intense circumstances, just made it extra special.

By definition, cricket has never been a game where an awful lot depends on a split-second action, unlike say, a 100 metre dash. In fact, cricket lives by its ebbs and flows, and each cricket match acquires its own personality and traits, drawn out over an extended period of time. That’s why a bowler smashed for consecutive boundaries can afford to shrug it off; he knows he always gets another shot at the batsman with the next ball. And though batsmen might complain about how ‘one good delivery is all it takes to get one out’, that’s precisely why at least half the team are batsmen, who can, between them, make up for the inevitable batting failures of each other.

But there are those occasional moments when this maxim is not true. When the entire weight of a match can hinge on a fateful moment, and everyone knows it. And when someone makes a wholehearted attempt to grab such a moment with both hands, it makes for great freeze frames in our minds. Like Douglas Marillier with his scoop shot against an unamused McGrath in Perth, like Hrishikesh Kanitkar hoicking Saqlain Mushtaq away to the mid-wicket fence in the Dhaka smog, like Lance Klusener clobbering through the covers time and again in the ’99 World Cup. Ajmal Shahzad just added himself to that list.

But this is not intended to take anything away from the rest of the happenings on a very eventful day. The symmetry of both teams’ innings stood out for me, in terms of masterful centuries scored by an opener, incisive spells from a seamer which brought the bowling side back into the game, and general floundering around by batsmen at the death. And the match kept twisting back and forth, as a result of quite a few ‘special’ moments, like Pietersen’s rocket finding Munaf Patel’s hands rather than the long -off boundary, Bell being told by technology that technology wasn’t good enough to give him out, the ‘other’ six hitters right at the end for England who heaved in with a couple of lusty blows of their own, and finally, the small matter of the match ending in a tie.

It was a special occasion indeed.

Boundary Line Thoughts

The World Cup is now truly underway, with almost all of the 14 teams having had a say in proceedings so far. The only truth established in the first week has been that ‘the glorious uncertainities of the game‘ has got a worse thrashing than the Associate Nations put together. But then, didn’t we expect this all along? It was always known that the tournament was going to meander around laboriously for the first 30 days, suddenly burst into life for the next 8 days, and before we realised it, leave us behind in a stream of blurred memories of matches we didn’t pay enough attention to. It’s gone according to script so far, and I have successfully settled into a routine of keeping a superficial eye on proceedings, without really getting involved in any game yet. As a result, some peripheral views from the first 6 days of world cricket’s premier event.

The best effort in the field so far has to be Zimbabwe’s Christopher Mpofu running out Ricky Ponting. Don’t you love it when those tall, thin Africans with endless limbs lope around the boundary line and score direct hits on the full at the non-striker’s end? Apparently, Ponting doesn’t, what with his TV breaking incident immediately afterwards.

The Netherlands almost made Nagpur their home that night. The only Associate Nation to put up a semblance of a fight thus far, and it nearly resulted in a victory! ten Doeschate and the boys in orange ran riot for a while, and I have to admit I was hoping they would cause an upset there. Just for the symbolism of the Orange Team making history in the Orange City, nothing else. Juicy headline opportunities like that dont come knocking every day, after all.

I wonder why UDRS decisions can’t be displayed on the big screen. Instead, it’s the poor on-field umpire who has to make contrite gestures with his hands on chest, looking suitably aggrieved at going from playing God to naughty schoolboy in a minute. I realise he might feel quite differently whenever his initial decision is justified. But surely, it’s better to keep the spotlight away from an erroneous lawkeeper than to put the spotlight on an efficient one. After all, we never get to see the linesman’s face in tennis after his call has been overruled by a challenge, do we? By the way, the UDRS seems to be working fine so far for the tournament, with or without the HotSpot. Hopefully, this will be the way forward.

The best quote in the commentary box thus far – David Lloyd’s instinctive  reaction on seeing James Anderson and Kevin Pietersen gape at each other while allowing a skier to fall right between them, “Ander-son, Pieter-son, ….after you, son!” followed by a typical bout of “ho-ho-ho”. Not bad at all, especially when there are people like Alan Wilkins around, mouthing off banalities every other second.

Just 4000 general public tickets are available for the World Cup final in Bombay, with the rest being distributed to the ICC, member associations and other such anonymous faces. It’s a story we’re familiar with in India, but it never feels less frustrating. My sympathies lie with the ardent Mumbaikar who fails to get one of those priceless entry passes into Wankhede, ends up at home in front of the television on the 2nd of April, only to see the World Cup Final being played to empty seats in the stands.

But before we get to that fateful day, we have a long and winding road ahead of us. More minnows to be crushed, more trash talk ahead of key matches, more expert cliches from the commentary box, more player injuries, and hopefully, a keen contest or two.

Onward the cricket caravan.

The Far Away Cup

The cricket carnival is upon us again…only, I am struggling to feel it in the air right now. I shall blame it on my current location, of course. I might be living in the birthplace of the sport, but right now, this is the cricketing world’s Timbuktoo. With perenially gloomy, dark skies overhead, and an interest in sports being synonymous with an interest in the English Premier League, this is a far cry from the hot, noisy cauldron of a subcontinental cricket World Cup. Add to that the crisis of confidence that the ODI format itself is going through, being lambasted by T20 fans and Test fans alike, it’s not surprising that my build-up has been slow. But all said and done, the World Cup remains that one cricketing constant we’ve all grown up with, we know the records and statistics by heart, we know the anecdotes and folk tales through the years, and we know we will only be adding to that over the next month. Thus, we remain loyal to history, if not anything else. This edition though, does seem to be the most open tournament for a long time, and there definitely are a few things to be excited about. Apart from pondering over the the perennial questions of which side of the bed the Pakistanis will get out of, which big match the South Africans will choke away, and how many centuries Sachin Tendulkar will score, here are a few things I am going to be keeping an eye out for over the course of the tournament.

Is this Bangladesh’s time? Their fans definitely seem to think so. Reports from the opening ceremony seem to suggest the kind of pre-tournament frenzy in Dhaka that could actually carry the team through for some distance. People hope for a run similar to India’s in 1983. God knows they have played long enough, and the conditions are ideal for their cause. They are playing at home, fresh off a thumping win against the Kiwis, and for the first time, there will be justified disappointment if they don’t make it to the knock-out stages. The only problem seems to be the lack of a 1983 Kapil Dev in their side. Will Shakib Al Hasan be able to fill those big shoes? Their first match at home against favourites and co-hosts India might give us an idea of what to expect.

How far will the West Indies go? They are expected to struggle to make it to the knock-out stages, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them being embarassed. But I have to admit, I do like their batting order. The explosiveness of Gayle at the top, the very exciting Darren Bravo to follow, the solidity of Sarwan and Chanderpaul, and the all-round skills of Dwayne Bravo and Sammy to round things off. Their bowling might be weak, their fielding might be indifferent, and they might rarely think like winners. But that’s not going to stop me from hoping against hope that something clicks along the way. Sammy’s rise to captaincy, which does seem to be appreciated by his colleagues, and Richie Richardson’s new role as coach might, just might, prove to be a catalyst for change. I hope so, because the Windies in full flow remains a unique sight in world cricket to this day. After all, Sammy did seem to enjoy the rickshaw ride more than any of the other captains at the opening ceremony!

What role is Kevin Pietersen going to play? For a team that was riding a crest just a couple of months back, England seems to have slipped back into a more familiar back-bencher role after a nondescript ODI series against Australia, and a string of seemingly never-ending injuries. That’s why I liked the move to bring Pietersen to the top of the order for the two warm-up matches that they played in the lead-up. Just the fact that they are thinking of bringing their star aggressive batsman up the order signals intent and purpose, which might be just the kind of manufactured strategy required to shrug off all the negativity holding the team back. Maybe the man in the England team to really look out for in this tournament is Andy Flower!

Is this the end of Australian dominance? A lot of people seem to think so, but we will know for sure only when the tournament kicks off. There has been an obvious decline in their Test credentials, but we know you dont essentially need players of the calibre of McGrath and Warne to win ODIs consistently. A fair dose of the famed Aussie toughness should do, and this team still has it in good measure. Nevertheless, Mike Hussey and Hauritz are going to be missed sorely, which is only going to make things interesting all around.

So, as the dust settles on the opening ceremony pyrotechnics, expert analyses and predictions are being wrapped up, and finishing touches are being put to Fantasy Teams, things are finally in order for the action to begin on the field. As I strive, in vain so far, to capture the elusive buzz of the World Cup, I realise that the words of the wise marketeer actually ring true. This really is ‘the cup that counts’. Enough said. Let the games begin.

And oh, by the way, “Jeetega, bhai, jeetega! India jeetega!” …where’s my vuvuzela?