Defeat and disgrace for India at Durban

Prem Panicker

A defeat by 328 runs, with almost two hours and two full days after that remaining of the scheduled playing time.

A scorecard wherein just one player managed to get into double figures.

A total score of 66, by the side that, in the latest rankings list, comes in at number five in the roster of Test-playing nations, ahead of the once-mighty West Indies.

And, most telling of all, the indication of the scorecard that the entire Indian innings lasted a mere 34.1 overs.

Shall we, ladies and gentlmen, clamber on the favourite soapbox, and recite dialogue well worn with over use? How does it go? "India can only win at home!" is one. "India can never play pace on foreign wickets!" is another. "Tigers at home, and kittens abroad!" is a third...

Or, before getting into mass condemnation and heated demands that the side be lined up against the wall and the firing squad be told to strut its stuff, shall we take a look at the details of the last day's play?

Here goes...

The South African innings

When play resumed on day three, South Africa were 164/4, with Hansie Cronje on 17 and Herschelle Gibbs not out on 25.

South Africa's goal was to bat India out of the match; India's, to finish off the innings in double quick time.

Hansie Cronje was the first to go, in the first over of the day. And the dismissal was a duplicate of the first innings. Prasad bowled a succession of deliveries outside off, seaming away, and Cronje watched them go by. Then came the ball on off stump, just short of driving length. The only option for the batsman was to play forward, the ball seamed away - Prasad's patented leg-cutter and, of late, his bread-and-butter ball - opening the batsman up, taking the edge and giving the keeper a regulation catch to pocket.

In the very next over, second of the day, Srinath struck. And again, the delivery was a stock-in-trade. Increasingly, when bowling with the older ball, Srinath has taken to cutting his fingers sharply across the seam, producing the breakback which beats the batsman looking for the ball to go straight through. The Indian opening bowler did it again here, catching Gibbs on the back foot in front of the stumps, and South Africa had lost two wickets without a run added to the overnight score.

In came Shaun Pollock, and out he went immediately after, Srinath this time producing the fast bowler's trademark, the ball on off stump seaming away from the right hander, drawing him forward and taking the outer edge for Rathore to hold, low down, at second slip.

And shortly thereafter, Srinath's breakback struck again, Richardson shaping to play the ball pitching outside off, taken by surprise when it cut sharply back in, the inner edge crashing into the stumps.

Lance Klusener has, time and again, fancied his chances as a strokeplayer. And the Indian bowlers, for their part, have kept the ball up and slanting across him to get the edge. The same ploy worked again, Klusener playing an uppish slash to one ball from Srinath for four, then getting the outer edge to the next delivery as it slanted away and rose sharply from a length.

Before the first drinks break, South Africa had lost five wickets for the addition of only 21 runs, and India had done very well indeed to pull the game back after it looked as though the home side was headed for a mammoth score. The more so as Allan Donald's smile, when taking guard, is considerably broader than the bat he uses in lackadaisical style.

And that is why what happened next was unforgivable. Both bowlers, perhaps seeking revenge for the bouncers that Donald had hurled at them when they were batting, consistently began pitching short. Donald ducked, and when they did the same to McMillan, the burly all-rounder, figuring he had nothing to lose, swung with every ounce of his brawny shoulders behind the stroke and smashed three sixes and four fours in an innings of 52 off 54.

What made the mayhem worse was that suddenly, the fielding side went totally to pieces. Catches - three of them - went to hand in the slip-gully cordon and were grassed. Overthrows became the norm. And Tendulkar neither attempted to cool his bowlers and fielders down and get them to concentrate on the job, nor did he ring in a bowling change or two if only to rest his strike bowlers after a spell lasting for over 100 minutes.

The result, the last wicket pair put on 74 runs, and took the total to 259.

And I suspect that it was at this point that despair set in. At one stage, India were looking to get SA all out within the 200 mark, chasing a maximum of 335 for a win. The next minute, the total was over the 259 mark, the target was 395 and the body language of the Indians, as they walked off after Prasad finally got his head back together and got Donald with the regulation away-swinger on off stump for Rathore to snaffle the edge, was that of a beaten side.

Am I suggesting, here, that the 74 runs made by the last wicket pair made all the difference? Not per se, no - but when a team gets the adrenalin surge of seeing wickets tumble, and then watches it all go to pieces, the psychological pressure intensifies, and despair sets in. And this, I suspect, is what happened to the Indians on the day.

The Indian innings

The primary questions that need answering were two. One, was the target too high to aim for? Two, was the wicket possessed of the devil?

For the first, the answer is logical, and obvious - the target is up there on the board, wishful thinking won't bring it down to half its size, there is over two and a half days to go in the match and so batting out time is not an option, so there really is no option but to try for it.

As to the wicket, again, the answer is simple. Over two days, the wicket has been lying uncovered and, more importantly, unwatered. What this meant was that the grass had burnt brown by the sun, and lost a lot of its spring. Bounce there would be, but not alarmingly so. Ditto for movement. And as McMillan showed, judicious shot selection ensured that runs could be scored if the batsmen set their minds to it.

The gameplan for India was to have concentrated, first, on weathering Allan Donald's initial burst. 81 per cent humidity means that bowlers can't bowl flat out for too long without tiring - frustrate a strike bowler, therefore, and you force him off the firing line, and get more chances against the second string.

All fine on paper, you might say, but then going out there and playing Donald is a different proposition from sitting at a terminal and writing about how to do it. Again, true - but let's not forget that we are talking of international cricketers here, and facing good bowling is precisely what they are being paid to do.

What I am trying to say, I guess, is that there was really no excuse for the way the Indians batted. Here's how:

Vikram Rathore: First ball of the innings, pushed through covers for two. Second ball, the exaggerated shuffle across the stumps, the bat hanging out and away from the body at a ball outside off stump, Richardson completes the regulation catch and India 2/1.

Saurav Ganguly: First ball, a swinging yorker, bang on middle stump. Ganguly's feet moving into a drive - the one shot such a full length on the stumps does not warrant. The bat moving in the prescribed arc for a cover drive, leaving a mile-wide gap for the ball to go through and upset the stumps. Surely a batsman, up against probably the best fast bowler in the world today and in a situation like this, would spend a moment or two settling in, getting his eye in? India 2/2.

W V Raman: Upright stance, his main drawback being the fact that he is slow to come down on deliveries of fuller length. The weakness exploited by Shaun Pollock in the first innings, and by Donald in this one, in identical fashion. The fast, straight yorker pitching precisely in front of the batsman's toes, sneaking under the bat and shattering the stumps. India 3/7.

Sachin Tendulkar: In such situations, time and again, the Indian skipper has shown signs of being in a dilemma. Does he play his shots, or does he defend for dear life? And almost every time, he ends up getting out checking a forcing shot, caught between the instinct to play it and the self imposed restriction against strokeplay. Happened here again, as Sachin got a ball from Pollock outside off stump, in the slot for the cover drive, and hit it without his customary full follow-through. Kirsten, at point, dived miles to his right to pull off a one-handed blinder. India 15/4.

Mohammad Azharuddin: In a recent interview, the Indian skipper said he thought the team was playing too much cricket and that, personally, he was bored with Tests and would prefer to concentrate on ODIs alone. Fair enough - but having made it to the side, he owed it to his colleagues to put his head down and bat with discretion. Pollock pitched one outside off stump, Azhar stood where he was and, without the slightest movement of the feet, swiped at the ball, looking to hit over midon and ending up giving Klusener the most comfortable of catches. India 20/4, and Azhar for the second time in this Test playing a shot that was totally inexcusable, in this or any circumstances.

An afterthought - in Calcutta, Azhar hit out, connected, and was hailed as a hero. Are we damning him here simply because he tried the same tactic again, but failed? No - because Azhar's mistake was not that he tried to hit out but that here, unlike in Calcutta, he made no attempt to first adjust to the condition of the wicket, and the nature of the bowling.

After this, the rest of the batting lineup doesn't call for in depth analysis - after all, when the top half of the lineup has departed for 20 runs, leaving the keeper and the bowlers looking at a target of 375 still to get, you don't expect miracles. And there was none on offer on the day, as the South African bowlers kept running in and putting the ball on the spot, and letting the natural limitations of the tailenders result in the dismissals.

The man who deserves a word, though, is Rahul Dravid. In the first innings, he got an LBW decision from Steve Dunne that was injustifiable. In this innings, he showed yet again that he is India's best batsman, bar none. Two things about his innings stood out. For every ball, Dravid was quickly onto the front foot, transferring weight to the back foot only if the length demanded it - in India earlier this month, he had played the other way, going back and then forward. Obviously, he had worked out what he needed to do on the faster, bouncier wickets. And the other thing was that while he was obdurate in defence, he was quick to combat any attempt to intimidate him with short pitched stuff. The fast bowler on a fast wicket uses the lifting delivery to psyche batsmen out - Dravid countered it by pulling with precision, power and timing each time the bowlers tried that stunt. 27 runs off 73 balls with five fours - statistics that indicate that he defended when the ball deserved it, and each time the bowler erred, he took optimum advantage.

Which, just in case it needs reiteration, was what the Indian batsmen needed to do anyway. Pity that one of the youngest members in the side showed a maturity senior players failed to display.

Pity poor Srinath and Prasad, here. Single-handedly, the two took 15 of the 20 wickets to fall in the two South African innings. In the process, they underlined that this Indian team could combat the tactic of preparing fast pitches with pace, swing and seam of their own. Prasad in particular came up with two five wicket hauls in the match - and when was the last time an Indian pace bowler achieved that feat?

And then they sat helplessly in the pavilion, watching the batsmen throw it all away, not once but in two innings on the trot. Interestingly, Andrew Hudson - who, in two innings scored almost as much as the entire Indian team combined - got the Man of the Match. I have a personal preference for Allan Donald for that honour, though - for in both innings, it was he who ripped the heart out of the Indian batting and opened the tourists up for the other bowlers to finish off. 2/2 in the first over? That was a blow this side was never going to recover from.

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