India back in familiar territory - dire straits
Prem Panicker
An interviewer once asked the great Barry Richards how he managed to score so heavily, and to so totally dominate the bowling.
The great man had a simple answer: "When I go out to bat, I tell myself this - that I am good enough to make ten runs against any bowling in the world. It's not a lot - just ten runs. And I concentrate on doing that, getting to that target. And when I get ten, I forget about those runs and start from zero, telling myself I can get ten runs against this attack. And that's all there is to it...."
Later in the same interview, he made another pertinent point: "Cricket is a game played from ball to ball. What happened in the previous ball is not important, except that it might teach you something about the wicket, or what the bowler is doing. What matters is the ball you are facing - if it is good, you play it with respect; if it is bad, you hit it for four."
If Barry Richards were coach of the Indian side (and I mean no offence to Madan Lal here), then India wouldn't be finding itself - as per usual - up the creek without benefit of paddle.
When India began its second innings, with an entire session today and all of tomorrow ahead of it, the target facing it was 467 for a win.
First up, comes the predictable comment - no team in history has done it, thus far. But then there's this - that's what they said when, at Port of Spain in 1976, India was set 404 to win against the most feared pace attack in the world at the time.
I am not arguing that India was favoured to get the target - merely pointing out that on this track, thus far, batsmen who played their strokes without bothering about inessential factors, who played the ball, and the bowling, on its own merit, have got runs at the rate of run a ball. Proving, incidentally, that there is nothing in this wicket that needs give anyone a moment of self-doubt.
Okay, granted there has to be a strategy for an innings, as there is for a match. Granting, too, that the Indians took one look at the target and collectively figured that it was beyond reach. What I do not understand is how, by what logic, total defense was seen as the alternate. I mean, is there no middle ground, between flat out aggression and obdurate defence? Isn't there such a thing as treating ball, and bowler, on merit?
If there is such a thing, it is apparently unheard of by this Indian side - they went out there determined to stonewall, and paid the price.
Why was defense the wrong strategy? Factor one, Allan Donald's heel injury, which has apparently worsened, ruled him out of the bowling crease - so you didn't have to face SA's most feared strike bowler. Factor two, when a batsman plays the forward defensive prod at everything - even the long hops and the half volleys - then the bowler automatically begins to look better than he is. And the fielding captain has the liberty of placing as many close in fielders as he likes.
Two examples from the Indian innings suffice to prove my points. The first is that of Sachin Tendulkar - who, from ball one, looked to have determined that he was going to hang in there, grim and obdurate, and defend for dear life on a wicket, and against bowling, that did not deserve such respect. The result - 2 runs in 25 balls. And at the end of it, the silliest method of getting out ever devised.
The contrasting example is that of Mohammad Azharuddin. When he came in at the fall of Tendulkar's wicket, he found four fielders ringed round the bat. 24 balls and 25 runs later, there were just two - despite the target still being above 400, Hansie Cronje had been forced to dilute his aggression a shade. And mind you, Azhar got those runs at better than a run per ball not by hitting out at everything, as he did in the first innings, but by playing strokes when the bowling was loose, and defending when the ball deserved caution.
Play the ball, not the situation - in cricket, there is no better axiom to live by!
The South African innings
The South Africans didn't need laptops and other high-tech gizmos to work out their strategy - it was run-getting, pure and simple. The obvious ploy was to go for the shots, risk the odd dismissal and put a lead of 425, maybe more, up on the board and get the Indians in for the second innings, the sooner the better.
And they found the right pairing for the job in Darryl Cullinan and Gary Kirsten - two batsmen who may not be front-rankers when it comes to playing the long, obdurate Test innings but are right up there with the best when their sole brief is to get on with things.
India had only one option - containment. The idea being to keep the SA batsmen in as long as possible, thus reducing the time the home side needed to bat.
South Africa succeeded in doing what it set out to do. And India failed. It was all as simple as that.
In the process, Kirsten got his second hundred of the match - joining the ranks of Everton Weekes and Sunil Gavaskar as one of only three batsmen to score hundreds in both innings at this venue.
And Darryl Cullinan got his second Test century, building on it to the extent that he was 153 not out when Cronje declared the SA innings on 367 for three wickets in 93.2 overs.
What could India have done differently? For starters, India could have used Srinath and Prasad more than they did. On the day, 49 overs were bowled. Of which Srinath contributed 12, Joshi 7, Hirwani 5, Kumble 22 and Prasad a mere 2!
It is moot whether or no Prasad would have got wickets had he bowled more overs. In any event, each Prasad over takes longer, by far, than a Kumble over. And using two pace bowlers in tandem throughout the morning session - with the captain discreetly instructing them to not rush back to the bowling mark after every ball - would have ensured that less overs were bowled overall, ergo less deliveries for the opposition batsmen to get their runs in.
Slowing down a game is a tactical ploy international teams have used for a good two decades now - Clive Lloyd, in fact, made that the cornerstone of his winning team's game plan. And such tactical thinking, presumably, will come to Sachin Tendulkar too, given time and maturity.
The Indian innings
Faced by a target of 467, what were the options available for India?
One, it could - given that this wicket has yielded runs by the ton thus far, and looks to be playing easier by the minute - have made an initial bid to achieve the supposedly impossible. Given that Donald would not be bowling, Tendulkar - as the person best fitted to devastate a bowling side - could have gone out with Rahul Dravid, and gone for the bowling at least until the field spread out. The time for shifting strategy to defense would have come if a couple of quick wickets had been lost.
The other option was to defend for dear life - but if the Indians had even recalled the Ahmedabad example where, faced by a moderate target, the touring side eschewed strokeplay totally and went overboard on the defensive pushes, thereby giving too much rope to the bowlers, then this strategy would not have been adopted.
But that, in the event, is how India chose to play. Every ball on the stumps, irrespective of length, was pushed back. Everything outside, irrespective of length, was left alone. Nayan Mongia, for instance, consumed 57 balls to score 8 runs - of which four came from one stroke. And in the process Lance Klusener - who in the first innings had disappeared for 75 runs in just 14 overs, and who in two outings in the Titan Cup had never bowled after his initial spells because he was mauled by the batsmen, actually began to look a dangerous bowler.
Saurav Ganguly hasn't played a game - or even had a serious net - since the semifinal of the Titan Cup. Since then, he has been locomoting with the aid of crutches thanks to a painful leg injury, and only passed a fitness test 48 hours before the Test began. The resultant rust showed, both in his slow movements in the field and in his hesitant batting. Bat, pad and head moved down three different lines to a straight ball from Klusener, and the edge to the keeper was textbook stuff.
In came Tendulkar. And very deliberately, as if to make some point to someone, he began putting his front foot forward, angled bat in front of pad - the copybook forward defensive stroke, just in case anyone in the 90,000 strong crowd had any illusions about his ability to play it. The sheer senselessness of the ploy became apparent when Pat Symcox, who on the day was getting neither appreciable turn nor alarming bounce, bowled a short ball. Tendulkar, preprogrammed in forward defensive mould, came forward again, found the ball pitching a good two feet in front of the bat, reached for it, and Kirsten at forward short leg gratefully accepted the catch. On any other day, Tendulkar - as indeed, any batsman worth his place at the crease - would have rocked back and, with the field set close, smashed it to the square leg boundary. Why Tendulkar, the most aggressive of Indian batsmen, did not do so on the day will remain a mystery.
V V S Laxman is a debutant, obviously he would have been instructed on what to do out there in the middle. And obviously, the instruction was to defend. Along came a ball from Klusener just short of length, on off stump - the firm push off the back foot towards the coverpoint area was the obvious shot, but the preprogrammed defensive push was what Laxman opted for, and the half-hearted stroke resulted in the ball crashing onto pad and then onto his stumps.
All along, Rahul Dravid at the other end was auditioning for the sequel of the Pink Floyd classic, The Wall. In came Azharuddin - and a nice, fluent off drive for four to start with showed that the former skipper, at least, had his head screwed on right.
When the umpires led the players off for light, Azhar was batting on 25 off 24 balls with four fours. However, despite what those figures indicate, there was no frantic big-hitting, no desperate heaves and hoiks. Four bad balls produced four good strokes, deliveries on a length were worked around for the single, and each ball was given just as much respect as it deserved - which, given his rate of more than a run a ball, wasn't much.
And interestingly, Dravid finally woke up and began taking his singles and, glory be, even driving fluently for a couple of boundaries. The ease with which the young Indian star was playing, he could have been a good 40, 50 runs on the board for the 108 balls he faced. In the event, he is batting 18, and one hopes that at least on the last morning, better sense will prevail and he will revert to his natural game.
I am not arguing that India has a chance of winning this - not any longer. But there's no law that says a team trying to draw a game shouldn't score runs - by working singles, rotating the strike around, hitting the bad balls to the fence, you reduce options for the bowling captain and, as Azhar showed in his brief tenure, disperse the close catching ring. And if you don't have fielders up close to the bat, you are in a position to get away with the odd defensive error.
None of this is new-minted cricketing strategy - just plain old common sense.
But as the Indian side keeps proving time and again, much to the distress of its legion of fans, commonsense is the most uncommon of commodities.
Scoreboard:
South Africa 1st innings R B 4 6
AC Hudson b Prasad 146 244 24 0
G Kirsten b Srinath 102 170 14 0
HH Gibbs lbw b Prasad 31 112 7 0
DJ Cullinan lbw b Prasad 43 85 7 0
WJ Cronje c Mongia b Srinath 4 18 1 0
BM McMillan lbw b Prasad 0 2 0 0
DJ Richardson not out 35 58 4 0
L Klusener b Prasad 10 21 1 0
PL Symcox b Prasad 13 20 0 1
AA Donald c VVS Laxman b Kumble 0 3 0 0
PR Adams b Kumble 4 8 0 0
Extras (b 6, lb 25, nb 9) 40
Total (all out, 121.1 overs) 428
Fall of Wickets: 1-236 (Kirsten), 2-296 (Hudson), 3-346 (Gibbs),
4-361 (Cronje), 5-362 (BM McMillan), 6-363 (Cullinan),
7-379 (Klusener), 8-421 (Symcox), 9-422 (Donald),
10-428 (Adams).
Bowling O M R W
Srinath 37 7 107 2
Prasad 35 6 104 6
Joshi 12 1 48 0
Ganguly 3 1 10 0
Kumble 20.1 1 78 2
Hirwani 14 2 51 0
India 1st innings R B 4 6
NR Mongia run out (Gibbs) 35 68 5 0
R Dravid c Hudson b McMillan 31 48 5 0
SC Ganguly b McMillan 6 17 1 0
SR Tendulkar b Donald 18 62 3 0
MA Azharuddin c & b Adams 109 77 18 1
VVS Laxman b Donald 14 35 2 0
SB Joshi run out (Donald) 4 9 1 0
J Srinath b Donald 11 44 1 0
A Kumble run out (Gibbs) 88 124 13 0
BKV Prasad c Richardson b Adams 1 10 0 0
ND Hirwani not out 0 2 0 0
Extras (lb 5, nb 7) 12
Total (all out, 81.2 overs) 329
Fall of Wickets: 1-68 (Dravid), 2-71 (Mongia), 3-77 (Ganguly),
4-114 (VVS Laxman), 5-119 (Tendulkar), 6-119 (Joshi),
7-161 (Srinath), 8-322 (Azharauddin), 9-324 (Prasad),
10-329 (Kumble).
Bowling O M R W
Donald 21.2 3 72 3
Klusener 14 1 75 0
Adams 13 1 69 2
McMillan 16 4 52 2
Cronje 6 3 13 0
Symcox 11 1 43 0
South Africa 2nd innings R B 4 6
AC Hudson retired 6 28 1 0
G Kirsten run out (Joshi) 133 194 18 0
HH Gibbs c Dravid b Srinath 9 12 2 0
DJ Cullinan not out 153 261 15 1
WJ Cronje c & b Kumble 34 37 5 0
BM McMillan not out 17 34 2 0
Extras (b 1, lb 11, w 1, nb 2) 15
Total (3 wickets declared, 93.2 overs) 367
Fall of Wickets: 1-39 (Gibbs), 2-251 (Kirsten), 3-306 (Cronje).
Bowling O M R W
Srinath 24.2 2 101 1
Prasad 15 0 63 0
Kumble 32 4 102 1
Hirwani 11 1 40 0
Joshi 11 0 50 0
India 2nd innings R B 4 6
NR Mongia c Cullinan b Klusener 8 57 1 0
R Dravid not out 18 108 3 0
SC Ganguly c Richardson b Klusener 0 4 0 0
SR Tendulkar c Kirsten b Symcox 2 25 0 0
VVS Laxman b Klusener 1 5 0 0
MA Azharuddin not out 25 24 4 0
Extras (nb 5) 5
Total (4 wickets, 36 overs) 59
Fall of Wickets: 1-17 (Mongia), 2-18 (Ganguly), 3-27 (Tendulkar),
4-28 (VVS Laxman).
Bowling O M R W
McMillan 10 6 8 0
Klusener 13 4 13 3
Cronje 7 4 10 0
Symcox 6 1 28 1
Score card source : Cricinfo
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