NEWS
MATCH REPORTS
DIARY
OTHER SPORTS
SLIDE SHOW
PEOPLE
ARCHIVES

Misty mountain tops...

We all of us, I suspect, could have had a more wildly exciting time watching paint dry.

The quick word, for those who didn't tune in at all, is that a combination of a faint, but naggingly persistent, drizzle and a fine mist coming in off the sea and shrouding everything in sight, conspired to make play impossible on day one of the first Test between India and New Zealand at Carisbrook, in Dunedin.

Rain bucketing down would have been easier to take -- the trouble here was that the drizzle was so light, you had to be told it was there. But yet, it sufficed to make a mess of visibility, and the umpires who, like everyone else involved, kept hoping the weather would lift, finally gave it up as a bad job after two successive sessions were lost.

Former Kiwi skipper and Dunedin native Glenn Turner says that is how it is in his part of the world. "It can go from cold (the temperature was 12 degrees, with a steady breeze adding teeth to the chill) to hot and every shade in between, all in the space of one hour," was how he described Dunedin weather.

I need some hugely competent meterologist -- the names of Shane Warne and Mark Waugh suggest themselves to mind in this context -- to explain that to me, I think.

Asked to assess the quality of this Indian team, Turner said, "I think India needs to ask itself why, with Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly averaging 50+ and Azhar and Sidhu averaging in the good forties, aren't they producing the kind of results those averages suggest they are capable of?

Turner left us with the conundrum, without however suggesting any answers.

Anyone seeking to fill that gap, to find answers, could with profit look at one interesting statistic. This year, India have played four Tests and 40 one dayers in the space of eleven and a half months. The world champions, Sri Lanka, have played at the ratio of 8:23, South Africa has a ration of 14-22, Australia has 11-25.

India, in fact, has the highest number of ODIs this year. And the lowest number of Tests. All of which seems to fly in the face of what ICC president Jagmohan Dalmiya told us, about how the body he heads had introduced some kind of criterion for Test-playing nations, specifying a ratio of about 12 Tests to 25 ODIs as the optimum.

Could it be that India doesn't do well in Tests because its players have abysmally little practise at it?

Take that one step further, and reckon that of the four Tests India has played this year, three have been on home soil -- and you begin to see why the side tends to be such a spent force abroad.

While on playing Tests abroad, Sanjay Manjrekar, now in New Zealand as part of the television commentary team, had a very interesting point to make. Based on his experience of having toured Kiwiland before, Manjrekar said tthat in his opinion, the board had goofed. A five day camp in Mumbai, he felt, was no preparation for a tour of New Zealand, where the weather is chilly at this time of the year and completely alien to what Indians are used to.

He said that the board could have, with profit, sent the team here a week earlier, given them more time to get used to the climate and the conditions. "Two tour games are not enough for you to adjust to such wildly different conditions," he said. And added a rather startling rider when, in response to a question, he said, "No, even during my playing days, I don't remember any time, ever, when the board prepared the Indian team for a foreign tour actually keeping in mind the weather conditions prevailing at the place we were going to."

How come, when we do those instant analysis of why India rarely if ever wins abroad, don't such factors come to mind?

Equally interesting was the reaction of the Indian skipper. I remember once, during a chat with Clive Lloyd, asking him what he thought of various captains he had played under, and the name of Garfield Sobers came up. Gary, Lloyd said, was a genius -- but an awful captain. "He never had to think about the game, he was such a natural, besides, he reckoned there was no need for thinking, team meetings, that kind of thing, he figured if the rest of us couldn't do it, he could win games on his own."

Azhar's attitude appeared to have a similar spirit of laissez faire underlying it. Asked if he thought a mere two tour games was preparation enough, and wether the five-day camp in Mumbai made any sense, Azhar said, "Yeah, I think so, we have been playing a lot of cricket this year, you know, so I think two games were enough to adapt. And the camp in Mumbai was fine, we just wanted the team to spend some time together, you know, get into the mood, the camp suited us just fine."

So much for all our analysis, then. The skipper should know, and he figured 40 ODIs and two tour games are good preparation for a Test series, and that a camp in Mumbai is good enough to acclimatise for seemingly arctic conditions in New Zealand. And he's the guy who has to lead the team, and produce results, so who are we to second guess him, right?

Right. By the way, Azhar also talked about how his first outing here as captain of the Indian team had ended in defeat, and how keen he was to wipe off that particular blot. In Kiwiland the record stands four wins apiece to the two sides, with six draws -- so, judging by precedent, the captain and his team have quite a job on their hands if they want to achieve that particular ambition.

Meanwhile, where does the first day's washout leave the game? Glenn Turner pointed out that these days, you don't really need five days to produce a result in a Test series. "You could have one here in three and a half days," said the former captain -- and since he seems to smile all the time, it's hard to know if he was joking, or in earnest.

The rugby season -- and in Kiwiland, the All Blacks take precedence over everything else, including cricket -- meant that Mark Perham, the head groundsman at Carisbrook, had just about six weeks to prepare the pitch for the Test. "It was touch and go for a bit, there, but I think the ground and pitch are ready for this game," Perham said.

The ground certainly looked it -- lush as you like, and seemingly fast. Turner says the ground drains very well. So, given that the drizzle was of the mild variety, there is no danger of waterlogging (though sharper showers are predicted for later tonight), and of the wet, slow outfield that results.

As for the pitch -- which spent the entire day under the covers, and will remain there till half an hour before start of play tomorrow -- Perham is the best judge. He feels it is a hard track, and that the fine layer of grass should give the seam bowlers something to work with on the first day of the game. Asked a specific question, Perham said that if he were the captain winning the toss, he would feel more comfortable fielding first, as he thought this track would ease into a good batting pitch later in the game.

That assessment makes even more sense after today -- the pitch has been 'sweating' under the covers all day, and will continue to do so till the covers come off tomorrow, so that should 'juice' it up quite nicely. Plus, the cloud cover and breeze should help the seamers make the ball talk, so conditions could be very testing for the team batting first.

Exploit those conditions to the full, bowl the opposition out for a low score, then pile up a big one as the track eases out and try and avoid having to bat a second time, seems to be the likely line the respective team managements will be thinking along.