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Kiwis win, in style

Prem Panicker

It’s not often that a team has two centurions and still manages to lose a Test to a side that has none – but India managed just that, in the second Test against New Zealand.

On the final day, India managed just two more wickets – one of those belonging to night watchman Paul Wiseman – before the home side went past the target, shortly after lunch, with both time and wickets to spare.

The story of the day is easily told – Srinath raised visions of a tough contest when, in the first over of the day, he rapped Wiseman twice on the pads with sharp incutters. The first strike was off a shorter-length ball, and higher on the pads, but the second one was absolutely to the right prescription, fuller, the strike lower, and no problems with the LBW decision.

That was wicket number 5. Effectively, wicket number six, with Nathan Astle being ruled out of the game, and indeed out of action for the next four weeks, with a cracked knuckle courtesy Srinath on the evening of day four.

That brought Chris Cairns to the wicket, and daylight for the Indians – Cairns, as per the records, has never done well with either bat or ball at the Basin Reserve, and for the first four days of this game, was an absolute passenger. That would argue a player low on confidence, and hence vulnerable to pressure.

The Indians applied it in spades, with a field of three slips, gully, silly point and short square leg for Srinath pulling out all the stops, and a close in ring for Kumble bowling from the other end as well. Cairns, who reportedly told Steve Rixon in the morning that he would try and redeem himself, gritted it out, hung in there and, wisely, concentrated on the singles, letting his aggressive partner, Craig McMillan, have the bulk of the strike.

In this, he was aided by some shoddy Indian fielding – especially the ground fielding, which was too sluggish to help maintain the pressure. In fact, at the end of the match, a morose Azharuddin was to say, with some justice, that it was the fielding that let the side down, too many catches going down and too many free runs being given away as well.

There was a moment, shortly after drinks, when India appeared to have clawed back into the game. Kumble went round the wicket, changing ends to take advantage of a rough outside the leg stump, got it bang on target and made one jump and turn at Cairns. The batsman poked forward, got pad onto glove and Dravid held at short square – only for the appeal to be turned down, much to the bowler’s obvious disgust.

From then on, it was all Cairns and McMillan. The former, well set by then, began playing with a lot more confidence and freedom while McMillan did enough to justify his rep as the most exciting bat in Kiwi-land – including a reverse sweep for four off Kumble, that at a time when the game was still poised to go either way. He bats with refreshing freedom, McMillan, and it was his ability to consistently tackle the spinners with good footwork that, in the final analysis, made the real difference on the day, as he completely negated Kumble’s aggressive bowling.

McMillan’s aggression began rubbing off on his partner, who greeted Harbajan Singh by waltzing down the track and launching him right out of Basin Reserve, straight back over the bowler’s head. And around that point in time, the result became a foregone conclusion.

Both batsmen came back after lunch seemingly determined to finish the job off quick. There seemed, too, to be a deliberate attempt to go after Srinath – probably a team ploy, in order to negate the psychological impact of a couple of fiery spells in course of the game.

With the wicket having eased considerably, there was nothing much in it for Srinath in the second session. Interestingly, he suddenly changed tack and, where he had been peppering the batsmen with short ones in the morning, went to producing the well disguised slower ball, mixed in with some good yorkers (the latter not really working, though, since the conditions were not conducive to movement in the air).

One such slower ball deceived the well set Cairns into driving too early, the ball flaring off the edge for Kumble to put down a catch at gully – the fact that Cairns was already walking back an indication of how simple the chance was.

Immediately thereafter, another well disguised slower ball had Cairns wafting it to cover, to give Srinath some faint consolation – but by then, a well made 61 by the all rounder and his New Zealand record partnership for the wicket with McMillan had put the home side within a boundary stroke of victory, which was duly completed by Dion Nash.

For the Kiwis, the Test was made by Simon Doull’s fine spell on day one, which shot the Indians out for a less than defendable first innings score. The spell, and his 9-fer in the game, won him the Man of the Match. Also serving the Kiwi cause well were the Nash-Vettori partnership in the first innings, coming just when India had clawed its way back into the match, McMillan’s flamboyant innings in the second essay, and the gritty display from Cairns just when it was needed most.

For India, there were the odd pluses – fine centuries by Azhar in the first and Tendulkar in the second innings, the fire – albeit of the on again, off again variety – in Srinath’s bowling, the penetration of Kumble (except today, when he seemed that tad over-eager, and ended up straying too much off line and length to be really effective).

However, the downside to that lies in the fact that India’s fielding remains way below par. That the support acts with the ball – Prasad and Harbhajan Singh – proved singularly ineffective, though in the latter’s case there is the excuse of being a touch underbowled, you don’t take an offie off the firing line as soon as he gets hit for a few, since offies by nature tend to work their victims out. And above all, there is the dodgy opening partnership – after the defeat in Zimbabwe, the think tank has been saying that a good start is half the battle, but that half of the battle seems, by the evidence of this Test, to be far from won.

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