NEWS
STAT SHEET
DIARY
OTHER SPORTS
SLIDE SHOW
PEOPLE
DEAR REDIFF

Where do you reside? USA UK UAE Singapore Hong kong Australia Canada North America South America Europe Africa Bahrain Kuwait Qatar Philippines Indonesia Asia New Zealand

India wins at Chepauk

Prem Panicker

For the second straight time -- the earlier one being 1996, the one-off Test at the Firozeshah Kotla -- India defeated Australia in a Test. And, in the process, ended what was beginning to appear an unending drought of Test wins -- the last being against South Africa, at home.

Rain did not interfere. The spinners did not fail, on a turning track. The close fielders didn't let their bowlers down. In short, the home side did pretty much what it had to do and, in the process, thoroughly outplayed Australia on the final two days of the game, after a rather iffy performance on days one through three.

Sufficient cause, one would think, for unrestrained celebration. Unfortunately, though, what is likely to dominate the media reportage of the game tomorrow is controveries -- which is why, in this column, I thought I would take those first, before getting into the game proper.

First up, whenever India wins at home, the same old chorus of doctored tracks keeps getting thrown up. In fact, that was the reason advanced by the Australian media after the Kotla defeat. And before the bogey is raised again, it seems about time to set it to rest.

The first question is about the home advantage -- and I frankly have a problem understanding what the hue and cry is about. When India tours say South Africa, superfast pitches are prepared specifically to aid the likes of Donald and Pollock. Compare, if you will, the Durban track on which the Indians played SA in the Boxing Day Test of 1996, with the one on which the same side recently played Pakistan -- the Durban track this time round was a pussycat, compared to the spitfire on which the Indians found themselves, with no practise whatsover, that year. So it follows, then, that other teams tend to use the home advantage, too -- so why is there a fuss only when it happens in India?

The counter to that which I usually hear is that pacy tracks are okay, it is square turners that are a problem. Again, why? If playing pace on a fast track is a test of the batsman's calibre, how is it any less so to play spin on a turning track? Beats me.

A more pertinent example refers to Australia itself -- just recently, the side hosted South Africa in a Test series. And went out of its way to prepare a spinning track to aid Shane Warne and Stuart McGill. In fact, the Australian newspapers, as will be evident from an examination of the archives, reported that a turner was being prepared, a week ahead of the Test in question. So obviously, it is not just the pace advantage, but also the spinning track, that home sides are prepared to exploit when they get the chance.

Hopefully, this time round, the Indian win will not be greeted with a fresh outcry of "doctored wickets" -- for to do so would be to forget that on the same wicket on which, on day four, Australia lost three quick wickets for just 31 runs, the Indian batsman blasted 318 runs in the day's play for the loss of just three wickets. Against, mind you, an attack that contains the best spinner in the world. So much for that.

The other controversy now brewing is, in a word, unnecessary. And, coming this early in a series, unfortunate. And it centers around the attitude of ICC match referee Peter Van Der Merve.

For the life of me, I can't figure out what it is about the Indian team that brings out the worst in match referees. Barry Jarman comes to mind, fining Indian players for "excessive gesticulating", and when Donald, twice in two balls, used the f*** word to Rahul Dravid in the ODI final, shrugging it off, saying "The bowler was only muttering something". Or take Bobby Simpson and the Chauhan chucking controversy. And now Van Der Merve.

Nayan Mongia is given out on day one -- a faulty decision. The batsman stands there for a couple of heartbeats, then walks. And is fined a hefty sum for "showing dissent". The same thing happens, on day three, to Greg Blewett. Who reacts in identical fashion. Surprise, surprise, no fine. And, what is worse, a comment from the match referee to the effect that 'Mongia was showing dissent... Blewett was only expressing disagreement...'

The Oxford English Dictionary, I am told, is available all round the world, wherever English is spoken. So presumably, copies are available in South Africa as well. I just checked the one in our office. Says here, very clearly: "Dissent: think differently, disagree; express disagreeement".

So what does Van Der Merve mean when he says Mongia dissented, and Blewett merely expressed disagreement? A case, it would appear, of double standards. My kid is hyperactive and over-energetic, your kid is a bloody brat -- that kind of thing.

And this attitude becomes important in context of some umpiring decisions on the last day, and the reaction to the same by the Australians. I am writing this at 3.45 pm, at which point in time, the match referee has not come up with any official comment about the incidents. Hopefully, these, too, will not be brushed aside through some maladroit semantic quibbles -- if they are, the team is going to end up losing faith in the neutrality of the match referee.

Which brings us to the game. Just before start of play, Sachin Tendulkar was interviewed on television. Asked about the nature of the wicket, the unbeaten centurion of the previous day said, "It is a turning wicket, but it has slowed down a lot from the first and second day, so it gives the batsman a good chance to adjust and play late and compensate for the turn and bounce." And as an assessment of the final day's track, that is as good as any you'll get.

The day had an unfortunate start, courtesy Mark Waugh and umpire S Venkatraghavan. Barring a tendency to jab defensively where normally he plays the stroke with the softest of hands, the younger Waugh looked in fine nick when Kumble, going round the wicket, drew him forward in defense to a top spinner on leg stump. The ball flashed past the bat, took the pad and Rahul Dravid held well at short square leg. Venkat upheld the appeal -- but there was no touch. And the decision adds one more to a litany of dodgy ones handed down in course of this Test.

What was more unfortunate was that it sparked off an orgy of sheer gamesmanship, neither side being exempt from blame. The Indians took a leaf out of the Australian book and appealed vociferously every time the ball struck the pad. The Australians, on the afternoon of the third day, had employed the same tactic when Saurav Ganguly came on to bat -- it will be recalled that in the first innings, umpire George Sharp handed Ganguly a wrong LBW decision against Robertson, and in the second essay, the same bowler was brought on as soon as Ganguly came on to bat, and that sparked a series of aggressive appealing at the end where Sharp was doing duty. On day five, it was the turn of the Indians.

The Australians, for their part, went into Oscar-mode. The looks of injured disbelief at each successive dismissal would have won for Messers Reiffel, Ponting and Steve Waugh those little statuettes that get all of Hollywood into an annual uproar -- what I am interested in though is to see whether Van Der Merve interprets them as punishable "dissent", or just schoolboy "disagreement".

Reiffel, who showed immaculate defensive technique against the spin of Kumble and Rajesh Chauhan through the first hour, fell to Venkatapathy Raju the minute the left-arm spinner was introduced after the drinks break. Raju, easily the most impressive of the three Indian spinners through this match, tossed one up on an immaculate off stump line, Reiffel poked his pad at it, the ball grazed pad, onto bat, for Azharuddin to hold superbly at slip -- and the verdict from umpire Sharp was greeted with a look of shocked disbelief from the batsmen that would have had any Oscar jury sharpening their pencils preparatory to awarding a perfect ten. A rather needless end to an innings of superb character, which lasted all of 84 deliveries played with little if any trouble -- the job of night watchman, filled to perfection.

That brought Ponting to the wicket. The right hander is an elegant, free-stroking player. But his technique has one flaw that, on Indian wickets -- or indeed, on any wicket where the odd ball tends to keep low -- is going to cause his downfall. And that is a tendency to shuffle too far across to off and try to whip deliveries on middle and off to leg, playing across the line. That kind of stroke comes with two risks -- either the feather edge onto pad for a bat-pad, or the LBW, the latter more often because along with that shuffle, Ponting tends to go back a bit.

It did for him here -- Raju pitched one on leg stump turning in to middle, Ponting tried to work it through leg, missed, the ball thudded into the back pad and umpire Sharp raised the finger. Ponting stood there, looked at his bat like he had edged it (the ball went very close to bat, but a succession of replays showed absolutely no edge), then walked down the track to the umpire and audibly asked: "How was I out?". "LBW", came the response from Sharp.

Point here -- in case Van Der Merve is listening -- is this. As per both the rules, and the code of conduct match referees are supposed to implement, no batsman is entitled to even "seek clarification", in case that is the explanation given for Ponting's conduct, following a dismissal. You are expected to take a decision, and walk. Failure to do so, no matter what form it is expressed in, qualifies as dissent and is punishable as such.

What is more unfortunate about the incident is that it, taken in tandem with Reiffel's behaviour before it and Steve Waugh's subsequently, needlessly causes controversy where none need exist. It pressurises umpires who can do without the pressure. It attempts to convey an appearance of unfair -- and presumably biased -- umpiring. And taken all in all, it injects into the series a needle the game can well do without.

Steve Waugh looked in good touch -- interestingly, he was the sole Aussie batsman, during the Firozeshah Kotla debacle of 1966, to offer any kind of resistance. Here again, he -- perhaps alone of all the batsmen till then -- played each ball on merit, defending with soft hands when the ball was on a good line, driving with fluent ease when the length was a shade too full, to get three of his four fours through the covers. Steve was looking good for a big score when Raju, again, did for him -- the ball was flighted and looping, on leg, the batsman came down the track and attempted to flick through midwicket, the ball grazed bat onto boot and Dravid, who seems to revel in the short square position, lunged to his left to hold another reflexive catch. The expression on Steve Waugh's face is the kind you would expect from a method actor when the director turns on the lights and camera and tells him to portray disbelief.

That was pretty much the last of the gamesmanship -- what followed was good cricket, followed by bad. With the Indian skipper rotating his three spinners in turn (I wonder if Harvinder Singh feels underemployed just a tad? He bowled 11 overs in the first innings, and all of two in the second, which seems a bit of waste of manpower), Ian Healy and Shane Warne took the battle to the rival camp with a series of fluent strokes.

Warne in particular was belligerent, with flashing cuts and a brilliant straight drive off Kumble. However, he kept sweeping ever so often -- inexplicably, the Indians for a long time failed to set midwicket deep for the shot, and Warne's mishits landed in safe territory. The last in the series was well hit, carrying the Chauhan delivery from off and middle over the midwicket boundary. At which point, wisdom dawned, Kumble was pushed back from orthodox midwicket to the deeper position, Warne went for it again and, predictably, hit it down the throat of Kumble. Rather shoddy shot selection there, from the Australian leggie -- the trap could hardly have been more obvious.

If Robertson had a good first half on his debut Test, the second half has been rather disastrous. The Indian batsmen took him for 92 runs for his sole wicket, and when he came in to bat, with memories of his first innings 50+ behind him, he lasted all of one ball. Chauhan pitched one outside off, the ball turned in to middle and leg, Robertson hopped back and was too late dabbing down on it, the ball going between bat and pad to crash into middle and leg.

Kasprowicz saved the hat-trick -- with eight fielders clustered around the bat -- but didn't last too long afterwards, wafting at a Kumble top spinner that glided off the outer edge of the heaving bat, for Srinath to hold the swirling ball well at cover and end the game in India's favour.

Ian Healy deserves a second round of applause -- he handled the Indian spinners, in both innings, much better than the higher rated batsmen. Playing with the softest hands when defending, Healy played to the merits of the ball, without seeing bogeys in the pitch -- and Azhar payed him high tribute by whittling down the close cordon to just two when he was on strike, while even the higher ranked batsmen rated three, sometimes four round the bat. The batting performance will come as some consolation to Healy for a nightmarish time behind the stumps, wherein he struggled, in both innings, to cope with the turn and bounce on this track (when last did he give away 18 byes, 12 of them through fours of Warne, in an innings anyway?).

Among the bowlers, Raju as mentioned earlier was the pick of the bunch. There seems to be a school of thought that he -- like say Hirwani -- is good only on turning tracks. To my mind, that is unfair to a bowler who adds, to his ability to turn the ball, a very good control over the loop in flight -- something Bishen Bedi was adept at. Flight alone can be judged and handled, but when the ball loops to varying degrees, batsmen tend to misjudge the line of flight and the pitch of the ball. Raju's main problem is a rather childlike temperament -- he tends to bask in the approval of his captain and, when sure that he has the confidence of his skipper, he bowls his heart out. Take him off after a couple of overs, or give him a defensive field, and he loses it. Perhaps that is one reason why Azhar, who has led him in domestic cricket, has consistently used him better than Sachin Tendulkar has.

Rajesh Chauhan, on the day, did take two wickets, but could have had many more if he had used his head a shade. The offie was getting turn right from day two, but the kind of turn he got late last evening and through the day today was outrageous -- every over had at least one delivery pitching outside off and flashing past leg.

However, that kind of turn is the bowler's worst enemy -- for despite beating the bat and finding the pad with monotonous regularity, and appealing his heart out on each of those occasions, he never got the umpires to see it his way. Simply because, given that extent of turn, which umpire can say with certainity that the ball wouldn't miss the stumps? Chauhan needed to give the ball a bit less of a tweak. Or, at the least, go round the wicket, posing a different problem by angling the ball across the right hander, then spinning it back into him. That he could turn the ball as much as he did is in his favour -- that he didn't think his strategy through, however, goes against him, his captain, and his coach.

Which leaves Kumble -- four wickets in the first innings, four more in the second. A performance that brings up the inevitable question -- is the leggie back on track, after a disastrous last 12 months?

Tough one, that. What is noticeable is that the prodigious bounce he used to extract earlier is back. And the reason is equally obvious -- for a while in the recent past, the leggie had developed a habit of bending at the left knee at the point of delivery, which meant first, a decrease in the height from which he was delivering the ball and second, a dropping of the shoulder that made the ball go on a leg stump or outside line, rather than off and middle. Noticeably, now, Kumble has gone back to the straightened knee on the delivery stride, with the result that he has regained the bounce that, allied to the pace with which he deliveries his flippers, makes him hard to handle.

Equally noticeable, though, is that he is still pretty much of a one-trick pony, the flipper being the stock ball, bowled pretty much six times out of six. No leg breaks, no wrong 'uns -- in a word, the only variety he brings to his bowling is in his speed, ranging from fast, faster to a top pace that must be giving team-mate Srinath a complex. This entails a risk -- that after a while, batsmen will yet again readjust to his greater bounce and, given his lack of variety, begin playing him more freely. Further, Kumble seems a bit too anxious to make up for lost time -- and that anxiety makes him pitch short far too often, inviting punishment. In his heyday, Kumble used to be a very relaxed, rhythmic bowler -- and at this point, it is the rhythm, alone, that seems a shade off. Something for the coach to think about, perhaps?

Overall, a fine win. The tendency is to give the credit to one or other factor -- man of the match Sachin Tendulkar for a barnstorming innings that propelled India to a considerable lead in quick time and gave the spinners a good score to bowl against, plus all the time in the world, perhaps; or to the spinners themselves for not choking, as they have so often in the past, but going on to finish the job; or again to the close catching cordon where pretty much everything stuck (barring one occasion today when Azhar got his fingers under a Mark Waugh edge but failed to hold on, and another where Ganguly did the same to Ian Healy at short square).

But to name one or the other factor would be to miss the vital element in the win -- which is, the fact that India, especially on days four and five, completely outplayed the Aussies with bat, ball and on the field. It is all round performances that lead to really big wins, and this was one such.

Seems a pity that it couldn't have come without attendant controversy...

Scoreboard