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Srinath, Kumble rock Aussies

Prem Panicker

The more I see of this Australian side, the more it reminds me of a recalcitrant schoolboy who, while doing his homework, took the easy way out and opted to flick answers from some out of date "guide" rather than actually read and understand the lesson he was asked to learn.

Throughout the last month, there has been one single leitmotif in the kind of analytical articles you read in the Australian media, and it goes thus: 'In the one off Test at the Firozeshah Kotla in 1996 the Indians did us dirty on a turning track, 'cause we didn't have Shane Warne to throw at them. This time, Warne is with us, so hey, guess what, no turning tracks!'

The sports scribes writing such stuff, you can understand. But when even the likes of Allan Border, who with five tours to India in his time should have really known better, spout that party line, you realise that what is happening to Australia here is akin to what happened to England in 1993.

Then, if you recall, it was Stewart who recce-ed the Indians in South Africa, and went back and reported that Kumble was a dead duck, the Indian batsmen were patsies, and such. Result, Gooch and company come here with a false notion of what the series is going to be like, and get tanned.

This time round, the Aussie boys appear to be here with the firm conviction that thanks to Warne, they won't have to play on turning tracks. A fallacy -- Indian tracks can't help taking spin, it is pretty much in the nature of the beast. Another crucial fact of Indian cricketing life is that the speed of the ball through the air and the speed off the track varies -- which is why the across the line shot is always iffy in Indian conditions, more so in the early part of an innings.

Check out the course of play on the opening day of the second Test at the Eden Gardens when, on a track where a team batting first on winning the toss had to score nothing less than 400 if it wanted to do justice to itself, Australia finished up on 233 all out inside of 90 overs, and those two are the points that jump out at you.

The wicket itself is hard, with a faint layer of grass on it, guaranteeing good bounce and some turn for bowlers prepared to hit the deck -- in other words, something for both spin and seam bowlers. At the same time, the even nature of the bounce means that batsmen prepared to get their eye in before opening out will get runs, especially on the first three days when batting on this or any Indian wicket is considerably simpler than on the final leg of the game.

Both teams made a change apiece -- India bringing in V V S Laxman for Harvinder Singh, thus going in with one opening bowler short but getting the benefit of a good middle order batsman who is also a part-time offie, and Australia resting the off form (the reason given, though, is a shoulder pain) Paul Reiffel in favour of Paul "The Blocker" Wilson.

Given that Australia were 29 for four before lunch, there is going to be considerable second-guessing of Mark Taylor's decision, on winning the toss, to bat first. Should he, the question will be asked, have opted instead to use his quicks to blast out the Indians?

My take would be, no. For one thing, Kasprowicz and Wilson are no McGrath and Gillespie. For another, this is not a "fast" pitch, in the sense that you don't really look to "blast" opposing batsmen out on it. And with the Indian batting lineup in prime form, the risk of the home side putting up a sizeable total and forcing the tourists to bat last on a turner was too big to take.

However, a captain who bats first expects that his batsmen will focus on putting up a big first innings score. And for that, they needed to get their eye in, look to play a grinding Test type knock that would carry them through till tea at the least on day two.

What happened was quite the reverse.

Michael Slater's Indian nightmare continued when, off the fifth ball of the very first over, Srinath produced an incutter after a series of outswingers, Slater pushed at it with bat in front of body, and Dravid held the bat pad at short square leg with ease.

That brought Greg Blewett to the crease. One thing you notice about the batsmen churned out by the Australian academy's assembly line is a strong tendency to move to off and flick off the pads to leg. Nothing wrong with that per se -- I mean, Azharuddin for one has built an entire career on the bedrock of that stroke -- but you need to judge the pace and bounce of the wicket before you try that little number. Granted, a late-inswinging yorker is a wicked ball to get first up, but then, a batsman facing his first ball is expected to play in, not across, the line. Blewett, spotting the huge acreage on the onside, moved across and flicked, ended up playing all over it to lose middle stump and Australia were 1/2 in the first over.

Saurav Ganguly opened the bowling with Srinath -- and did superbly well, mixing off and leg cutters shrewdly. Taylor, who faced him for the most part, kept getting turned inside out, unable to figure which way the next ball was going. Thus, his demise always looked imminent, but it was Mark Waugh, against the run of play, who preceeded his captain to the dressing room.

In Madras, Srinath had tended to pitch too short to be effective. Here, he was full in length, and on a very good line on or around off. True, even edges raced along the lightning fast outfield for fours, but he always looked like getting a wicket, unlike for most of the first Test. Waugh for his part looked his usual confident self, a lovely clip off the toes through midwicket and an equally elegant cover drive giving indications of his class. Srinath did him with a beauty, pitching just on off and darting in off the seam to trap Waugh in front of middle -- the one dismissal thus far that owed nothing at all to batsman's error.

Ganguly finally got Taylor, in a pretty inevitable dismissal. Time and again the left-hander had been hopelessly beaten, the ball however doing too much. On this occasion, another late away-seamer had Taylor playing for the straight ball, to feather the edge to Mongia and reduce Australia to a miserable 29/4.

Followed a partnership of 112 between Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh. In the initial phase of their innings, both batsmen looked tentative. Understandably so, because they were the last recognised pair and had to be ultra-cautious. And the Indian bowlers, spin and seam, bowled with their tails right up, having tasted blood.

Therein lay the real contribution of Srinath on the day. Australia would have been looking to play positive cricket especially against the spinners, in order to take back the initiative. But Srinath's three early strikes coupled with the one by Ganguly meant that by the time the spinners came on, there was no risk of the Aussie batsmen going after them.

Once over their initial nerves, the pair batted fluently and for the first time, the pitch and the bowling were put in correct perspective. The odd ball did beat the bat -- but given that these were international bowlers, you would expect that on a featherbed, even. The point was that neither of them looked in any trouble as they increasingly opened out and played their strokes.

And the Ponting fell. The batsman played a lazy pull at a Kumble flipper that was too full in length. On an Australian type wicket, the shot just might have been on, given the fact that the ball comes on evenly -- but as pointed out earlier, on Indian tracks there is a fractional loss in pace after pitching, and here that factor meant Ponting played all over the stroke, to see the ball go under the bat and crash into middle stump. A good sixty, needlessly thrown away and another batsman had succumbed to the lure of hitting across the line.

The normally obdurate Healy went the same route after scoring just one -- again, the flipper on middle was sought to be flicked through midwicket, again the stroke was a shade early, the edge onto pad had Laxman at short square take a superb reflexive catch.

Shane Warne knows only one method of play -- a tightening of those pumped up muscles and a nice healthy hit at the ball. The method produced two fours in his 11 run essay, before yet another flailing drive at a Kumble leg break outside off took the outer edge for Azhar to hold at slip.

Throughout it all, Steve Waugh displayed the kind of grit you need to put up big scores on Indian tracks. In the early part of his innings he was fluency personified, but after crossing his 50, he succumbed to his perennial problem -- a groin muscle strain that hampered his footwork, made him totally crease bound and finally produced Greg Blewett as runner.

From that point on, Waugh played with feet immobile, watching ball onto bat and hitting as late as he could, getting runs mostly with placements. Given the total absence of footwork you would have expected him to get out either LBW, or edging behind, or even bowled through the gate. Tragically in context of such a fine innings, it was Blewett who caused his downfall -- Gavin Robertson drove straight to Dravid at cover, Blewett took off like a rocket, Dravid moved swiftly to his left, picked up, swivelled and flung down the stumps at the non-striker's end. A sad end to what, in context of both the situation and the injury to the player, was an innings of grit and character.

A face-saving 54-run partnership between Gavin Robertson and Michael Kasprowicz again put the situation in perspective. Neither batsman tried anything flashy, preferring to play the bowling on merit, grinding it out and increasingly frustrating the Indians until, in desperation, Azharuddin was forced to take the second new ball despite his lead bowler, Srianth, being off the field.

Ironically, stand-in opening bowler Saurav Ganguly finally did the trick. The bowler bounced one at Kapra, directing it well on off and middle, the batsman got into a tangle trying to avoid it, the ball took the bat which was hoisted on his shoulder and ballooned towards gully. Azhar, the solitary slip, ran swiftly to his right, then dived headlong to hold a beauty that compensated for an earlier miss off the bowling of Venkatapathy Raju.

And in the last over of the day, with two balls remaining in play, Ganguly straightening one to rap Robertson on the pad. The ball, however, seemed to be just sliding past leg -- a bad decision.

Interestingly, there were a couple of other bad decisions in the game, both from Sri Lankan umpire B C Cooray -- and both concerned LBW decisions that were, surprisingly, not given. Mark Waugh was the beneficiary on one instance, Ponting on the other. But then, Cooray does have the rep, in tandem with the likes of David Shepherd and Steve Randell, of being a "not out" umpire, so there really were no surprises there.

Ganguly, Srinath and Kumble ended with three wickets apiece -- just reward for some very good bowling. Ganguly in particular was very impressive, mixing his deliveries beautifully and troubling every single batsman he bowled to. Srinath bowled a brilliant, hostile first spell, but surprisingly kept overstepping, being no-balled on at least ten occasions that I counted. One reason, I suspect, is the slight slope when running in from the pavilion end -- it seemed to be putting the quick bowler off his natural rhythm.

Kumble appears to have recovered his old accuracy, even if his turn still varies from the miniscule to the non-existent. On the day, he held to a line just around off, and the bounce he invariably gets had the batsmen tentative.

Raju alone could consider himself the victim of luck -- his bowling ranged from the very good to the brilliant, being especially good against the top flight batsmen who he beat repeatedly with flight, loop and turn. But the edges he found either dropped short of the slips or, as in the case of Azhar, popped out of hand, an LBW appeal went the other way, and the bowler ended up with nothing to show for a good spell.

Chauhan, increasingly, has a problem -- he is getting remarkable turn these days, and -- like, ironically, is the case with Warne -- that turn is proving his own enemy. For one thing, it negates the possibility of an LBW given that the ball in all probabilty would go on to miss leg, for another it permits the batsmen to sweep with near impunity or glance late to leg -- as witness his 31 runs off 11 overs.

Azharuddin, in the field, lived up to his pre-Test promise that he was going to be positive out there. Thus, bowling changes were swift and, for the most part, sure, the thinking was good -- the best example being when the Ponting-Waugh partnership was on, Azhar blocking one end with Kumble and rotating his bowlers rapidly at the other -- and for the most part, the field placing was aggressive.

But for me, the most interesting aspect was the Indian fielding. Mongia missed a sharp chance off Raju, Azhar let one go off the same bowler, there were two misfields that on an electric outfield meant fours -- but other than that, the fielding was razor sharp. And most noticeable was the fact that the Indians, who appeared chronically incapable of hitting the stumps, seemed on the day as incapable of missing it. Ganguly, Sidhu, Azhar, Sachin, Dravid, Laxman -- they all hit, like it was a coconut shy. An aberration, or signs that some work is being done on a problem area? Time, I guess, will tell.

The first session of play on day two could pretty much dictate the course of the rest of this game. If Wilson and Kasprowicz, the Aussie new ball bowlers, can reproduce the swift strikes by the Indians this morning, then Warne and Robertson will have the rare luxury of bowling to batsmen afraid to really go after them.

But if -- and judging by what the Aussies have done to date, I would suspect this is what could happen -- the two quicks begin banging it in short, venting their side's collective frustrations rather than pitching up and looking to make the Indian batsmen play, then the tourists could be in for a long leather-hunt.

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