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India on song at the Gardens

Prem Panicker

It's a strange thing about the Indian cricket team -- there are no half measures where they are concerned. Most especially with the bat.

Thus, you never have days when they are steady, sedate. It is either a wild collapse, or a spectacular display of batting that seems to take the game to a plane no other contemporary side comes close to matching -- and it is this wild oscillation between extremes that most exasperates the fans.

Today was one of those days. When, in course of just 90 overs, the home side powered to a score of 369 for the loss of three wicket, a rate of scoring of 4+, which for Test match cricket is great going by any yardstick.

In fact, the problem for an analyst is that this is one of those days when statistics barely suffice to capture the play, yet when all the superlatives are exhausted, bland statistics are all that remain.

And the most startling of them would be this -- that on the day, 64 fours and two sixes were hit off the Aussie bowlers. In other words, 268 runs in boundaries -- which alone is way ahead of the Aussie first innings total.

The pattern of play was set in the first hour itself. Taylor, with just 233 on the board, was caught in the no man's land between offence and defence. When he tried three slips and a gully, the batsmen, Sidhu in particular, got fours to third man on this electric outfield. Which meant Taylor had to plug that gap -- and that in turn meant he was forced to dilute the aggression of his field placing.

To make matters worse, the Aussie new ball bowlers pitched predictably short. This meant the Indian openers could play predominantly off the back foot, waiting for the ball, judging pace and bounce to a nicety, and getting runs with the minimum of risk.

More importantly, what it also meant is that Shane Warne, coming on in over number 15, found himself facing well settled openers with runs on the board. Had the Aussie quicks prised out a couple of early wickets, the remaining batsmen would have been a shade on the defensive, which suits the leg spinner. It is when the batsmen are looking to play shots off him on both sides of the wicket, off either foot, that he finds himself helpless to either contain or strike -- and as in the second innings in Madras, so again at the Gardens, that was the situation Warne faced. The result? 90 runs off 24 overs for the man expected to carry the burden of strike bowler for the tourists, and not once did he come remotely close to getting a wicket.

Says it all, really.

The Indian think tank got it right, sending V V S Laxman in to open alongside Navjot Sidhu (curiously, Laxman has only opened at the highest level of cricket, never at any of the lower levels). And the real advantage of having two regular batsmen -- both free-scoring ones by way of bonus -- out there was to become apparent a bit later on.

The two batted in contrasting styles. Laxman is a superb driver of the ball on both sides of the wicket, equally comfortable off front foot and back. And having modelled his batting on statemate Azharuddin, he is equally good off his pads. If there is a flaw, it lies in a tendency to play with bat away from pad at the line of off or just outside -- which leaves a gate a good exponent of the off cutter or inswinger could perhaps exploit. However, on the day, the Aussie bowlers didn't get enough movement off the seam to trouble Laxman at all, and the batsman opened out in a superb array of strokes that saw him match Sidhu's pace of run-getting.

Sidhu was his usual tentative self at the start, his feet static, his bat more edges than middle, getting a lot of runs off the outer edge through the gully-point region. Once he got through the first hour, however, his feet began to move, his usual strength in back foot play on either side of the wicket came to the fore, and from there on, it was pretty much vintage Sidhu. With one difference, that on the day, he seemed to concentrate more on Robertson than on Warne, giving the leg spinner a rather unusual amount of respect but hammering Robertson out of the attack with a series of flowing cover and on drives that fairly scorced a path to the fence.

The key to the success of the pairing, however, lay in a statistic I noted three quarters of the way through their partnership. When India was 163/0, Laxman was batting 78 off 125 deliveries, Sidhu 79 off 123. And that underlines how well the two rotated both the burden of run-making, and the strike -- not only their scores, but the number of balls faced by each, ran parallel almost right through their association.

This is what good opening partnerships are about. While Mongia's fighting qualities are not in doubt, you find that when the keeper opens with Sidhu, the latter at some stage begins to feel the pressure of having to keep the board ticking, and is forced into taking increasing amounts of risks. Here, the two shared the burden evenly, which not only frees the pressure off the batsmen, but puts it squarely on the fielding side, who find they are unable to bottle either end up and attack at the other.

The openers went in with the score 97/0 off 29 overs, at lunch. Which seemed a fair rate to go along at -- only, the duo in one spectacular hour after lunch overshadowed all that had gone before. With Sidhu driving in the V like he was the Ayerton Senna of the cricket ground, and Laxman rocking back at every opportunity to cut, drive or pull, 87 runs came off just 13 overs after the break.

The association finally ended one short of the all-time highest Indian first wicket partnership, 192 between Gavaskar and Chauhan at Bombay in 1979. And rather tragically, both partners got out within a boundary hit of their individually centuries.

Sidhu was the first to go, misreading a Mark Waugh arm ball to be rapped on the pad in front of off and middle. And Laxman followed shortly after, when he aimed a cut at Robertson outside off, the ball turned fractionally more than the batsman had budgetted for and Healy held the faint inner edge.

That brought Dravid and Sachin together in the middle. And just when you thought batting couldn't get better than what had been seen in the first three hours, it did.

Sachin was in the mode one saw in Madras in the second innings. The first ball he faced was a well flighted delivery outside off -- a half step, a full swing of the bat, and the ball vanished in the direction of cover. Taylor brought Warne back quickly, to try and take Tendulkar out before he got set -- but Sachin, who has taken to standing well outside leg, forcing the leggie to bowl to him on the stumps, watched three deliveries spin away from him, then knelt to number four and swept him way into the back of the stands over midwicket.

And that signalled the kind of blistering assault Sachin, when batting freely and without pressure -- and what pressure could there possibly be when you come in with a score of 207/2 behind you? -- always produces. Drives, cuts, delicate late cuts and leg glances, savage pulls and the trademark down the track drive to a Robertson delivery, which deposited the ball in the topmost tier of the gallery over mid off, produced 76 stunning runs in 86 deliveries, 60 of them with boundaries.

Most typical was a little incident involving Kasprowicz. In one over, a thumping on drive was followed by an inner edge to fine leg, both fours. The very next ball produced a classical straight drive that left the field standing -- and a furious Kasprowicz very vocal.

Tendulkar rarely reacts to sledging -- but here, whatever was said prompted Sachin to turn and give the bowler a sharp look. Came the next Kapra over, and the batsman was down the track to ball one, blazing it through cover. A pull off the back foot fetched four off the next ball. And two balls later, the most delicate of flicks off the toes produced four more, through midwicket, and Kapra was off the firing line for the duration.

It is perhaps this desire to wipe out Kapra that led to his ultimate downfall. The second new ball was taken in over number 82 and off the second ball, Sachin again came onto the front foot to play a trademark cover drive that left the field standing. The next ball was short, Sachin slashed -- a stroke that he has conspicuously avoided lately -- and was held at point.

When he left, 130 runs had been added for the third wicket -- in a startling 151 deliveries, a rate that would have been electric in a one day game, totally unprecedented in a Test.

Rahul Dravid meanwhile batted like he had a point to prove -- and on the day, his back foot play was unmatched. In fact, it was Dravid more than Sachin or Laxman who really forced Warne out of the attack, rocking back time and again to slam the ball through point and cover when the leg break was pitched on the off, and again onto the back foot to pull savagely when the line went to outside leg, the ball curling in. But the highpoint of his play today came when Robertson went round the wicket trying to hit the rough -- on successive balls, Dravid was down the wicket, to the pitch and ondriving fours that prompted the offie to immediately revert to his more usual over the wicket style.

In fact, after an initial slow start, Dravid not only matched Tendulkar in run-scoring, but in fact was neck to neck on the board till the two got past their individual fifties. And in the process of getting his half century, Dravid added to a day of records by equalling G R Vishwanath's run of six consequtive Test fifties.

It was following the exit of Sachin that Dravid finally downed shutters, keeping Azhar company in a sedate last six overs, in which the two batsmen were obviously playing for the morrow.

India ended with a lead of 136 -- an incredibly strong position to be in at the end of only two days of play. And that raises what, for an Australian bowling attack that was slashed to ribbons over a long, hot day, should be a grim prospect for the third day.

The real key to tomorrow is not so much Dravid, who you would expect to be his usual, solid self, but Azharuddin, first, and then Ganguly.

For Azhar, the Eden Gardens is home turf. 6 innings at the venue, beginning with his debut 100 (the first of a record breaking three on the trot) way back in 1994, including his brilliant 182 against Gooch's Englishmen when he was under pressure both as captain and batsman, and culminating in a 74 ball century against the South Africans, Azhar at the venue has a dream run of 600+ runs in six Test innings here at an average of 109. And judging by the way he batted during his 26 ball stay this evening, he looks set for another big one.

And then there is Ganguly -- a fluent strokeplayer, who will be hell bent to match his colleagues before an adoring home crowd.

Day three, thus, could well be decided, as days one and two were, in the first hour of play. If the Aussie quicks, with a ball just 8 overs old, fail to break through and seperate the overnight not outs, India will be looking at duplicating the blitz of today, with a view of adding a good 250, 300 to their lead before putting the Aussies back in.

The only way to stop that happening is for the Aussie new ball bowlers to bowl a fuller length than they have managed thus far, and prise out one, preferably two, wickets early in the morning.

On the evidence to date, though, I don't see that happening.

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