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Azhar rules, in his personal paradise

Prem Panicker

If I was Mohammad Azharuddin, I would trade in all my Armani suits, Versace sports gear, Patek Phillipe watches, foreign cars, favourite bat and maybe even my left arm if it would get me, in exchange, the Eden Gardens pitch.

I mean, I've heard of batsmen having favourite pitches -- Sunil Gavaskar at Port of Spain, or Dilip Vengsarkar at Lord's, come immediately to mind -- but Azhar's love affair with the Eden Gardens is something else again.

He debuted here in 1984, with a century that started a world record streak of three on the trot. He came back here from a disastrous South Africa tour with both his captaincy, and his place as a batsman, under threat -- and blazed an incredible 182 against Gooch's Englishmen. Again under fire for lack of interest, and he replied with a 74-ball 100 that tamed a fiery South African attack on a quick pitch. And going into this game, had over 650 runs at an average of 109 plus, on this venue.

When he finally declared the Indian innings closed, on a mammoth 633 for five -- giving the home side a lead of 400 going into the second innings -- Azhar was batting on 163 off just 248 deliveries, an innings studded with 18 fours and three sixes.

And nothing is more indicative of how confident he feels on this ground than the way Azhar got to that hundred. Before him, four Indian batsmen had made it past 75, two of them in fact past 90, and failed to reach the three figure mark. Azhar figured, perhaps, that the best bet was to get the whole thing over and done with in a hurry. So from 87, a waltz down the track and biff, Robertson disappears through cover. Another tango and bang, this time over mid on. Next over, a quiet defensive push at Mark Waugh, then another walk down the track, converting a perfectly decent delivery into a waist high full toss, which Azhar wafted contemptuously into the crowd at midwicket.

No edgy eighties or nervous nineties for this bloke, not at the Eden Gardens. And reciprocating the Indian skipper's love affair, the 110,000 strong crowd lifted the roof, first when he got to the 100, then as he walked off at the end of the Indian innings.

Talking of which, I don't think recent memory can throw up any similar instance of such complete mastery, to the point of brute domination, of a batting side over opposing bowlers. 633/5 declared --India's highest ever total against Australia. Partnerships, respectively, of 191, 16, 140, 53, 158 and unbeaten 75 for each successive wicket. An incredible 85 fours and six sixes.

The statistics cascade, on and on.

But for me, the real key lies in two sets of figures. The first is a bowling analysis of 42-4-147-0 for Shane Warne -- which must surely be the first time Warne has bowled this amount of overs and remained totally wicketless.

But more important is the fact that he went at well over four an over. Typically, for Australia, either he strikes, or he bottles one end up, and batsmen frustrated by his bowling take liberties at the other end, to fall to the inevitable mistakes. Here, as in the second innings at Chennai, neither could Warne strike, nor could be contain -- and this, more than anything else, is what explains the Australian non-performance in the field.

The other stat is that India's 633 came off just 159 overs -- a run rate of 3.98 overall. In Tests, you touch that kind of run rate on good days -- but it is rare for a side to keep that up over such an extended period, six sessions plus one hour to be exact. It is this electric rate of scoring, first in the second innings at Chennai, now here, that has really helped give the Indian bowlers time to attack, with runs on the board to back them. This is one area India has failed in, in the recent past -- even when they have batted better than the opposition, the rate of scoring has been too slow to really put them in the position to force the win.

The pitch remains pretty much what it was when this game began -- bounce and movement for seam bowlers, turn for spinners, coming on nicely to batsmen able and prepared to play their strokes. In sum, a good Test wicket.

India resumed with Azhar and Dravid, Australia with Warne and Kasprowicz. Both bowled lovely first spells, Kapra in particular bothering Azhar no end with a series of off cutters that had the batsman squared up and pretty clueless.

They say, in cricket, it is always a good idea to give the first hour to the bowlers, so you can milk them for the other five. Which is what the Indians did -- a quiet (well, relatively quiet, that is) first hour with 41 coming off 15 overs had both not outs playing themselves back in, provided the platform for yet another savage assault that fetched the side 264 runs off just 69 overs.

Rahul Dravid, in this innings, has been in a different zone from his norm. Very aggressive, and a superlative exhibition of back foot strokeplay that was particularly severe on Shane Warne. Interesting thing, that -- before the Madras Test, when asked what he thought of the Warne factor, he tended to discount it. Asked why, he said, "See, the thing is, Indians don't panic just because a ball turns past the bat, we see it every day at practise or in Ranji, unknown spinners come and beat the bat with turn, so you get into this thing of, if one ball spins past you, cool, no problem, wait for the next. Elsewhere, batsmen find one turning square, they go oooo, the next one is likely to get me."

In the end, it was the part time medium pace of Blewett that got him -- again, in rather unsual fashion and again, when well in sight of his century. Dravid had just rocked back to crash a fractionally short ball through point. The next one was a bouncer and Dravid rocked back again, to pull -- the ball, however, climbed a fraction higher than he thought, took the top edge, and ballooned for the bowler to hold on the follow through. Just one century and 15 half centuries now and, if I remember right, 7 or 8 of them above 80 -- I would think if, the next time Dravid finds himself close to a 100, he would need to apply himself and get there, or he is going to develop a major complex about this.

Ganguly came in and Taylor, promptly, brought in the off spinner -- classic ploy against the left-hander. Only, Ganguly is in such an amazing mental frame of mind that these things seem hardly to matter. In his second over he danced down and thumped the bowler over mid on, one bounce into the fence. And in the next over, a silken off drive for four was followed by another foray down the wicket, picking the ball from off stump and depositing it into the top tier over long off.

With Ganguly obviously aggressive from ball one, and Azhar on song, the bowlers were pretty much reduced to going through the motions. And the Australian fielding, which in the first hour of play was at its brilliant best -- I counted at least six fours stopped by electric work by the likes of Warne, who was outstanding in the short cover region, Mark Taylor, Mark Waugh, Ponting and Blewett -- crumbled.

The left hander seemed at his most silken when his wicket fell, against the run of play. Standing well outside leg to Robertson -- a ploy he used throughout this innings to try and convert the line and play inside out -- Ganguly for once figured on flicking to leg against the turn, as part of the policy he and Azhar had been following of taking rapid singles, and ended up edging onto pad for a catch to silly point.

Looked at from an Australian point of view, Mongia's arrival at the wicket must have been particularly galling. I mean, you knock back the last recognised batsman and who do you have coming in but the guy who, in the previous Test, figured in two 50+ opening partnerships. And here again, Mongia started off with a series of shots all round the wicket, a flowing cover drive off Shane Warne being the pick in his brief, entertaining cameo,.

Azhar applied the closure with 19 overs left in the innings -- the psychological 400 mark being his cue. This meant the Aussies needed to bat out 17 overs in the day, plus another possible 180 in the next couple of days to save the game.

That measures the magnitude of the task. 400 is merely the lead. Not what is required to win, merely what makes India bat again. So it all boils down to the fact that India has 197 overs to get the Aussies out.

This, in turn, means there was only one option left to the tourists -- bat, in the second essay, a lot more positively than they have at any point on this tour to date. For obviously, you can't go in thinking of defending for nine sessions of play.

It's strange -- a lot of players have found India a good place to make their reputations in. Michael Slater, like his bowling buddy Shane Warne, goes the other way. The last time Slater played for Australia in Tests was 1996, the one off at the Kotla, and a wild swipe at a wide ball outside off triggered a slide that lost the game for the tourists, and saw Slater dropped from the side. Now he is back -- and in four innings thus far, it has merely been more of the same.

This time round, Srinath did him in with some superb thinking. Slater was very watchful, letting them go outside off. So Srinath out of the blue produced a startling breakback, which pitched about five stump widths outside off, Slater shouldered arms and then watched in disbelief as it darted back in to sail just over off.

From that point on, Slater was never sure of what to do with deliveries around the off stump region -- and after being beaten on a couple of occasions, ended up pushing a vaguely defensive bat at an in-cutter outside off, which took the inner edge and crashed into off stump.

Blewett, in common with most of the Australian cricket academy alumni, has this thing of moving across off to play to leg. In the first innings, a Srinath yorker went through him as he tried it, and bowled him first ball. Here, Srinath tried the yorker again, first up, but this time Blewett managed to put bat to ball.

He will, however, count himself very very lucky to survive. In the following over from Ganguly, the first ball thudded into his pad as he tried to work to leg. Not out, ball bouncing a touch too high. Next ball, again onto pad -- only, this time it was the right height, halfway up the pad in front of off and middle and for the life of me, I can't figure why umpire Ramaswamy thought there was some doubt there to give Blewett the benefit of.

A case, I would think, of a home umpire not wanting to give a crucial decision against the visiting side.

Taylor meanwhile continued his tortured existence at the crease, first against Srinath, then against Rajesh Chauhan and Kumble. And the most ominous sign for the Aussies lay in the turn the former got, and the incredible bounce Kumble managed in his penultimate over -- the ball pitched on a length and almost took Taylor's head off, sailing so high that Mongia had to reach overhead to pull it down.

It is this that is going to be crucial for the Australians -- the Indian bowlers operating in familiar conditions, with a mountain of runs on the board. This is a champion side -- and it will need every bit of its confidence and grit to fight its way out of jail from here.

One thing for sure, this wicket won't crumble -- so if the Aussie morale is not totally shattered, there really is nothing to stop them fighting back, and at least drawing the game from here.

One other thing for sure -- 29 years have gone by without an Aussie series win on Indian soil. That gap is going to be stretched further here.

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