NEWS
MATCH REPORTS
DIARY
OTHER SPORTS
SLIDE SHOW
PEOPLE
ARCHIVES

Last nails in the coffin...

In a recent article Sanjay Manjrekar was saying how much he enjoyed the series against Pakistan but how disappointed he was at the end of it all.` Where is the big picture?’ he asked, and he made a most valid point.

We have had two of the best Test matches in recent times. The first, for the quality of its finish and the second, since everyone is allowed to be a bit partisan at times, for the identity of the winner. One game all, both sides ready to produce a final effort and......... the series is over. It was great cricket, but it only served up appetisers. It was like inviting a guest for dinner and sending him packing after the soup.

Manjrekar summed it up best in his article, and I suspect it was because he was watching as a cricket lover rather than as an analyst. It was like a Wimbledon final, he said, with the match ending at two sets all. Who’s the winner? Come back next year!

Asif Iqbal has made a call for India and Pakistan to have the equivalent of the Ashes. I think it is emotion rather than reason speaking, and I only say so because cricket between our countries is a political event. This series happened not because cricket lovers on both sides wished it to be so but because there was a little political victory to be gained. Next year, it might be politically unwise to have a cricket series and that will be the end of our “Ashes”. But Asif’s call deserves to be echoed, and here is a little one.

It is sad, and times like these call for cricketing statesmen. People who look beyond the immediate and at the larger picture that Manjrekar was talking about. India v Pakistan cannot be a two-Test series and may it never ever be that way again. Forget all the talk about Calcutta effectively being the decider. The trophy was shared at Delhi and wonderful as that moment was, it cannot be carried forward.

India versus Pakistan needs two other things to happen. It needs a match referee who appreciates what is at stake and who, like a lot of opthalmologists, under-prescribes. Between the stringent and the mild, he must choose the mild but he must make it clear that a stronger verdict is round the corner. Ranjan Madugalle did a very good job in Pakistan during the one-dayers when he had a problem with the crowd in Karachi. And Cammie Smith, remarkably fit for someone his age, chose the lenient route as well.

Yet I wish, and I have neither his experience nor his sagacity, that he had opened the rule-book when he saw pictures of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis doing things to the ball. I hope he has had a word with them in private, for they have been ornaments to the game, but everybody on television saw Waqar using his fingernails all the way to his bowling mark and saw Wasim liberally transferring the cream on his face to the ball. No action there means a lot of young men in either country, and they idolise these two in India as much as they do in Pakistan, will start thinking it is allowable. And that will be very bad for the game.

The truth is that, for all the skills we saw from Kumble and Saqlain and Tendulkar, my lasting impression of this series was the intensity we saw from Wasim. I remember watching wide-eyed when Richard Hadlee bowled in India in 1988 when he was all but finished; when he was a mere 50 wickets away from retirement. Hadlee was clinical and his passion lay within. He was the lone ranger, for there is little to enthuse about when New Zealand are playing.

Not since then have I been as awe-struck. Wasim showed all the variety that Hadlee did, but he added to it the gladiatorial touch. Forget the academies, forget the wailing of columnists, for the truth is that if you want young men to get inspired to bowl fast, get Wasim Akram here every year. But Wasim, please leave the cream out. Don’t let us add a sub-clause to our unabashed admiration, for the ball in this series was like a puppet in your hands.

Or better still, tell me it wasn’t cream. Tell me I was wrong and that it was only a hard working fast bowler’s sweat. And I will very happily carry a correction.

The other thing we need, and the ICC must understand the role cricket plays in the lives of people on the sub-continent while it debates this, is to have two third country umpires. I am not for a moment saying that the umpiring was biased, and I don’t think Umpire Jayaprakash had as bad a match as people have accused him of. I just think that it will eliminate a huge area of friction.

Both in Chennai and in Delhi, the first question that was asked everytime a home umpire gave a decision was “Was it correct?” That is a terrible thing to happen. But it has gone too far and you cannot wish it away. I don’t see that problem when India play any other country, for there isn’t the same level of hysteria -- but with India v Pakistan, it is an inescapable fact and we will be short-sighted if we think that the voice of sanity will rise above that of passion.

Look at all that was said after the Delhi Test. People in Pakistan who did not watch the telecast might believe Jayaprakash will be the next Param Vir Chakra awardee. It mattered very little to anybody that the margin of victory was a whopping 212 runs. I can understand public statements of disappointment if the margin was under 50 runs. But to assume that the entire match hinged on a couple of decisions is to close your eyes to reality; to play martyr and display your wounds. That should never happen and, since we cannot stop people from talking, we should take the cause away.

When it comes to India v Pakistan we are not a mature audience. The child and the beast in us rear their heads simultaneously and Imran Khan realised that in the middle eighties in Pakistan. Nobody before or after has quite appreciated his stand, but the time has come for us to revive it. Third country umpires, distant country referees and, if I may add, an independent television production house and we should take away most of the elements that can cause rancour.

And yes, we must play five Test series and we must play them in cities with proper hotels. Only a dreamer would believe that we would get five Tests of the quality we got in Chennai and Delhi. We might get the odd one-sided game, the occasional dull draw -- but it is only five Tests that will provide a better idea of which team was stronger; not just on the ground but on the bench as well. There will be the odd injury, key people will miss games and a team’s adaptability will be tested. The ability to withstand conditions in another country, to keep morale going in the face of apparent hostility will become key factors and I think it will test every skill that is part of a sportsman’s life.

That is what Test cricket is all about and that is why it is the ultimate test of a cricketer’s personality. With two Test affairs, we are trying to dilute those skills to some extent. Like in a one-day game a cricketer does not have the time to fight back, to analyse his faults and to overcome. I would for example, give anything to watch Sachin Tendulkar play Saqlain Mushtaq in the fifth Test of a series. Or to see if Rahul Dravid has been able to understand Wasim Akram’s swing bowling better. Or indeed, to see if Wasim and Waqar are the same bowlers in the fifth Test that they were in the first.

That is why an Ashes series is special. But they love the tradition of cricket in England and Australia. For all the hysteria that accompanies the game on the sub-continent, the truth is that we do not have much time for tradition.

That is sad and that is why, Sanjay, we will never have the big picture.

Harsha Bhogle