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India keep Kiwis under the hammer

New Zealand 211/6, Astle batting 68, Cairns batting 18, Kumble 4/55; Kiwis need 173 more to avoid the follow on

Barring the bowlers' footmarks, the pitch remained true to character on day three -- nice even bounce, turn if you really tweak it.

But the Kiwis had one factor to contend with that the Indians did not. The first is the obvious -- pressure. The kind of pressure that comes to a team walking in to bat knowing that if they get 384 -- which is far more than they have managed thus far this series -- they will have merely staved off the danger of a follow on and a possible innings defeat.

Prasad and Kumble began proceedings, and the latter quickly took out Daniel Vettori. A good thing too, since Vettori of late has developed a reputation of being a sticky customer with the bat, with the ability to hang in there for long periods and frustrate bowling sides. The delivery in question was bowled round the wicket, on line of off and middle and Vettori, as so many of the Kiwi batsmen have done through this series, made the mistake of pushing with bat in front of pad, Vijay Bharadwaj (substituting for Dravid, off the field for the morning session with a tummy upset) staying low to hold well at short square.

Gary Stead looked impressive -- far more so, in fact, that Mathew Bell, making you wonder why Stead had been left back in New Zealand till this late stage -- out in the middle. A nice, tight, organised defence, and more importantly in these conditions, a mindset that refused to allow the bowlers to cow him down. Though his was a predominantly defense oriented innings, it was interesting that unlike the others, he was positive with his footwork, firm and decisive with his defensive strokes and confident enough to stroke through the line when chance afforded. A superb catch took him out -- Kumble drifted one onto the leg stump, Stead looked to help it along, played too early, got the leading edge and Ganguly, at short cover, dived full stretch forward to take a very good one.

One thing noticeable about Kumble's bowling in the morning was that he took to bowling slower, tossing it up a touch more and gave the ball a chance to get bite off the deck.

Srinath versus Fleming -- the former has taken out the Kiwi skipper 5 times in the last eight Tests, preying on his vulnerability to the ball on a very full length -- provided an interesting battle within the main war, during the morning session. Time and again, the fast bowler pushed Fleming, a very good player of pace off the back foot, back with three quarter length deliveries jagging back in off the seam, then slipped in the quicker one on a fullish length to force the batsman to scramble. The one puzzling aspect though was why Srinath never went round the wicket to the left hander.

Harbajan Singh, brought on for Kumble at the end of the first hour of play, got huge turn and bounce from ball one. Two overs later, he was switched around to the other end, with Prasad taking over from Srinath. Seam at one end, spin at the other was in fact the pattern of the morning.

Craig Spearman had kept his concentration going for most of the morning. But the Indian bowlers were on a good line, they were attacking relentlessly, and the mental pressure finally forced the error as Spearman drove at Prasad with bat well away from body, to find the edge for Ramesh, at second slip, to hold diving low to his left.

New Zealand was almost in further trouble immediately thereafter, when Harbajan looped a top-spinner at Astle, the batsman played for non-existent turn and pushed down the wrong line, to get the inner edge. Bharadwaj at short square, though, was unable to get down quickly enough to snap that one up.

26 overs had produced 55 runs for the loss of three wickets at lunch-time -- and for the Kiwis, the pertinent part of the equation was that they still needed 311 to avoid the follow on, with just six in hand.

> Post lunch, India opened with Srinath and Harbajan. A bit of a mystery about the latter was why, especially against the left-handed Fleming, he didn't bowl round the wicket looking for the rough of the bowlers' footmarks. Bowling the full line over the wicket permitted Fleming to counter by sticking his foot well forward, and using bat and pad together to blunt the turn. At one point -- by way of underlining this -- Fleming, out of 42 runs, had got all but five on the leg side, and that kind of thing makes you wonder whether a change in tactics was not in order. If a batsman looks at ease playing down a particular line, wouldn't you switch things round on him?

The early part of the session had its share of incidents -- a leading edge for Fleming off Srinath's slower one, bat-pad from Astle to short square off Harbajan being the most noticeable ones -- but the deadlock continued. Astle played the anchor role, focussing entirely on defense while Fleming played with more freedom, stroking nicely off his pads in particular and keeping the scorers from going into a deep trance on a day where the mercury hovered around the 45 degree mark. A bit of an enigma, Fleming -- undisputably talented, but if you judge by his conversion rate (20 50s, just two centuries), you'd have to say a guy who got out 20 times between 50-99 is rather guilty of throwing it away after getting himself in. The partnership, made possible because this pair played the ball on merit, rather than imagine devils in the pitch and the bowling, went past the 50 mark during the post lunch session, and eased a bit of the pressure out in the middle -- must have had the guys back in the hut breathing a touch easier as well.

Kumble, away from the bowling crease for a good 90 minutes either side of lunch, took over from Srinath with the Kiwis on 100/4. And in keeping with the Indian thinking through the day, Prasad promptly took over from Harbajan at the other end. Kapil Dev of late has been putting in some heavy duty work with Prasad, concentrating on getting the medium pacer to bring the odd ball back into the right hander in the air and off the deck -- but while Prasad managed to get the odd leg cutter going, there was a noticeable lack of dimension to his bowling, which alternated between straight outside off, and outside off seaming away. Made you wonder what Mohanty was doing on the bench -- maybe J Y Lele, who these days has extended his multi-faceted personality another notch, and set himself up as an expert on bowling ('Who said Agarkar is a good bowler?', quoth he in reply to Kapil recently) would know the answer to that one.

Srinath finally forced a breakthrough coming back for another spell shortly before tea -- and predictably, it was Fleming falling to his old failing of getting set, then throwing it away with a soft dismissal. To a ball angling straight across him, the Kiwi skipper played a loose drive, feet not moving into line, bat describing an airy arc, and the resulting edge, taken well by Prasad lunging to his left, meant that just when the Kiwis looked to be batting themselves back into the game, their captain of all people threw the advantage back to the Indians. And Srinath, interestingly, had Fleming for the 6th time in eight Tests.

One regrettable factor about India's performance during this session was the somnolent pace they set. Fielders strolling around, bowlers walking back to their marks like they were taking their sweethearts on a stroll round the park -- rather inexplicable stuff, that. Some teams, you notice, have mastered the art of pacing -- when the batsmen are on song, they slow it down, when the edge is with the bowling side, they rush through their overs, keep coming at the batsmen, don't allow the batsman the luxury of time between deliveries and between overs to compose themselves afresh -- a lesson India could learn with profit.

India also paid for including the extra batsman, thus missing out on variety with the ball. A rather strange policy that -- if five frontline batsmen, three of them demonstrably world class and proven over time, can't get you runs on a track like this, what was the sixth batsman going to do? With just four bowlers, the Indians settled into a seam-spin pattern that became rather predictable.

Srinath, for instance, had 6 spells going into the tea break. Only one was five overs -- the others were three or two. It really is hot, hard work out there in sweltering conditions -- which is precisely why, since you can only use Srinath in very brief bursts, you needed that extra bowler to take the load off. A Mohanty with his both ways seam, or a Joshi with his left arm spin, was by any yardstick a better choice for this 11 than a Jadeja -- or are we missing something here?

Umpire V K Ramaswamy has been having a rather bad Test as far as no balls are concerned -- on day one, he failed to call Harris in particular on some huge cases of over-stepping, then on days two and three (did someone talk to him about keeping an eye on the line, in between?) compensated by swinging to the other extreme and calling when the bowler's foot was just cutting the line. After tea, he capped an ordinary performance with a dodgy LBW decision, the Kumble flipper pitching middle, angling to leg, the batsman well forward on the defensive prod and the line clearly missing leg, but the finger was up in a flash and Parore -- much to his own surprise -- was walking back.

Funnily enough, in the same over, Cairns took one on the pad that was the same line, and even fuller in length, and this time Ramaswamy -- correctly -- turned it down. Do a split screen version with Parore ball on one side and the Cairns ball on the other, and try playing 'spot the difference', should be fun.

India's sluggishness in the field put the side in a bit of a hole, needing to bowl 21 overs in the last hour of play (the team will inevitably earn a fine today -- which won't matter, since the BCCI pays it anyway; the board actually has a budget allocation, these days, for paying fines. It does take away the point of fines, though -- if the player or team concerned is not directly affected, why would he, or they, learn?), which meant the two spinners a sustained spell in tandem.

At 187/6 Harbajan, who after tea began alternating round the wicket and over, went round to Astle, bowled a couple of off and middle turning in, then sent down the top-spinner. Foxed by the change, Astle, who was a model of concentration, patience and right technique throughout his sustained innings, pushed the wrong line, got the leading edge, and Ajay Jadeja under the helmet at silly point put the chance down.

The attritive battle -- tight spin from both ends with a four-man close cordon against batsmen hell bent on survival at all costs, continued during this session. Cairns, in some trouble against Harbajan, began looking for singles off the off spinner's first ball, letting Astle do the hard work. The ploy almost got him out, when he pushed one to Srinath at mid off. The fielder fumbled, Cairns attempted the run on the misfield, was sent back and just managed to beat Srinath's direct hit.

India opted to take the new ball late into the day -- fair enough, since this gave Srinath and Prasad a chance to try a late burst in the evening, then start the fourth day with the ball still new. Prasad, Srinath and Ganguly, given his first bowl of the Test, didn't get much joy out of the new ball, and the Kiwis survived to fight another day.

Astle did very well to play through the day, a performance full of grit and character. He was let off twice, both times against Harbajan, and survived a run out chance late in the day when Tendulkar from mid on missed with a shy at the stumps with the batsman a couple of yards shy of the crease. But those mishaps apart, the batsman gritted it out, dropping anchor as soon as he came in and keeping the Indian bowlers from breaking through at one end -- just the kind of performance the Kiwis needed given the task they were facing.

Cairns applied himself very well to the task of survival, and the two go in knowing that come the morning, they have it to do all over again -- the Kiwis needing a further 173 to avoid the follow on, with just four wickets in hand.

There is one factor, though, that the Kiwis can take heart from. The Indians have spent a blistering day in the field -- and to win, they need to spend two more of those. Assuming the home side does get the follow on enforced, the quartet of bowlers have a long, long grind ahead of them -- and that could blunt their edge and leave the Kiwis in with a chance of saving the Test on a pitch that continues its benign character.

Postscript: A bit of research from Mohandas Menon threw up this bit of statistical information, served up here sans comment:

This year, a total of 27 Tests have been played so far (not including the ones now on between India and New Zealand, and South Africa versus Zimbabwe). Of these, 18 have ended in results, the other nine ending in draws.

India has played in 7 of these Tests, won two, lost two, and drawn three.

Interestingly, New Zealand has featured in the most number of Tests -- 10 -- this year.

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