SA bats in strength as India muff it in the field

Prem Panicker

Defeat, of the magnitude the Indian team suffered in the last week of 1996 at Durban, can weigh like a tonne of bricks on the collective team psyche.

And the most visible exemplar of this, perhaps, was the performance of the Indian team in the field on the first day of the second Test of the Castle Lager Series, being played at Newlands, Cape Town.

Statistics, as always, are the best spotlight - and here are the relevant figures. Out of a closing score of 280 for four, Garry Kirsten gets 103, after being dropped before scoring and again (this second one a sitter) with his score at 10.

Cullinan puts one in front of cover, for a fielder of any competence to lean forward and take low - but VVS Laxman dives sideways instead, preferring to block the ball rather than take it. And the batsman adds another 50-something runs to his, and the team's, total.

This slipshod performance had two repercussions, one short term, the other possibly long term. The short term one of course is that it permitted South Africa to go in to day two with the platform for what could be a total big enough to put the Indian batting under pressure.

The longer term repercussion is that the two batsmen to benefit were Kirsten and Cullinan - two frontline batsmen who have struggled for runs in their last four Test innings. By letting them bat themselves back into form, India has effectively ensured that their bowlers will find their job even more difficult in the second innings here, and in the third Test of the series at the Wanderers later this month.

But enough summary, here's the how-they-done-it...

The pitch, teams and other factors

The Newlands wicket, prepared by former S'African pace ace Meyrick Pringle, was not exactly calculated to make fast bowlers salivate.

There is the odd patch of grass, but of the dry, brownish variety. The wicket, too, sported a mosaic of cracks which, coupled with the hard surface, appear to indicate that batting is going to get easier as the match moves along, though spinners who toss the ball up and let it hit the deck could get turn and nip on this one.

India made two changes, both predictable, to the side that went under inside of three days at Durban. Out went Vikram Rathore, to be replaced in the opener's slot by the re-promoted Mongia while Laxman, coming into the side, will bat at number six. The Durban performances, or lack of them, also ensured Rahul Dravid's promotion to number three, with Tendulkar, Azhar, Ganguly and Laxman following. The other change was the debut of D Ganesh, in place of his Karnataka bowling partner David Johnson.

South Africa, meanwhile, went in with just one change - Paul Adams coming in for the off form Herschelle Gibbs, to give South Africa a four man pace attack backed by a spinner. And the presence of five bowlers in the home side indicates, more clearly than anything else, that we were looking at a batsman-friendly track here.

It was a good toss to win, and Cronje for once got it right and promptly chose to bat, to no one's surprise.

Officiating in the game are Darryl Hair of Australia and Rudi Koertzen of South Africa, with Cyril Mitchley also of S'Africa doing duty in the third umpire's slot.

The South African first innings

A stiff breeze blowing through the day, stump to stump, meant that one of the two bowlers on duty would be fighting a headwind, while the other would get a stiff tail wind which, while adding to his speed, would also tend to make for drift down leg. A humidity level of 31% meanwhile indicated, especially when coupled with a lack of cloud cover, that there wouldn't be the same amount of swing here as there was at Durban.

The best bet for the new ball bowlers was to keep the ball up, seam it both ways and get the batsman off the leading edge. And in his very second over, Prasad did just that, pitching on off, moving it away and getting Kirsten's edge only for Azhar, who injured a finger in the previous Test while trying for a low catch, reacting with uncharacteristic slowness at second slip and letting the chance go. Kirsten, at that point, was yet to score.

Two overs - and two fours, off leading edges flashing through precisely the spot a fourth slip would occupy had one been placed - later, Kirsten again got the huge outer edge to a ball from Prasad seaming away from a length. And this time it was Anil Kumble at gully who got both hands to the ball and saw it go down. Kirsten was ten at the time.

Hudson, meanwhile, looked in good touch after his Man of the Match heroics at Durban - and as so often happens, he was the first to go, as Prasad made one lift that bit extra off the length to take the faintest of top edges off the attempted cut for Mongia to do the rest behind the stumps.

Adam Bacher came in and, with the unhurried competence that is already developing into the teenager's trademark, saw SA through to lunch in company of the still tentative Kirsten.

Post lunch, Srinath and luck conspired to dismiss Bacher. Having set him up with a few length balls, Srinath produced the shorter one, Bacher flashed into the hook but, having gone too far across his stumps in the first place, ended up in a tangle, gloving the catch to Mongia. A bit of a pity, really, as he again looked in very fine touch.

That brought Cullinan to the wicket. And as per usual, the early portion of the right hander's innings was all slashes and swishes as Cullinan, true to habit, went for strokes before reading the pace of the wicket and getting his eye in. It was at this stage that Prasad produced a lovely slower delivery, Cullinan drove at it, played far too early and popped one in the air, in a nice loop to cover. For Laxman, it seemed simple as pie to lean forward and take it off his bootstraps - the fielder, however, chose to dive sideways, blocking the ball rather than going for the catch.

Both batsmen having had their quota of luck for the day, they settled into a sound, steady display of batting, shrugging off the odd occasions when they were beaten outside the stumps and coming good with some firm, positive strokeplay alternating with the pushed singles and twos. Kirsten, in particular, began timing with ominous assurance and when his 100, Cullinan's 50 and the S'African 200 all came in quick succession, the home side looked headed for a gargantuan total.

The run out that got rid of Kirsten was the ultimate comedy of errors. Cullinan pushed Ganguly into midwicket. Kirsten dashed headlong down the pitch, stopping only when he saw that his partner and he were both at the same end. Azhar meanwhile picked up and, with both batsmen at the keeper's end, chose for some reason to throw to Mongia. The Indian keeper, fortunately, retained enough presence of mind to fling the ball to the other end, just about beating a scrambling Kirsten. And the funniest part of it, of course, was that the delivery was a no-ball anyway, which makes that headlong dash for a non-existent single all the more inexplicable.

That brought Cronje to the wicket. And Cullinan, who by then had completed his 50, decided to open his shoulders, carting D Ganesh from outside off stump to way over the midwicket boundary for a thumping six. Cross bat, certainly, but played with conviction and very good timing - which in any event is Cullinan's strength anyway.

Again, it was Prasad who produced the breakthrough, after India claimed the second new ball as soon as it became due. The ball was on middle stump, drifting away to leg off the seam. Cullinan flashed a glance, feathered an outer edge and Mongia dived to his left to grab the catch.

From then on, Cronje and McMillan shrugged off their early uncertainities to take SA into day two on a healthy 280 for four.

For India, Srinath and Prasad were again impressive. Ganesh bowled well enough - getting more nip than Johnson did, though Newlands was definitely a slower wicket than Kingsmead. With his high arm action, Ganesh is a natural mover of the ball in the air - so it seemed just a tad strange that Ganesh was bowled with the wind at his back, rather than into the wind which would have aided him in finding swing.

The most surprising, though, was Kumble. On a couple of occasions, when the batsman went on the backfoot, the ball got bounce and turn - which should have encouraged the leggie to toss the ball up a bit. Instead, he kept on, for over after over, bowling flat through the air, at a pace pretty much rivalling Ganesh's, and drifting so often down leg that the batsmen had absolutely no trouble playing him.

Ganguly bowled a bit, more to help Tendulkar rest Srinath and Prasad than with any real hope of getting wickets - especially as he was operating with a defensive field throughout. And again, W V Raman went through the day without bowling a single over, which did strike one as funny, given that when Cullinan and Kirsten were coasting against Ganguly, Ganesh and Kumble, Raman would have been at the very least a change, and the possibility was always there that with his propensity to toss it up, he could have got more turn and found the elusive edges.

Inexplicable, too, was the refusal of the fielding side to place a fourth slip even for Srinath and Prasad at the beginning of the innings. After all, these two had taken 25 of 50 S'African wickets to fall on Indian wickets, and followed up with 15 out of 20 at Durban - surely a fourth slip, at least for the first ten overs, would have been indicated?

More than all this, however, what really let the side down was a totally slipshod display in the field. Time after time, fielders dived late or not at all and then lay prone, watching the ball go through to the fence. Misfields, bad throws and general laxness in the field all contrived to blunt whatever edge the bowlers achieved,and one gets the feeling the touring side could well rue this shoddiness before this Test is finally over.

For South Africa, then, a platform in place for the overnight notouts, with support from Pollock, Richardson and Klusener to get to a score of 450 and more - and on this wicket, with the bounce not alarming, front foot players like Pollock and Klusener should prosper if they take time to settle before opening out.

For India, the only real hope of clawing back into the game is if they bowl, and field, much better than they did today in the first hour of day two. The early morning conditions coupled with a ball only 10 overs old should help the fresh Srinath and Prasad strike a few telling blows - assuming, that is, that chances offered are accepted by fielders who, on day one, tended to rival Santa Claus in terms of generosity.

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