Wayward bowling, good batting sees India in good position

Prem Panicker

For a while now, some of us have been making the point that the performance of this Indian side, especially with the bat, needs to be viewed in perspective of two important factors: one, the very little time there has been for the side to adjust - all of five days, actually - to the conditions in South Africa before going into the first two Tests; and two, the inability of the opening pairs tried so far to see through the initial burst by Allan Donald.

The key to reading this South African attack has always been Donald. Give him an early wicket, and he takes fire. And when Donald fires, the rest of the SA bowlers manage to ride on his coat-tails, their wayward bowling escaping unscathed because the loss of quick wickets puts the Indians under so much pressure that they are in no position to take advantage.

The key to playing South Africa, fast wicket or no, has always been, therefore, to see off Donald each time he comes on to bowl, and then garner runs against the rest.

And it is in context of these two factors that the performance of the Indian team on the first day of the third Test at the Wanderers, in Johannesburg, needs to be viewed - for one thing, the Indian batsmen have had time to acclimatise and, for another, they had sense enough to see off Donald in each of his spells.

The result? A very comfortable position at the end of day one, and the ideal platform for India to build a total, in the first innings, from which to try and pull one back in a series they have already lost 2-0.

Here is how it all happened...

The pitch, teams, and other factors

The Wanderers wicket was, if pre-match hype was to be believed, likely to turn out to be faster than greased lightning. In the event, it turned out to be a case of too much of a good thing - hard, yes, but not hard enough to produce Durban-style bounce. Which meant that the ball would come through fast, but even in bounce and nothing to unduly alarm batsmen who have their fundamentals right.

The key to the conditions, in fact, lies not in the wicket, but in the fact that Johannesburg is a good 7000-feet above sea level. And two, that it has a humidity factor of 80 per cent.

Meaning what? One, that the comparitively rarefied atmosphere would mean that bowlers would tire more easily than at Cape Town and Durban. And the humidity meant that there was swing to be had, provided bowlers kept the ball up and on a length, with reverse swing possible once the ball had aged a bit.

India went in with one change - Vikram Rathore coming in to the top slot in place of Woorkeri Raman. As for South Africa, they had announced immediately after the second Test that they were going in with an unchanged lineup - and that is just what they did.

Sachin Tendulkar won the toss and elected to bat. If two, three quick wickets had fallen, this decision would probably have been damned by media and fans alike. But Sachin himself was quite clear when he said, after the toss, that "The wicket looks good to bat on, and could get slower as the game goes on". Obviously, he was prepared to risk a Donald blitz on the first day, rather than the prospect of playing the SA bowling on a slowing track on days four and five.

Give the little man credit, then, for the fact that he got his judgement right when the pundits of the cricketing press indicated that it would make good sense to bowl first rather than face the rampaging Donald.

The Indian innings

Vikram Rathore and Nayan Mongia went out to open - and their job was easily defined - ensure against the loss of an early wicket or two, make sure that the Indian middle order wasn't in fact called on to face Donald and Pollock with the new ball.

Simple, really. And made even more so by the fact that the South African bowlers rather overdid things a bit in their search for pace, stretching that bit too hard and ending up spraying the ball all over the shopfloor.

Nayan Mongia faced 104 balls for his 21 runs; Vikram Rathore 69 for his 13. Those figures, seen in isolation, appear to point to the two openers having waged a grim, defensive battle - but the fact was that of 69 balls faced, Rathore had to get bat to ball only on 20-odd occasions, while letting the rest sail through outside off stump. The same was the case with Mongia, who, for over after senseless over, just moved over to cover his stumps and let the ball through.

Both batsmen took runs only when the ball was in the right slot to push for the single, or play the firmer push through the infield for more. Which is precisely what they needed to do - and to the credit of Messers Mongia and Rathore, they played well within their limitations.

In fact, the bowling was so wayward that even the normally hyper-alert slip cordon went off to sleep - vide the sitter that Darryl Cullinan dropped off Rathore's outer edge to the bowling of Klusener, and the even simpler one Richardson, of all people, grassed after a bit of a juggle from Mongia's edge off Donald.

In the event, Rathore can feel even more peeved at himself than usual - having patiently seen of Donald, Pollock, McMillan and Klusener, he poked a defensive bat at the first ball of Paul Adams, without even reading the line of the ball, and gave a regulation catch to Richardson which the keeper gratefully accepted. Given that Rathore had just come off a century and a fifty in two innings of the warm up game against Free State this weekend, Richardson would have been one sorry individual if Rathore had taken advantage of the reprieve by getting a good score here.

Mongia, for his part, played spectator to the deliveries rushing through outside the line of the stumps - and "rushing" is the operative word, with Donald being timed at 144 kmph and Klusener at 140 kmph during their spells. And getting runs with the glance off his hips, and two exquisite cover drives when Donald, looking for the yorker, overpitched outside off stump.

And India, for once, went in to lunch having lost just one wicket. 41 runs at the break might seem poor scoring, but then again, this is a Test, not a one day game, and the low score has to be seen against the fact that in the process, they had blunted the sting of the new ball and made things easier for the latter batsmen.

Donald has a knack, even when he bowls badly, of producing the unplayable delivery - and the one that bowled Mongia belongs in that category. Express speed, holding an off stump line before swerving in at the very last split second, the ball went through Mongia's defence like hot knife through butter, and in came Sachin Tendulkar to partner Rahul Dravid.

Dravid, judging by the way he was playing, was looking to put the nightmares of recent failures behind him and play an innings which would justify his rating as one of the finest of the younger players in international cricket. Eschewing flashes outside off, solid in defence and playing strictly percentage cricket, the Indian number three concentrated on rotating the strike and letting his captain have his head.

Sachin, meanwhile, seemed in belligerent mood. A short ball was deliverately guided over slips, Donald was spanked first through the covers and then behind point, Klusener disappeared through the extra cover region, and Tendulkar with 35 runs including seven boundary hits off 55 balls looked very ominous indeed.

I guess Cronje's decision to bring himself on at this stage will seem, in retrospect, like a masterstroke - but the fact was that the SA skipper came on merely to give his wayward quicks a break, and get through some quick overs with Adams doing his thing at the other end.

Tendulkar, however, decided that it was time to turn the screws even tighter, and went after a wide delivery from Cronje that ended up in the hands of McMillan at second slip. Tendulkar should have been mentally kicking himself all the way back to the pavilion, for if ever there seemed a time when a century and more was his for the taking, then today was that time.

Ganguly and Dravid, at the beginning of their association, seemed tentative. But again, the SA bowlers did not really make them play at everything, and the sprayed deliveries enabled both batsmen to get their eye in.

Once over the initial hesitancy, Dravid in particular was a delight to watch. Firm pulls off short balls, perfectly executed on drives, well timed pushes through the off cordon and, throughout, that air of calm composure that is increasingly his trademark saw him through at the end of the day to within 19 runs of what will, if and when it comes, be a well deserved and long delayed century.

Ganguly, meanwhile, was Ganguly. Silken outside off. Rather hesitant but still increasingly competent on the leg side. And absolutely ruthless when Adams came back into the attack - hoiking the spinner for six over midwicket, then spanking him for superbly timed fours through the covers, Ganguly forced Cronje to remove his spinner before the latter could really settle into line and length.

The new ball was taken when due, after the 80th over - and Donald's hamstring acted up again after the quick had bowled just 1.1 overs with it, leading to his having to leave the field. Pollock and McMillan both produced the odd good delivery, but again there were too many balls outside the stumps to really cause problems for the well set batsmen.

So there we have it, India 233/3 at close of play - by far its best batting performance on this tour, and a direct consequence of keeping their cool, playing the bowling strictly on merit and not surrendering to imaginary devils either in the bowler or the wicket.

As for South Africa, it's time to do some thinking. And if they want to pull this one back from here, then it can only be if they decide to bowl a much better line, keep the ball on the stumps, and let the humidity produce movement in the air to test the batsmen.

So where does this leave the batting side? Logically, on a platform firm enough to go for a score that can really put it on course to try and pull one game back in the already decided series. If, in the first hour of the second morning, Dravid and Ganguly can see off the quick bowlers, then the batting side is ideally placed - more so given the fact that this is just the kind of wicket on which Azharuddin, if he can only curb his strokeplay for an over or three till he gets his eye in, can play his free stroking game - to look for a score of around the 400 mark by the last hour of play tomorrow.

And if the batting side concentrates on that task and, for once, bats to its true potential, then we could be in for a very interesting match. Because the forte of Srinath and Prasad is an ability to keep the ball right up - which, on these conditions, will give them enough swing to trouble the SA batsmen. And given that even a MacMillan, putting every ounce of his bulk into bouncers, found the ball climbing just chest high, Kumble for once will find that his flippers don't come on nice and easy and hittable.

But for the bowlers to really have a chance, the batting will need to consolidate and provide the runs on the board - and the first hour of tomorrow's play will indicate whether or no they manage to do this.

Meanwhile, a thought to leave you with - what if the Indian batsmen had played with this application on the batting-friendly wicket of Cape Town?

Postscript: Meanwhile, two incidents on the field of play left a definite bad taste in the mouth.

The first involved Rahul Dravid. The batsman played a defensive push off the back foot to a straighter one from Pollock. The bowler fielded, then flung the ball back with all his might at the batsman's end. Dravid swayed away, and the ball whacked the middle stump out of the ground. There was no way Dravid was even thinking about a short single, as the ball was not played dead at his feet but pushed right back to the bowler.

A while later, it was Ganguly's turn to feel the heat. Again, the defensive push. This time, it was Adams who fielded on the follow through. And next second, wham, the throw goes ripping back at the batsman. Ganguly wasn't expect it, so he couldn't avoid it as easily as Dravid did. In the event, the batsman put up his hand and warded the ball away, otherwise it would have thudded into his ribcage. And again, no way in the world was Ganguly looking for a single off that ball.

So what on earth were those displays all about? There has been some sledging on this tour thus far, but these two incidents, coupled with the shove skipper Hansie Cronje gave Srinath in the first Test, are really deplorable displays of bad sportsmanship - and rather sad that South Africa, which since its re-entry into the cricketing fold has been applauded for the spirit with which it plays the game, is the side seen indulging in such.

Another distressing element is that such gestures are coming from the younger ones - Pollock, Adams, talented cricketers at the start of their careers. If Adams, this early in his career, is going to react thus when a batsman hits him around, it is a very sad sign indeed.

And to me, what made a bad incident worse was when, at the end of the over (the Adams incident occured off the last ball), Hansie Cronje made a point to come trotting up from cover to pat his bowler on the back. Was the gesture intended to console him for the stick he got earlier in the over? Or congratulate him for his "aggressive" behaviour? Either way, Cronje blotted his copybook right there, any person with the barest of sporting instincts would have expected him to come up and take his bowler to task...

One thing someone needs to tell the SA team, and its captain - when they do such things on the field, the impression gained by the observer is that they are "good sports" only when things are going in their favour...

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