Rain ruins play on last day
Prem Panicker
So what could have been a fascinating last day ended up a damp squib, thanks to persistent rain that wiped out all play before lunch and for an hour after the break as well.
Going into the final day on a placid pitch, the events as they transpired would have provided answers to some interesting questions in context of the remaining four Tests.
For instance, the West Indies overnight were 241 for four. With an 81 run lead in the first innings, this meant that the Windies were 322 runs ahead, with 90 overs to play on the final day.
Had Walsh declared at the overnight total, it would have been an indication that he was confident that his bowlers were more than capable of going after the Indian batsmen even on this placid pitch, attempting to bundle them out and, if they met with obdurate resistance, then tightening up and forcing the draw.
If the declaration hadn't come first thing in the morning, and Walsh had chosen to bat on, then it would argue that he was not certain of being able to crash through the Indian batting and force the win, and therefore would prefer to bat out a few overs, make the runs to overs ratio totally impossible for the Indians to attempt, and then see what he and his fellow quicks could do with the ball.
And there would, too, have been pointers of interest in the Indian response. Basically, 323 to win in 90 overs is a run rate of around 3.9 per over, so we are not talking here of some absurd impossibility, more so on a wicket where run-making has been easy for players in form and playing their strokes. In seeing whether the Indians attempted it by looking for the singles from the get-go, keeping the board ticking, pacing the innings or, alternately, began playing for the draw from ball one would lie an indication of whether the touring side feels comfortable about its own abilities with the bat.
In short, the full day's play today would have given both sides an opportunity to probe each other's defences out a bit, test their own muscle and, who knows, really make a match of what looked, from the first ball bowled here, to be headed for a draw.
In the event, there was nothing in it for either team. By the time the rain stopped doing its stuff and play resumed, there was just sufficient time for 53 overs. Walsh promptly declared - batting on, at that stage, would have looked absurd anyway.
India was not really likely to go for the bowling - I mean, 322 in 50 overs hasn't been done in a one day international thus far, if I remember right, so it was hardly on the cards for an attempt to be made here, more so as the outfield, not the fastest in the world to begin with, had become even slower thanks to the rain.
So for India, the game became a sort of extended net practise - and that, in turn, brought the only false note for the touring side when Navjot Singh Sidhu, making his comeback to the national side, failed for the second time in the match. If Sidhu had managed a long bat out here, it would have done his confidence a world of good going in to the second Test at Trinidad from Friday March 14 on. But he lasted just six deliveries before fending awkwardly at the seventh, a rising ball from Walsh that he conveyed from inner edge onto body and from there into the hands of Holder at short square.
Talking of rising deliveries, I wonder if anyone out there can explain precisely what the rain did to this wicket? The covers were adequate, there was no direct seepage onto the track. True, long periods of rain does result in underground seepage, and wickets do tend to provide some lift when they get damp. But this particular track after the rain behaved in a fashion that puzzled even that all-time great fast bowler, Michael Holding. The bounce was steepling at times, even from a good length; and at other times, the ball tended to skid through at bootlace height.
Walsh and Ambrose steamed in at the Indians for a good 13 overs - a fair test of the mettle of VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid. And the two young Indian batsmen stood the test pretty well, playing with composure and good technique and not letting the bounce rattle them.
It was most interesting to see the way Laxman coped with the two premier Windies quicks - decisive footwork, body in line with everything coming at him, and very easy, assured strokeplay. If he can reproduce this form at Trinidad, where the wicket is bound to be faster, then India could well have found at least one of the two openers they've been seeking for over a year now (interestingly, Laxman is the 13th player to have done duty in this role for India in the past 12 months, and that is an unusually high turnover of openers indeed).
13 overs into the game, Walsh gave up. It appeared that he, at this stage, discounted the chances of blitzing through the Indian lineup, and from then on what we got was some Mickey Mouse stuff from Hooper, Chanderpaul and Brian Lara.
Given that the bowling was of wonderful variety - the half volley, the full pitch, the fuller pitch, the ridiculously short of length - the Indian batsmen contented themselves with just moving easily and stroking it out to the fielders or back to the bowler for the most part. Dravid in one over of Lara's spanked him for three fours, but that seemed more an attempt to relieve boredom than anything else.
So matters rapidly turned farcical out in the middle, the batsmen refusing to hit the ball, the fielders refusing to show any hurry in getting to those balls that were pushed in their direction - good clean fun.
In the event, Walsh decided to let his young debutant Franklyn Rose (adjudged man of the match later on for his six wicket haul in the first innings) have a nice long bowl. And Laxman provided Rose with another wicket, his seventh of the match, when he played a lazy drive straight into the hands of Holder at cover. 27 off 111 to Laxman's credit sounds as if he was waging a grim battle out there - but if there was any battle after that first blitz from Walsh and Ambrose, it was merely a battle to stay awake.
Sachin Tendulkar decided to treat himself to some time out in the middle - a good thing, too, given that he does need to be working on his footwork and timing. If there had been a third slip in place, the Indian captain would probably have notched up another failure - attempting to play one of his trademark punches off the front foot through cover, all he managed was the thick outer edge off Rose to precisely where third slip would have been. In the event, Tendulkar promptly played the same stroke off the next ball, middling it well and suddenly, his feet began moving a lot easier, and that nervousness of his vanished.
From then on, more batting practise as the batsmen stroked the ball around, turned down singles that could have been walked, then tested themselves by running tight twos... In the event, it was Walsh who, perhaps deciding that enough was enough, took the ball back and bowled an over of mostly short pitched stuff. When Ambrose was given the ball for the next over, the umpires offered the light to the batsmen, who took it and all concerned trooped off the field, conscious of having done their bit to make a boring day into a total yawn.
In passing, I wonder if there is any provision by the BCCI to treat its captains to courses in public speaking? Post-match, Holding asked Tendulkar what he thought were the gains of this game. And Tendulkar said just this: "Well, the game has been drawn, so we go to Trinidad all square."
Perhaps the response was prompted by recurring nightmares of the beginning of the South African tour, when White Lightning and assorted other thunderbolts combined to bundle the Indians out for a combined total of 166 on a scorcher of a wicket. But one would have thought that Tendulkar would, on the cue, have mentioned the fact that Laxman, asked to open as a wartime measure, came through with panache; that Dravid and Ganguly handled their first outing against the West Indies speedsters with confidence; that Mongia and Joshi got long, morale-building innings under their belts; that Abey Kuruvilla in his long-delayed debut bowled with enough intelligence, application and variety to impress even Michael Holding...
Hey, before you send me flame-mail for being too harsh on Tendulkar (if you are a cricket reporter, these days, the first thing you need is an asbestos overcoat), a disclaimer. The above is not a criticism, Tendulkar wasn't picked for the job on the basis of his silver-tongued oratory anyway. I just figured that since he left the question unanswered, I might as well give it a go, is all.
And having done so, it just remains to tell the incuriably statistics-conscious that at the end of it all, India had made 99/2 in 48 overs (most of those runs coming despite the batsmen's best efforts to not take them), and that Rahul Dravid was not out on 51 off 141 balls and Sachin Tendulkar walked back with 15 off 36 balls.
Did that mean anything to you? Didn't, to me? So tell me, how come we don't have a rule in there someplace, saying if both captains agree the game is a washout, then we can all pack up and go home - more so when there were less than two dozen spectators dozing in the stands through it all?
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