Lara, Hooper bat Windies to position of strength on day one

Prem Panicker

The one feeling that overrides all others, at the end of the first day's play of the first Cable and Wireless Test between India and the West Indies, is one of appreciation for cricket's little ironies.

21 years ago almost to the day (the game in question was played between April 21-25, 1976), then West Indies captain Clive Lloyd decided that he'd had enough of leading the Windies to defeats. In a bid to reverse the trend, he had the then groundsman of Sabina Park, in Kingston, Jamaica, produce a deadly greentop. And having packed his side with four lethally quick fast bowlers, he gave them one terse instruction: "If you can't get them out, hit them!"

The result, Indian skipper Bishen Singh Bedi declared the first innings at 306/6, the second at 97/5, deliberately giving the Windies a comfortable win rather than risk crippling injury to his players in the face of a barrage of short-pitched deliveries from round the wicket aimed at maiming batsmen rather than getting their wickets. And from that point on, the four-man pace battery became the Windies tactic and took the side to an undisputed reign at the top of the cricketing totem for almost two decades.

The groundsman then was a certain Charles Joseph. The same man who, for this first Test in the India-West Indies series beginning today, produced a wicket that batsmen salivate over in their dreams. And Michael Holding - who, in that game in 1976 was the most lethal of the foursome - took one look at the wicket produced here and said, "If I were playing today and had to bowl on this wicket, I would fake an injury or something and sit this game out."

Watered and rolled to within an inch of its life, so bare of grass as to give a stray cow the impression that it had wandered into bovine hell, this wicket was made for batsmen who could get out there, go on the front foot and display their mastery over the various shots in the cricketing repertoire. It is the sort of wicket that makes bowlers and fielders rather irrelevant to the proceedings - the main point of interest is to see just how long a batsman can go on without getting bored. And at the end of the day, 300 runs had come for the loss of just four wickets in 90 overs - Holding was right, this is one track bowlers don't want to see too often.

True, what this wicket could do after day three remains unpredictable - except that if the ball doesn't keep progressively lower and slower, I'll gladly eat the pitch for dinner and the groundsman for dessert. Again, what Ambrose and Walsh, with their superior skill and experience, can do with the ball on this one remains to be seen. But whatever the course of the next few days' play, let's get one thing clear upfront - if a batsman doesn't make runs here, he lacks either the ability, or the mental strength and determination.

So much for preamble, on now to the details...

The teams

India had no problem picking its playing eleven, actually. The nature of the wicket made a minimum of two spinners mandatory, so in came Joshi. Kuruvilla as the faster of the two was always sure to get the nod ahead of Ganesh. And the rest of the side had picked itself anyway, in Srinath's absence and, more importantly, the absence of any real options for Sachin Tendulkar to play with. Cricketing thinking holds that the blander the wicket, the more sense it makes to use five bowlers in your side, to give more variety to the attack - safe enough, as on a bland pitch, five batsmen plus the keeper should be enough to get good scores. But given the mint-fresh opening pair of Sidhu and Laxman, Tendulkar probably felt safer going in with six batsmen. More importantly, if he wanted a fifth bowler, who was he to pick? If a spinner existed, then the choice was easy - but Ganesh on this friendly track would be as innocuous as anyone else, so the Indian tour management obviously opted to ensure that they batted deep enough to go for a draw, rather than try to force a win on a featherbed.

As for the West Indies, the selectors served up just one surprise. Jimmy Adams, the erstwhile Mr Reliable of the side's batting lineup and not so long ago rated the top batsman in the world (at least statistically) found himself on the bench, with Roland Holder getting the nod ahead of him. And Franklyn Rose, after his spell in the warm-up game against the tourists the other day on this same venue, got his chance to debut, giving the Windies a four-pronged pace attack of Walsh, Ambrose, Bishop and Rose.

Given that no one can tell with any certainity whether the wicket will, or will not, crumble by day four, batting first was the ideal scenario. And Tendulkar did Walsh a favour by calling wrong, for once, and the Windies captain didn't waste a heartbeat before opting to bat first.

Pre-Lunch session

Spare a thought for poor Venkatesh Prasad - on the one hand, he has been a shadow of his former self ever since coming down with a viral fever during the second Test against RSA in South Africa recently. And on the other hand, he is aware that in Srinath's absence, it is his responsibility to lead the attack.

This could be why, against every evidence of his senses, Prasad opted to bowl aggressively in his opening spell with the new ball. The result? A tentative Sherwin Campbell, and an ominously assured Stuart Williams, hit him around the ball park with relish.

The surprise package was Abey Kuruvilla. Playing in his first Test, it would have been natural for the medium pacer to have stretched a bit, tried that shade too hard to make an impression. Instead, the debutant cannily choose to bowl at three quarter pace, concentrating instead on keeping the ball bang on the stumps and making the batsmen play at everything, without ever giving the width they needed to play their shots.

The outcome was that while Prasad went for 49 in his first nine overs, Kuruvilla conceded a mere 14 in his first eight. And in the bargain, he foxed Williams, who till then had been batting with assurance bordering on contempt, with a superb slower delivery, pitched just short of drivable length and holding the off stump line to sneak through Williams' defence and peg back off stump (Williams 23 off 25 balls with three fours, Windies 41/1.

Unlike Williams, who was timing the ball from the get-go, Campbell looked like he had inadvertently managed to get some superglue on the soles of his boots. His feet remained static, his bat made the sort of passes you expect from magicians desperately hopping that they can pull an elephant out of a hat - and yet, such is the nature of cricket that his edges fell short of the fielders, the ball on beating the bat failed to find either edge or stumps, and the runs came trickling along.

I am not quite sure I understand what Chanderpaul is doing up there at number three, when you have a batsman like Lara in your lineup. Chanderpaul is more the grafter, the kind of player who gets his runs in trickles, while the Lara-types dominate the bowling, and shatter the fielding side's spirits, right from the first ball.

In the event, a combination of Campbell's uncertainity, Chanderpaul's circumspection and some tight bowling by Kuruvilla, Kumble (who, in his eight overs before lunch, had us rubbing our eyes in disbelief as he actually flighted the ball and tempted the batsman to come down the wicket to him) and Joshi meant that the Windies, after getting a brisk 49 in the first hour of play, managed only 20 runs in the second hour and went in to lunch at 69/1.

Post lunch to tea

When a batsman is obviously out of touch, his innings goes one of two ways. Either luck stays with him and he hangs in there long enough to bat his way out of trouble, or he gets out quick. In Campbell's case, Luck stayed his friend long enough to let him get over his initial shakes - but when it saw that the batsman was in no mood to take advantage, decided the heck with this, and ended his torturous stay abruptly. In Campbell's case, some cleverness from Joshi also contributed to Luck's efforts - having bowled a few flighted ones on the stumps and noticed that Campbell was repeatedly trying to lay back and cut, Joshi fed the stroke with the faster ball outside off stump. Campbell, sure enough, went for the cut, got a feather touch and Mongia did the rest. (Campbell 40 off 123 with four fours, WI 96/2.

Chanderpaul, meanwhile, appeared to have woken up to the fact that this wicket held no terrors for any batsman above schoolboy class, and blossomed out into fluent strokeplay. He was a shade shaky against spin, surprisingly enough given that he is known for his fluent footwork against the slower bowlers, but he did play with enough confidence and technique to cruise smoothly to his 50 - the 12th time past that mark in his 18th Test, which argues for high levels of consistency. Unfortunately, if Chanderpaul is consistent at getting his 50s, he is even more consistent in failing to convert them into 100s, which is what seperates the men from the other types. And again, almost immediately after crossing the 50 mark, the batsman made a mess of an attempted defensive push at Prasad's away-swinger, inner-edging onto pad for Mongia to do the honours yet again. (C'paul 52 in 117 balls with four fours, WI 143/3.

That brought Carl Hooper to the crease. Meanwhile, Lara was being, well, Lara. Aggressive from the outset, disinclined to let the bowlers dominate, he made run-getting look as simple as a stroll in the park, and under his attentions, the thus-far steady bowling of Kumble, Joshi, Prasad and Kuruvilla began to wilt.

Much has been written about Lara's rather pronounced flourishes outside off stump, his exaggerated backlift and tendency to go too far across his crease. To take advantage of that defect, though, India needed a bowler of the Srinath class - and in his absence, Lara showed what distinguishes the top batsman from the good ones as every stroke found gaps where those of his predecessors had found fielders.

Hooper, meanwhile, has been on a good run this season, topping the averages in Australia with a string of superb performances. As a batsman, he is undoubtedly top drawer - it is his seeming inability to score with the frequency his talent suggests that stops him from being named in the same breath as the Waughs, Laras and Tendulkars.

Here, however, he seemed on top of his game - and when Hooper is on top of his game, the best that bowlers can do is trot up, deliver the ball, and watch it disappear. Which it did with such regularity that by teatime, the WI score had galloped along to 171/3, 102 runs having been added in the post lunch session for the loss of two wickets, and 64 of those runs being added in the hour before tea.

The Indian bowlers did pretty much everything they could on this wicket. If fault is to be found, it is on the grounds that at the end of four hours of play, India had used only four bowlers. The best ploy, when the wicket offers you no assistance, is to mix things up, keep bringing on the irregulars for brief two, three over spells and not allow the batsmen to get comfortable against any one pair. But surprisingly, neither Ganguly, nor Laxman (who, the think tank had indicated, would perform off-spinner duties along with Rahul Dravid) was even asked to warm up, and the four main bowlers kept bowling till they tired, then handing over to the next pair.

On a bowler-friendly wicket, things happen. On a batsman-friendly wicket, you have to make it happen. And this was where India slipped in this session.

Post tea session

The story of this session is easily told - Hooper blazed away like he thought it was a one-day game he was playing, not bothering with such niceties as picking the gaps but preferring to choose his stroke, then wait for the ball and slam it up and over the fielders to the boundary.

So authoritative was his batting that though Lara was on 20 when he came to the crease, it was Hooper who raced ahead into the sixties and seventies ahead of his more famous partner.

Lara, meanwhile, appeared hellbent on setting himself little objectives and accomplishing them. Objective first was to try and dominate Kumble, and this was achieved in the space of one over with one blistering sweep-pull followed by an electrifying on-drive. Then he decided that Joshi was bowling too well for comfort, and needed taking down a peg or two - so a lofted on drive, then another one, then a straight drive by way of variety, and Lara showed the left-arm spinner who was boss.

Not, mind you, that the Indians bowled badly - it is just that top quality batsmen on this kind of wickets have so much time to play their shots, that there is little the bowlers can do but hold a decent line and hope like hell.

At this stage, the momentum of the West Indies innings resembled that of a custom-built Rolls. So smooth you think you are stationary, but you blink your eye and look out and hey, you're there where you wanted to get.

Tendulkar finally woke up to the fact that the game was getting out of hand, and gave Ganguly and Laxman a try out. And Ganguly in particular did the trick, bowling his vegetarian medium-pacers bang on the stumps, and keeping both batsmen reasonably honest while giving the overworked scorers a bit of a breather.

Desperation more than anything else prompted Tendulkar to claim the second new ball two overs after it became due - and cricket again showed its maddening illogic. Bowlers bowl superb lines, come up with endless variations, and get treated like trundlers. Then they bowl a real flat out lousy ball, and down goes the wicket.

Happened to Kuruvilla, when after beating Lara with a lovely awayswinger, he sent the next ball wide of leg stump. The batsman, who was playing with the sort of ominous calm that made you wonder if he was looking to break his own Test record for most runs in an innings (and on this wicket against this attack, I for one wouldn't have been surprised if he did had done it too) wafted at the ball rather like at a pesky fly, and feathered an edge to Mongia. (Lara 83 off 141 with 10 fours, Windies 290/4).

From the West Indies point of view, that wicket went down at the worst possible time, with just five overs left in the day's play. Hooper and Lara walking out again on the second morning would have meant the sort of total that, even on this placid pitch, could have raised visions of an innings win for the home side. But with Lara back, the Indians breathed noticeably easier, and with good reason - Hooper, unlike his compatriot, isn't the kind to go on and on ad infinitum, so if there was a choice of whose back the fielding side would rather see, Lara would be the choice ten times out of ten.

Bishop came out to stand guard over the stumps and ensure against further alarms - and Hooper did his best to give skipper Walsh and manager Lloyd heart attacks by getting beaten twice on the trot, then slashing one dangerously in the air, then being beaten again outside off, and getting into enough trouble in one Prasad over to last a lifetime.

But if bad balls get wickets on bad pitches, then good balls go unrewarded - and Prasad has just the one wicket to show for 90 runs conceeded in 21 overs of honest toil. Kuruvilla, in fact, came off with the impressive figures, for a debutant on this pitch, of 2/46 off 18 overs, while Kumble (21-2-61-0) remained true to form - tossing a few up by way of testing the waters and, at the first sign of the batsmen going for their shots, reverting to flat, fast, straight bowling more proper for a medium pacer than a leggie.

Joshi (20-5-68-1), for his part, impressed with his willingness to take stick and still keep challenging the batsmen with flight and loop, given that there was no spin to be had on this track anyway. Ganguly chipped in with a steady 7 over spell for 17 runs, and Laxman's three overs, though costing 14 runs, impressed enough for the viewer to pencil him in for more work with the ball in course of the innings and, in fact, of the series.

Which brings us to the prospects for tomorrow - and again, it is simply told. The ball is just 8 overs old, so India's best bet is to prise out Hooper first crack out of the box before he has a chance to settle. Do that, and the innings could still fold short of the 350, 360 mark. Let him survive that first half hour, and in this kind of form, Hooper (87 off 132 balls with 13 fours) will bat the visitors right out of the game.