Anwar blitz puts Pak in I-Cup final

Prem Panicker

A colleague said it best. When, with the Pak score at 297/4, Saeed Anwar flicked Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly at backward point took a brilliant back of the head catch, the spontaneous reaction here was "Damn! He missed the double!"

So incandescent was Anwar on the day that even the most parochial of fans forgot their flag-waving and shared in the joy of achievement, applauding as the Pakistan left-hander smashed a four through midwicket to record the highest individual score in a one day international and, shortly after, the dismay of failure as Anwar missed what would have been the first ever double hundred in an ODI.

This was batting that transcended boundaries of nationality, and swept everyone into a magic land where anything was possible - even three consequtive sixes off Anil Kumble.

The statististicians will have their own take on things - but to me, the most telling stat is that Anwar got his 194 off just 146 balls (22 fours and five sixes). In other words, considerably more than half the Pak team's total - in less than half the number of balls the Pakistan innings lasted.

This is the kind of performance that exempts itself from the axiom that cricket is a team game. True, after Shahid Afridi was out in the second over of the innings, mistiming a hoik over the onside field to give Ganguly a chance to display his catching abilities, skipper Ramiz Raja played a calm, controlled innings of 22/51 balls, following which the ever reliable Ijaz Ahmed weighed in with 39 off 55 and Inzamam ul Haq, coming in at a time when the question was just how much above the 300-mark Pakistan would go, brutalised the bowling to club 39 off 33, it was Anwar who started off in top gear and then found even higher gears to change into.

The other day, we saw Sanath Jayasuriya play a similar match-winning innings against the Indian bowling - the difference between the two being merely in the fact that Jayasuriya wielded the club, while Anwar was the master of the rapier. All style and poise on a perfect batting wicket, he seemed hardly to work up an effort as he caressed the ball into whichever part of the field he decided to favour with his attentions.

For the Indians, only two bowlers came off with honours - Abey Kuruvilla, whose dream form continued with a spell of 10-2-50-1 which, given the Pakistan total of 327 for 5 in 50 overs, is very good indeed and Robin Singh who, before his home crowd, came good with 9-0-50-1, the two helping to bring a hint of sanity to the proceedings.

Could the Indians have done more than they did on the field? Sure - given that Kumble commanded little respect and Prasad even less (Joshi, for his part, was written off after 4 wayward overs cost him 36 runs), the likes of Jadeja and Ganguly could have been asked to weigh in with a few overs. No one is suggesting that these two are dangerous bowlers - and most definitely not on that perfect batting wicket at the M A Chidambaram Stadium. But batsmen - even a rampaging Anwar - take a bit of time to judge each bowler, and so more rotation of the bowling could have been tried as a means of slowing the Pak assault. At the very least, it was better than going through the motions of tossing the ball to the frontline bowlers by rote - but then again, the Indian team does not believe in going beyond the tried and tested on the field.

India has this funny habit of coming up with inexplicable collapses when faced with attainable targets - and then, suddenly faced with an Everest, of pulling out all the stops. And this was in evidence at the MAC Stadium in Madras as well. Tendulkar fell early - and given that this wicket had extra bounce, the manner of his exit was predictable, trying to hit a ball outside off through point, being beaten by the extra bounce and caught well by Inzamam at slip (remember how, at the Wankhede the other day, a similar ball saw him hit it down the throat of backward point?)

That brought Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly together with the score 9/1. And the two rising stars of Indian cricket gave food for thought to those who hold that without Tendulkar firing at the top, India doesn't have a hope in a huge chase. Ganguly in particular was silken aggression, two of his square drives rivalling anything Saeed Anwar had produced earlier in the day. Ganguly left with the Indian score at 61, after a rapid 33 off just 28 balls with seven fours, when he miscued a drive into the hands of the sweeper.

That brought Vinod Kambli to the wicket. The left-hander took time to settle down... but once he got his eye in, he began reverting to a reasonable fascimile of the batsman he was early in 1996. The shuffle was less pronounced, the backlift less unaesthetic than earlier - but the strokeplay was pure Kambli, as he signalled his comeback with a fluent 65 off 80 deliveries before going airborne once too often off Mohammad Husain to redice India to 195/3.

Earlier, when discussing the Anwar blitz, we talked of some statistics. Here's some more numbers that merit consideration: The totals of the respective teams, at various stages of the innings (Pakistan first) : 52/1 and 64/2 in 10 overs; 81/1 and 86/2 in 15 overs; 107/2 and 116/2 in 20 overs; 133/2 and 141/2 in 25 overs; 160/2 and 167/2 in 30 overs; 197/2 and 201/3 in 35 overs; 221/3 and 234/4 in 40 overs; 276/3 and 271/5 in 45 overs...

The easily apparent fact is that right through, till the 40th over, India were always ahead of Pakistan in the chase though it had, at that point, lost one extra wicket. Even more interestingly, though the Anwar blitz which produced 26 runs off a single over from Kumble occcured in over number 41, India in its turn managed to keep the target within sight despite that acceleration - thus, at 45 overs, the difference between the sides was a mere 5 runs.

Crucially, however, India had lost two wickets extra. And those two wickets were those of Tendulkar and, in context of the match, the even more important wicket of the innovative Ajay Jadeja who, on the day, looked totally out of sorts and fell for just four runs.

If India kept pace with the chase almost till the very end, the credit yet again goes to the man who is increasingly seen as the best batsman in the country, bar none - Rahul Dravid, who added icing to a superb individual performance by recording his first 100 in ODIs. Dravid, in Durban in the ODI final against South Africa, had shown that if needed, he could match the best in strokeplay. Here, again, he shrugged off his anchorman image, and without ever appearing flustered or playing ungainly hoiks, kept pace with the run rate to record 107 off just 116 deliveries before a hard flick to a yorker length ball from Aaqib Jaaved had Shahid Afridi pull off a good catch at midwicket. Dravid had come in with India on 9/1. When he left, the score was 247/5, the innings then into its 43rd over.

And that, effectively, was that. Robin Singh gave his home fans something to shout about with yet another crisp cameo of 35 off 26 with two fours and a six - but the departure of Dravid meant that he couldn't concentrate on his own game, but had to worry about his partner at the other end, try to farm the strike as he was the man who was well set and in a position to go for it. Inevitably, this ended in the run out, Robin looking for a second run that wasn't there.

Sunil Joshi and Anil Kumble did their pretensions to batsmanship no good at all by heaving blindly and putting the ball straight up in the air, Kuruvilla and Prasad emulated their betters in this respect, and Mongia was left unbeaten on 23 off 21 as the Indian innings ended off the second ball of the final over for 292, to give Pakistan a 35-run win and entry into the final against Sri Lanka.

India, yet again, had come up with an unexpectedly well-planned chase when faced with an impossible target - and yet again, after doing all the hard work, thrown it away at the end. But all else - even the controlled innings of Dravid - paled before the incandescent Anwar.

The temptation when faced with such a total would be to say that perhaps the Indians bowled and fielded badly - but such a judgement would be given the lie by the fact that the rest of the Pakistan batting, playing as many balls as Anwar did, failed to match his productivity.

No, the bowlers and fielders, for the most part, did everything they could. But on the day, Saeed Anwar batted like a god - and when the gods descend to the cricketing green bat in hand, you admire, you appreciate, and you put your palms together to salute one of the truly memorable knocks in one day cricket history.

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