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India shines on gloomy day

The trouble with this Indian side of late is that its performances have fluctuated so wildly between the sublime and the mediocre, that it becomes hard to voice unqualified optimism.

You begin to type "India did well to..." and suddenly, stop and do a rethink. Is this, you wonder, a flash in the pan? Will the side, come the next morning, lapse into its earlier ways and make a mock of your report of the day?

Then again, if you are reporting, your best bet is to call each day's play as you see it -- neither the past, nor the future, is relevant to what actually happened on the day, is it? So the bottomline is that the home side, as indicated, did well on day one of the second Test of the ongoing Pepsi series.

That it scored 134 runs in 41 overs at a little over 3 runs per over on a rain-truncated day is only half the story -- it is the manner of run-scoring, rather than its quantum, that I liked.

To begin at the beginning, though. The Vidharbha Cricket Association stadium at Nagpur provided a pitch that, from a distance, looked nice and green. Catch being, the "green" comes from dead grass rolled into the pitch.

Every indication is that the wicket will crumble rapidly as this Test unfolds, and that spin more than seam will dominate proceedings. And the reading is reflected in the team compositions of the rival sides.

India went for the straight option -- drop a seamer, in Debashish Mohanty, for a spinner in Nilesh Kulkarni while keeping the rest of the side unchanged.

Ranatunga, however, made a most interesting move. The axing of Sajeewa D'Silva for Ravindra Pushpakumara was predictable. However, the move to drop Kumara Dharmasena for Jayanta Silva comes as a surprise -- a very pleasant one, properly considered.

Dharmasena was easily the unsung hero for Sri Lanka in the first Test. In the first innings, his positive batting helped the last two Lankan wickets add 60-odd runs. And in the second, his obdurate defence (he was in fact sent in ahead of 'keeper Lanka D'Silva, a clear demonstration of the faith his captain had in him) in company of Aravinda D'Silva kept the Indians from breaking through, post lunch, on the last day and, in the final analysis, this was what denied India the win.

And yet, he is dropped. Yet another indication of Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga's clear, sharp thinking. True, Dharmasena is a more than useful batsman. But the point is that he is in the side for his off spin bowling, and it was clear that he didn't have the arsenal to cause the Indian batsmen any kind of problems -- at best he is steady and restrictive, but to win matches, you need bowlers who can attack and take wickets and Dharmasena does not fit the description. And the Lankan bowling lineup is not strong enough to carry a passenger.

So, Ranatunga axes him, on the "horses for courses" theory. Sentiment plays no part in it, the hero of the previous game does not get an automatic passport for the next one. And that, to my mind, is as it should be -- a team should be picked on the basis of the need of the game, not on reputations, or as reward for past heroics.

It is the kind of thinking India, with its 'holy cow' mentality towards players, will not master, at least in the foreseeable future.

The day started out cloudy, the atmosphere heavy with moisture, which meant that swing bowlers would prosper. (Which reminds me, what on earth is Venkatesh Prasad doing on the sidelines anyway?) And this is how each of the next four mornings will probably be. However, once the sun comes out, the medium pace swing bowlers are pretty much taken out of the action, and spin is bound to dominate.

All of that is why it was a good toss to win, the decision to bat first being automatic. And Tendulkar served his side well by calling right and, fighing to hide a smile, opted to bat.

What was interesting is that from the first ball, both Nayan Mongia and Navjot Singh Sidhu were found looking for runs. And doing that was not exactly easy -- because after one over, the teams went out as a small drizzle came down, then came back ten minutes later, played out another seven deliveries and went off again for bad light, then came back again, played out a bit more and went out again for rain... that kind of thing plays hell with your concentration.

Vaas, I thought, wasted the new ball. On a track where the conditions and the pitch are not doing much, his style of bowling -- pitching a shade short and angling it across the right hander -- is fine, because it keeps the batsman from getting on top of the bowling and hitting it about, and if in his impatience he drives, it is with bat away from body, given the line, and that brings with it the risk of edging to the slips. Today, though, the ball was guaranteed to swing about -- a much better ploy, one thought, would have been to pitch the ball up and just outside off, letting the natural inswing alternate with his drift away from the right hander to pose problems and force errors.

In the event, Sidhu, Mongia and later, Dravid had little problem letting the wide balls slip through to the keeper, while guiding those closer to the stumps square on the off side for runs.

Pushpakumara was the more aggressive, working up a pretty nifty pace -- he being easily Lanka's fastest bowler, fitting into the fast-medium category -- and getting bounce and movement off the track thanks to his willingness to bend his back and put his shoulder into the delivery. His knack of getting sudden nip and bounce surprised Mongia who, after blazing a square drive through point an over earlier, attempted to repeat the stroke, found the ball jumping on him, went through with the shot anyway, predictably failed to keep it down and departed to a comfortable catch at point.

Dravid hasn't had a good, long innings under his belt in a while now -- and that showed, in his rather hesitant footwork at the start of his innings. Showed, too, in the way he kept trying to slam his drives with full power -- his forte like Ganguly's is timing and placement, and whenever he tries to hit hard, rather than place, he keeps finding the fielder and getting increasingly frustrated.

To his credit, however, he went against the grain and kept trying to force the ball all the time. And, more importantly, had an eye for the single -- thus, every time he drove to mid off or mid on, he was off with the stroke, calling and racing through to the danger end. And as the singles trickled in and the ball hit middle of the bat a few times, he grew in confidence, opening out to play some lovely on and off drives to the spinners.

If Dravid's innings, at the start, showed a lack of confidence, then Sidhu's knock went the other extreme. A century under his belt appears to have given the opening batsman a huge high, and it showed in the decisive footwork he employed to both spinners and quicks. And more importantly, in the thought that went into his innings. His innings was studded with instances of this, but one suffices -- Muralitharan bowled, pitched one short and Sidhu promptly rocked back onto the back foot, waited for the ball to turn, then slammed a pull through midwicket for four. Treat a spinner that way and the odds are the next ball will be pitched further up -- Sidhu anticipated that, second guessed the bowler and when Murali flighted, there he was, down the track and in perfect position to launch it over long on for six.

And when Dravid, in Murali's next over, went right back on the stumps to wait for the turn and glance Murali behind square for four, then off the next ball rocked back and slammed a square drive to the point boundary, the threat of Lanka's main spinner was pretty much negated.

The lessons of the last Test appear to have been learnt, too, when it came to dealing with the line down leg stump. This time, Ranatunga never employed it as a tactic -- but both Jayanta Silva and Muralitharan tended to drift down leg every now and again, and both batsmen were quickly down on their knees, sweeping. Not, maybe, connecting all the time, but the intention was there, and it sufficed to check any attempt to repeat that line.

If the problem India faced in the previous Test was a slow rate of scoring that shackled its hope of going for a win, this time round they showed a greater sense of urgency, the century partnership between Dravid and Sidhu coming off just 186 deliveries which, in the conditions, was pretty good going.

The Lankans bowled as well as they were allowed to, both Murali and Jayanta Silva getting turn and bounce whenever they tossed the ball up. What is more interesting from a long range point of view, though, is that by late evening, the ball began throwing up little puffs of dust each time it hit the deck -- and that is indicative of a powdery pitch, the kind that will crack and crumble as the Test goes into its third day.

Batting, thus, should become difficult -- unless the pitch slows down as it crumbles, in which case, sharp though the turn could be, it will be slow enough for batsmen to judge, and adapt to. But that is for the future. For now, Ranatunga -- never one to miss a bet -- saw the light fade as the sun sank behind the stadium. At that point, there was still 12 overs to go for the end of the reduced day's play. The Lankan captain promptly tossed the ball to his fastest bowler, Pushpakumara, with a smile.

The ploy was obvious -- the umpires, seeing the quick bowler being brought on, had to offer the light to the batsmen; Sidhu, the man on strike, accepted, and the Lankan team trooped off knowing that the batting side had 12 less overs on the day in which to score.

Yet another instance of sharp, incisive thinking, that, from the Lankan skipper. And an object lesson in how to keep an eye out for every chance and seize it when it offers.

And so on to day two. The home side is perfectly poised, 134 on the board with two well set batsmen at the wicket, and three strokeplayers still to come, against an attack that looks rather week in the dentures. Assuming that the weather gods stay kind and the full 90 overs can be bowled tomorrow, the home side will probably look to bat through, going at around 3.5 per over till the tea break, and then producing the kind of blitz Ganguly and Kuruvilla figured in on the fourth day of the first Test.

The objective being to send Lanka in to bat needing 300 or a bit more to avoid the follow on -- which allows the home side to set attacking fields and go for broke. Against a star-studded lineup of aggressive batsmen. Prescription, that, for a real good contest.

Of course, all this is on paper -- which is not where the two sides are going to be playing the rest of this Test.

Be interesting to sit back and watch just what happens in the four days to come. One thing is for sure, though -- unless rain and light interfere in a very big way, this Test will develop into a cracker.

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