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DEAR REDIFF

India make it two in a row

Prem Panicker

In cricket, one little mistake is all it takes, sometimes, to put yourself in a losing position - and Ramiz Raja weighed in with a whopper at the start of game two, when he opted to bat after winning the toss.

Made no logical sense, that. Like on day one, the game was delayed a half hour due to heavy overnight dew - so right there, you knew the pitch would provide some movement and bounce early on, for the quicks. Also, the weather forecast was for a blistering hot day, so you knew the dew would burn out soon - which in turn meant your own bowlers wouldn't have quite as much of an advantage in the second half of the game.

True, India has in recent times made rather a meal of chasing targets - but that is the kind of thing you try to capitalise on if you are on a belter of a batting track. In which case you bat first, hope to put up a biggie and let India lose its way in the chase. But the ploy presupposes that you put up a good total for the other team to chase - and going in to bat on a dewy pitch isn't exactly the best way to ensure that.

Both teams made one change apiece from the lineup that took the field the previous day. India dropped Rajesh Chauhan and brought in the left arm spinner Nilesh Kulkarni - the reasoning perhaps being that Chauhan wasn't getting too much out of this wicket, and the Pakistani right-hand batsmen are in any event very fluent players of off spin, whereas Nilesh with his huge height (six foot five, almost to the inch), high arm action, and angle across the right hander, could be more restrictive in the middle overs. Pakistan meanwhile sat Mohammad Akram out - after his prodigality in the opening overs yesterday, wherein one particular over alone went for 10 wides, that was on the cards - and brought in the steadier Kabir Khan.

This time round - in keeping with Raja's desire to set a big target, perhaps - Afridi opened with Saeed Anwar. And the openers immediately came up against a rather heavy duty combination of circumstances - the dewy pitch and resulting seam movement early on, and young Debashish Mohanty, after his exploits of yesterday, bowling like a man possessed.

Amazing what confidence can do, both to an individual, and to a team. A day earlier, Mohanty had found the wicket to his liking, realised that if he kept the ball right up, his natural awayswinger and his ability to bring one back sharply meant that the batsmen were not going to find facing him a picnic. Today, he added to those two strengths the confidence to go flat out, adding a couple of yards to the pace he bowled at yesterday - and the result was pretty stunning. Meanwhile India, after a long spell of losses, found the elusive win the day earlier - and so came out swinging, starting off with three slips and, for the first five overs, even a gully - not quite the sort of field you see in ODIs these days.

Victim number one was Shahid Afridi (zero off four deliveries) - Mohanty in his first over producing a quicker delivery on off that moved in off the seam to defeat Afridi's drive through off and knock the middle stump out of the ground and reduce Pakistan to 7/1.

In his second over, Mohanty tormented Saeed Anwar with a series of lovely away swingers of full length and just on off, the ball leaving the bat just when the batsman was moving into the stroke. What was most interesting was the body language - each time he beat the bat, and he did it three times in three tries, Mohanty gave the batsman a 'what are you still doing here?' style glare, interesting to see in a boy just a month old in international cricket, against the batsman with the highest score in ODIs. And then he changed the line a bit, pitching one leg and middle and moving it into the batsman's body. Anwar (12 off 25 with two fours) in frustration went for the flick, not realising this was the slower ball, and spooned it to mid on where Harvinder judged it superbly and dived to hold a good catch. Pakistan 17/2.

The hugely experienced Ijaz Ahmed (4 off 19) looked like settling down for the long haul, when Mohanty again produced a lovely ball, bang on off stump, kicking up more than the batsman expected and leaving the right hander to defeat the intended drive through cover, take the edge, and fly straight to Azhar, standing at the second of three slips. Pakistan 26/3.

At 23/2 in 10, and 38/3 in 15, Pakistan were very much in jail, thanks to a combination of Mohanty's aggressive bowling (7--1-15-3 being the kind of bowling analysis we haven't seen from an Indian bowler in some time now) and Kuruvilla's steady, line and length stuff aided by a fielding side that flung itself on everything. Putting the batting side in jail, though, is merely half the problem - the trick is to keep them there. And this is where India could have been vulnerable. Harvinder Singh, who debuted yesterday, had been too wayward for comfort - in fact, it was pretty commendable of the tour management to have persisted with him today. If he had bowled badly again, then Ramiz Raja, Inzamam ul Haq, Salim Malik and Moin Khan still had enough firepower to repair the early damage.

In the event, Harvinder - debutant's nerves apparently behind him - bowled the right line and length and so did Robin, to turn the screws further in the period between the 15th and the 25th over. It was all very simple, really - Sachin Tendulkar set six, and at times, seven men on the off - and both bowlers concentrated on keeping the line just on or outside the off stump, meaning that no matter where the batsmen stroked the ball, there was a fielder there. Very basic - and yet so very, very effective. How effective, is indicated by one statistic alone - 15 runs came in those ten overs, and two more wickets went down.

Robin Singh, celebrating his 34th birthday today, began with a maiden. Then came up with another one. And sheer frustration drove Ramiz Raja (8 off 46 with one four) into trying to go over the top - only he picked the ball Robin had held back a bit, and ended up lobbing it to mid off for Mohanty - who on the day seemed to be all over the place - to hold at mid off, reducing Pakistan to 41/4.

Inzamam ul Haq was to figure with the bat in a rather different way much later - but here, at the business end of the pitch, he looked as out of sorts as he did yesterday. That pronounced walk across his stumps not only looks ugly, it is making him very vulnerable outside off, an area he revelled in before. And sure enough, Robin produced an away-swinger on a length, just outside off, Inzy (10 off 34) in the middle of his walk drove at it and Karim dived low to his right to hold a good catch, Pakistan 50/5 and at this point, totally out of the game.

Moin Khan's dismissal, for one run off nine deliveries, was perhaps the only one in the Pakistan innings where the batsman was blameless. Salim Malik played a hard straight drive, Harvinder on the follow through did very well to bend quick enough to get his hand to it, and the richochet slammed into the stumps at the bowler's end to catch Moin out of his ground, Pakistan losing its sixth wicket for 66 runs.

Malik had, throughout, been stroking with authority. Which was when Saurav Ganguly yet again demonstrated the enormous value of the non-regular bowler - something that the likes of Steve Waugh have perfected into a fine art. His gentle inswingers contrasted with the odd ball going away, his line was immaculate - and he was confident enough to ask Jadeja, captaining the side from the 25th to the 37th over while Sachin rested a bruised finger, to give him a second slip. The minute he got that, Ganguly went from keeping it on the stumps to hitting the line just outside, looking for the edge - and when he did find it the first time, the ball went too far wide of Karim. However, by now, bowling in tandem with Nilesh Kulkarni, Ganguly had checked the run rate to such an extent that between overs number 30 and 35, just nine runs were scored. Off the first ball of the 36th over, Ganguly produced the slower one in the slot, Malik (36 off 58 with six fours) inevitably went for the drive and miscued, and the bowler gleefully took the return catch, Pakistan 91/7.

Azhar Mahmood (8 off 20) and Saqlain Mushtaq batted with some application against the tight bowling and fielding, before the former finally surrendered to impatience and slogged at Ganguly for Azhar, fielding at mid on for a change, to make a blinder look ridiculously easy. Pakistan 115/8 and, immediately thereafter, 115/9 as Kuruvilla, coming back for his second spell, bowled the regulation leg-cutter to have Saqlain (21 off 54 with two fours) patting it behind into Karim's gloves.

Frankly, around this point, I lost track of Pakistan's thinking totally. At this stage, the game was into the 43rd over. India was in definite danger of not bowling the full quota of 50 overs in the allotted time. That would have meant that India, which looked to be bowling about 5 short, would have had that many less overs to get to the target, if the Pakistan batsmen had only had the wits to just stay put at the crease.

Funnily enough, the 12th man came out just then with an unwanted pair of gloves. And Wasim Akram, in the commentator's box, made a big to-do about how, since the Pakistan players in the latter order were largely young and inexperienced, the seniors tended to send out messages every now and again about what to do - and that this particular message was obviously to bat out the overs.

And then Azhar and Saqlain did the exact opposite. And Aaqib Javed, the last man, rubbed it in when he slogged at the last ball of Kuruvilla's over, the 45th, to give Azhar the chance to show off his catching skills yet again. The irony was that if he had waited one more ball, India would have overshot its time - and been docked that many overs when it came India's turn to bat. Little thing, perhaps, but when you have only 116 runs on the board, five overs less to bowl can be a big thing in itself.

For India, every single bowler did his job to perfection. It was obvious that the collective gameplan had been fixed firmly in everyone's minds - thus, bowler after bowler came in, pitched up, kept it around off or just outside to a packed off side field, and the runs dried up. And in consequence, the wickets kept tumbling. Classic one day strategy - makes you wonder where this thinking cap was, all these days.

Kuruvilla (10-0-29-2), Mohanty (7-1-15-3) and Harvinder (8-2-19-0) all found the wicket aiding their style of fast medium swing and seam, while Robin (6-2-22-2) and Ganguly (9-2-16-2 - figures his captain needs to take note of) concentrated more on bowling wicket to wicket and cramping the batsmen. Nilesh Kulkarni (5-0-11-0) did his bit in the period between the 30th to the 40th over, bottling up one end with his slanted left-arm spin across the right handers - and like the previous day, the fielders backed their bowlers 110 per cent.

Came India's turn to bat, and Saba Karim came out with Ganguly - whether because Sachin wanted to drop down the order for a change, or because he wanted to nurse his bruised finger a bit more, is unclear. In the event, Karim (9 off 30 with one four) batted competently enough to help the more fluent Ganguly push India's score to 34 before one from Azhar Mahmood kept ridiculously low from a length and crashed into his stumps.

Rahul Dravid again batted with fluency, playing two lovely drives in a brief 14 off 25, with two fours, before just failing to beat a direct throw from Azhar Mahmood at mid on, while trying a short single. India 63/2.

Interestingly, earlier, Kabir Khan gave his captain some grief when, after bowling just two deliveries, he pulled up with a groin strain. Which brings up a thought - Pakistan seems to have the knack of producing an endless array of quick bowlers of high quality - but every single one of them seems to have some physical problem or the other, beginning with Waqar and Wasim, through the younger lot. And it's happening to too many bowlers, too often, for it to be mere coincidence - looks more like something their physio needs to be paying some thought to.

Saqlain Mushtaq is a class act - and his bowling to Ganguly (32 off 86 with four fours) was further proof of how very much he has come on of late, as he made the left hander, in fluent touch, grope for the ball time and again before pitching one on perfect off stump line, making it bounce and turn to take the splice of the bat for Inzy to hold well at slip. India 69/3.

But Sachin Tendulkar (25 off 45 with three fours) and Mohammad Azharuddin (18 off 24 with one four) shut the door in the fielding side's face with some calm, unhurried batting, to take India past the total in the 34th over and take a 2-0 lead in the series.

Sir Clyde Walcott, recently ICC president, nominated Saurav Ganguly for man of the match - making a point of it that he not only had played a solid innings with the bat, but also contributed a useful hand with the ball. To get an MOM award as all rounder should do good for the lad's confidence - and, hopefully, should also ensure that the Indian captain uses him much more regularly than in the recent past.

At the very end, a rather sour note needs to be struck. And it relates to an unsavoury incident off the field.

I see it all the time, on cricket chat - fans making an India-Pakistan encounter an occasion for a proxy war. And it has always struck me as ridiculous, to see people slanging each other's countries and making like much more than a game of cricket hangs on an encounter between these two countries - after all, to be very realistic here, if Cyril Radclyffe hadn't got busy with that pencil of his, the two would have been one country still. And if the politicians of both countries had not, down the years, systematically and for their own narrow ends fostered the spirit of enimity, what real grouse do any one of us have against the other?

I thought this tournament would have been free of all that jingoism, being fought out in a neutral country. Thus, it was doubly unfortunate that fans from both countries, massing in numbers and with megaphones to aid their vocal chords, should have spent the first two days yelling abuse at the players of the rival sides. Yesterday, it was Azharuddin who heard it by the earful. Today, it was Inzamam ul Haq. And Inzy, who for all his faults is a very calm, sane, placid person, finally lost it totally, grappled the megaphone out of the fan's hands, and when he was threatened, picked up a cricket bat and jumped into the stands to take the spectators on.

Fortunately, he was restrained. And after a good half hour break while the authorites arrested two of the culprits and brought calm, the game resumed without further problems.

However, it does leave a very, very bad taste in the mouth. What kind of "fan" gets his jollies abusing - and Wasim Akram, who while the authorities were struggling to secure peace, went over and spoke with both Azhar and Inzy, made it clear that it was of the filthiest sort, and directed at the families of the players concerned - cricketers who are playing out there for the pleasure of the spectators? Just how low are we going to sink? Alternately, just when are we going to realise that if this is 'patriotism', then these very actions lower the dignity of the flags the fans take pride in flying?

Is commonsense and basic human decency dead, for heaven's sake?

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