NEWS
MATCH REPORTS
DIARY
OTHER SPORTS
SLIDE SHOW
PEOPLE
ARCHIVES

'Baby Jaya' does it for Lanka

The curator of the Indira Priyadarshini Stadium, at Vishakapattinam, produced a nice, flat batting track -- a typical sub-continental wicket, the kind that is full of runs early on with a tendency to slow down a touch as the game wore on.

Batting first on winning the toss appeared the obvious prescription, but Wasim Akram chose to insert. "It is a good wicket to bat first on, but we thought we needed some practise in chasing as well, so we asked Lanka to bat first," Akram said after the toss. A statement that only underlines the fact that though the three teams are ostensibly playing for the Pepsi Cup, the real goal of this tournament is to tune up for the World Cup in England.

More experimentation followed as both Akram and Shoaib Akthar, with the ball, went flat out, reaching for pace with a slip, often two, in place. You don't do that on the sub-continent, where the wickets tend to take the edge off your pace -- but this would perhaps be the way Pakistan will want to bowl in England, and this outing indicated that their bowling, under English conditions, could prove to be quite lethal.

Akram has long since exhausted all superlatives. What was interesting was the performance of Shoiab Akthar. That he is quick goes without saying. What was noticeable here was that he was improving in other departments -- there was movement in the air with the new ball, there was good thinking (as when he went round the wicket to the left-handers, swung wide and arrowed his superfast deliveries in on a full length around off stump). And his slower ball, mentioned in these columns before, continues to be destructive -- perhaps because the sheer pace of his normal deliveries makes the slower one all the more startling.

One such ball got rid of Avishka Gunawardene who, despite the hype, doesn't seem likely to displace either Jayasuriya or Kaluwitharana from the opener's slot. Here, he played way too early at a superbly disguised slower ball from Akthar, and only managed to hit it straight to mid on, where Akram had the easiest of takes. Apparently there is some signal that lets his team-mates know when Akthar is going to bowl the slower ball -- here, as he ran in, Moin Khan was seen taking a few steps forward, obviously in order to be able to take an edge that, at a reduced pace, wouldn't carry to him standing in his normal position.

Azhar Mahmood's entry to the bowling crease produced another moment of interest. Mahmood, who when he first started out threatened to challenge Jacques Kallis for the title of premier all-rounder, appeared to have lost his batting touch in recent times. The fact that he is a clean, classical bat who can bowl more than fair medium pace makes him an ideal player for England -- provided he could get his touch back.

With the ball, he certainly did just that, here. Rather than try for pace, he bowled within himself, to a very full length, depending on the line just around off, and his seam movement, to create problems -- which, when you think of it, is the perfeect prescription for England.

Every now and again, Mahmood would drop one short, pushing it through quicker and really hitting the deck. And that delivery, which surprises with both the added nip, and the extra bounce, surprised both Atapattu and Aravinda D'Silva. Both batsmen played the length, aiming to pull; both were beaten by the extra pace and bounce, with the ball climbing on to them quicker than expected; both got the ball high on the bat; both fell to easy takes at midwicket.

Arjuna Ranatunga perished to the first ball he faced -- a misguided attempt to run it down to third man, despite the presence of a slip, saw the movement off the seam taking the edge through to the keeper, to leave the Lankan innings in seeming disarray.

Which was when Mahela Jayawardene, with first Hashan Tillekeratne, then the flamboyant Upul Chandana for company, took centre-stage. They call Mahela 'Baby Jaya' -- but the way he bats, 'Baby Guru' would be an apter appelation. There is about Jayawardene's batting the phlegmatic calm, the ability to pace himself, the classical, straight-bat strokes all round the wickets, that made Asanka Gurusinghe such a useful member of Lanka's all-star lineup of 1996.

There is, too, the ability to ride out good spells of bowling by the opposition, the patience to wait for his chance to score -- which, with the other attributes, was on display here. Jayawardene was cautious against Akram, Akthar, and Saqlain, but quick to cash in against the bowling of Arshad Khan and Shahid Afridi. Khan in particular came in for big tap -- 62 off 9. Khan, however, is not likely to make the Pakistan squad to England, so this aberration can be written off -- while, on the other hand, the rediscovered form of Azhar Mahmood (4/36 in 10) will count as a bonus.

Pakistan went into the chase with the disadvantage of having two overs deducted for a painfully slow over rate, that ate into the lunch interval, reducing it to just ten minutes. This phenomenon, of bowling sides taking their own time to go through the overs, is noticeably on the increase in recent times -- given the ICC's speed of action, a more effective deterrent (like awarding runs to the opposition) will probably be put into place somewhere towards the middle of the next millenium.

Akram's heroics light up the chase

Scoreboard