A bite out of the bum

A few minutes after Sachin Tendulkar and Ishant Sharma walked off the field taking advantage of the offer of ‘bad light’, an Indian batsman [what with ads taking up half the screen and a giant graphic occupying most of the remaining real estate, I couldn’t make out who] walked out towards the practice area for a bit of a knock. At the same time, Shakib Al-Hasan, with a wry grin on his face and with his eyes slitted against the glare of the evening sun, walked slowly out of the park.

Technology is good – but where in the manual is it written that a light meter should replace common sense?

An hour or more had already been lost in the morning; surely the umpires could have used their minds, and their eyes, to figure that the light was more than good enough for play to continue rather than bank on that silly little gadget? An ICC that wants Test cricket to survive doesn’t do much for that cause when it encourages its officials to abandon play on such laughable pretexts. Surely umpires need to rely on the naked eye, not the light meter, to tell them when conditions are dangerous for play to continue — the meter can merely confirm the evidence of their own senses, not replace it.

As to the play itself, Bangladesh coach Jaimie Siddons was way off the mark when he said Sehwag’s comments about the toothlessness of the Bangla bowling attack could “bite him on the bum in a few years time” – it only took 12 hours.

The way the game unfolded notwithstanding, I’m personally convinced that Shakib Al-Hasan’s ploy of asking India to bat first was a defensive measure. The home team was not, IMHO, betting the bank on its bowlers as much as it was shielding its batsmen from the task of facing India’s 3-seam attack on a wicket with some juice in it [conditions, in fact, that prompted Sehwag to comment at the toss that he would have chosen to bowl, had he called the coin right].

Motivations don’t show up on scoreboards, though – only results do. And Shakib and his men did themselves proud on a day when the vaunted Indian batting lineup was reduced to rubble by a bowling lineup packed not with stars but with a bunch of disciplined youngsters who stuck to their briefs and throughout, remained unfazed by the reputations of the opposition.

India seemed to have fallen victim to its own press. The “world’s number one Test side” apparently forgot that all it really takes is one good ball or one bad shot – and as it turned out, there was enough quality bowling from Bangladesh and silly cricket from the batsmen to make for a disastrous post-lunch session [a missed catch off Tendulkar at 16 being the difference between disastrous and fatal].

Sehwag and Gambhir looked – as they always do – capable of decimating the opposition. But once the stand-in captain got out, playing a push-drive without his usual authority and giving the ball just enough air for Tamim Iqbal at a shortish cover to hang on to, the wheels came off in totally unexpected fashion.

Gambhir flailed at a ball too wide for the square drive that is his bread and butter shot; Dravid got a high quality delivery from Shahadat – yorker-length, late curve through the air and perfectly pitched; VVS looked patchy; Yuvraj Singh [whose franchise recently relieved him of his captaincy so he could ‘concentrate on his batting’] has, except for the first innings he played after his return to the ranks, sleep-walked through his batting assignments and continued to do so in this innings…

If not for Tendulkar’s ability to lock himself into a world of his making and play his own game irrespective, India’s embarrassment could have been monumental – and due credit for that goes to skipper Shakib.

Prior to the game, Shakib set expectations low when he said his goal was a draw in the first Test, but there was nothing defensive about his captaincy on the day. Except against Sehwag once the opener had the bit between his teeth, the field placings remained consistently aggressive and always calculated to give his bowlers the chance to attack; his rotation of the bowling resources was fairly thoughtful, and he was consistently good in the way he harnessed his pace and spin options to optimum effect.

The highlight for me was his bowling to Sehwag in the post-lunch session, when he repeatedly foxed the Indian captain with subtle variations of flight, line, length and direction, eventually forcing the tentative miscue. Not too many spinners can boast of having tied Sehwag up and forced him to play the get out shot — Shakib, despite being hit for a first ball four, made the dismissal look almost inevitable. VVS, too, is a master of the art of playing spin but on the day, the Bangladesh captain made him look a rank amateur, tormenting the stylist with almost every one of the 17 balls he bowled to him before finally claiming his wicket when Laxman, a modern master of playing inside out, got bat and legs into an awful tangle and yielded a simple stumping chance.

Shakib led the bowling effort with 25 overs of sustained cunning. The Bangla captain comes across as someone clearly aware of his bowling limitations and willing to work within the limitations of his own craft; his marathon spell of 25 unchanged overs proved decisive in pushing India to the wall.

Equally notable was young Shahadat Hussain, who bowled in sharp, hostile bursts. The tall young lad, who served notice that he was one to watch a couple of years ago with a 6-for-27 spell against South Africa, has the height and smooth run up of a genuine pace bowler; his slightly open-chested delivery allows him to get the natural angle away from right handers and to use the rare one coming in as a surprise weapon — vide the lovely late-inswinging yorker to castle Dravid.

The image of the day for me was Shahadat’s celebration after the fall of Dinesh Karthik’s wicket — the youngster raced down the pitch and, when in proximity to the departing batsman, put his finger to his lips in a ‘talk less, play more’ gesture that the team, and its stand-in captain, surely begged for with the dismissive remarks of yesterday.

Hopefully, the message of that gesture — and of the scoreboard, which reads an underwhelming 213/8 in just 63 overs — has gotten across. Had fog and bad light not delayed the start of play and the umpires not abruptly truncated it with a little under half an hour yet to go, India could have suffered the huge embarrassment of being bowled out inside a day’s play by a team ranked 8 places below it.

The dil maange more man

Virender Sehwag interviews are always fun to read — words that would sound vainglorious in the mouth of any other player, up to and including a Sachin Tendulkar, seem perfectly natural when Sehwag utters them. Check this bit out, from an interview by Boria Majumdar in Open:

I don’t want to sound pompous. But I can surely tell you that once I get to 60 or 70 there’s no bowler in the world who can get Virender Sehwag out. Only Virender Sehwag can get Sehwag out at moments when I am batting the way I am currently. My philosophy has always been to make the most of the situation when you are in form. So when I go out there, I identify a bowler and get after him. If he is the best bowler in the opposition, your job becomes much easier.

Outrageous, you think? Consider his follow up:

Q But scoring 280 not out in Test match cricket is phenomenal—is it a plan or did it just happen?

A There are no conscious plans like this in place. I have made it very simple for myself. There are 90 overs to be played in a day. If I am able to hit a boundary in 80 of these I can get to a triple hundred by the end of the day’s play and set a match up for my team. Gavaskar and Srikkanth have told me that I should just hold off for the first 15 minutes or the first four of five overs. Once the initial 15 minutes are over, I can get to many more hundreds. That’s exactly what I am doing.

If more cricket players spoke like this, interviews would be worth reading. Then again, if more players could bat like Sehwag…

Culpable homicide

#Why is it that the ICC gets its truss in a knot when 10 wickets fall in a day’s play, or when a pitch takes turn, but is totally silent when it comes to pitches on which a grand total of 825 runs are scored in one hundred overs?

Rajkot was, not to put too fine a point on it, an unmitigated disgrace — if bowlers had unions, they would be organizing a gherao outside the curator’s home around now. We’ve had — distressingly often — ‘batting beauties’ in the past, but this wicket was something else: no matter what you bowled — pace, spin and every variation in between — the ball did just one thing: it sat up and begged to be hit.

To speak of the batting feats of Sehwag, Tendulkar, Dhoni, Dilshan, Sangakkara and others would be a travesty — the real heroes of the game yesterday were the bowlers who ran in ball after ball, knowing that ‘victory’, on this ground, was the difference in whether they were hit for a four or a six. Maybe the innovation the ODI format really requires is a rule change that permits teams to have 11 batsmen, and for all the bowling to be done by machines calibrated to serve up 300 half volleys per innings.

#It occurs to me, too, that if some smart entrepreneur were to bring bullfighting into this country as a professional sport, that would be the end of cricket. The crowds that infest our cricket stadia increasingly want blood sport, not cricket. They want Indian batsmen to hit sixes off every ball, and Indian bowlers to take a wicket every over; the silence with which they greeted a brave charge by Dilshan [who, on the day, outperformed even Sehwag with ease] and some classical hitting by Sangakkara, was disgraceful to say the least.

#For all the reasons above, parsing the Indian team’s performance on the day is pointless, yet one point occurs that will, I suspect, recur in course of this series.

The first relates to the question of opening bowlers. You have 414 on the board. You know that the wicket is dead. You want to somehow winkle out a wicket or two early, while the ball at least has hardness going for it. So why on earth would you bowl your best strike bowler as first change?

Zaheer bowled first change for the same reason Ishant has been doing it in recent times — because Praveen Kumar just cannot bowl first change; at his pace, he will be slaughtered on any but the most responsive of wickets. Strikes me that is a half-smart way of managing a bowling attack — because you insist on shoe-horning Praveen into the side, you are forced to use your best bowlers as stock, and that means you lose out both coming and going.

It seems fairly axiomatic that the bowler you pick for a particular slot should be the one best suited to that slot; thus, if Praveen Kumar is given the new ball, it needs to be because he is best fitted to use it, not because he cannot be used in any other position. Equally, for example, if Zaheer and Ishant are your best new ball bowlers, you need to give them the new ball — and then, from available options, pick the best possible number three. Fail to do that, and you not only have a less than penetrative opening attack, you end up blunting the edge of the one bowler who can be your spearhead.

In passing, watching Ashish Nehra bowl yesterday — except at the very end — was an exercise in wanton masochism. Granting that the wicket offered him nothing, Nehra made things worse for himself by carefully picking out the exact wrong line [and/or length] to bowl, at every available opportunity. MS for instance set a packed off field for Dilshan, with on occasion a short cover as an attacking option.

The field cried out for bowlers to bowl as wide as legally possible outside off, and force the batsmen to play into the packed field. Nehra promptly pitched middle and leg or, if by accident he strayed onto off stump, pitched the ball at that precise back of length spot that was guaranteed to invite the batsman to go back and thump through the untenanted off side.

If this was the first time Nehra was losing control to this extent, you could put it down to the mind-melt consequent on bowling on concrete — but this was precisely the problem he had during the T20s as well, so maybe it is time someone spent quality time with the guy.

Hits and misses

Those who have been watching cricket closely and reporting on it reckon they can tell when Virender Sehwag has been given a talking to by his captain and/or coach. The tell lies in the way he bats in the opening overs of the knock he plays immediately after that jawing.

The first recorded instance of such a dressing down [a fairly strong word to use for what, in Sehwag’s case, is almost always a mild remonstration] was when John Wright took him to task, some months after Sehwag had been promoted to open. John, wincing in nostalgic bemusement, once recounted that conversation after a beer or three, and as far as I recall, it went like this:

“Viru, for fuck’s sake, this is a Test match, you don’t have to play all your shots in the first over.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not saying don’t play shots,” says Wright, somewhat taken aback by the demure acceptance of his strictures. “Just give the first hour to the bowlers.”

“Why?”

“Because after that you can hit all the shots you want, you can bat all day. Don’t you want to do that, murder the bowling all day?”

“Yes. But why give the first hour to the bowler if he bowls me a half volley first ball?”

John had a penchant for extremely colorful language, so I’ll leave out the rest of a conversation that, even in reminiscent mode, caused the then coach to turn a rare shade of puce. Anyway, you get the idea.

Today he ‘gave the first hour to the bowler’ – and it was excruciating to watch. It always is with batsmen of this type, whose every kinesthetic sense screams hit, while an external voice in the ear says block. After 11 overs he had inched his way to six off 24 balls [not coincidentally, India’s run rate at the time was 2.3 – the lowest it would touch all day].

And then, the transformation. The closest analogy is a school kid who, having gritted his teeth and worked his way through math homework, flings the hated book aside and dashes out into the open air to join his friends at play, secure in the knowledge that he has satisfied the parental diktat.

Almost, in these atypical starts of his, you can imagine that point where he looks up at the dressing room, semaphoring to his mates ‘Okay, have I been responsible enough for you? Can I be me now?’

It is good advice, actually – if he does rein in his atavistic impulses initially, he becomes unstoppable, and makes up lost ground in no time. [Equally good, as again evidenced by his final tally of 133 in 122 balls, is the other advice he constantly gets: Bat in ODIs like you do in Tests, why don’t you?] Only, his mates feel free to offer it to him [and the batsman will stand still for it] only after Sehwag has thrown away a few knocks by trying too hard too early.

A statistical measure of the value of that advice: after 30 overs, India had made 169/0 [and 232/0 after 41 – that is, less than half the day’s quota — when Viru got out]. If it was a one day game, the stands would have been in a state of permanent eruption; in Tests, that rate of scoring is just flat out absurd.

If backing Sehwag to open is one of the very few occasions I’ve had to pride myself on a measure of perspicacity, suggesting in numerous blog posts that Gautam Gambhir would never make it as opener is among my more monumental follies.

I watched him bat early in his career and found a guy unsure of the area around his off stump; a guy, too, who was so aware of his weakness that he seemed to over-reach himself, play too many shots way too early in a bid to deflect the bowler’s attention from his deficiencies.

What I failed to see then is the steel core that has emerged of late; a quiet determination to parlay his skill sets into as many runs as he can possibly manage. More than Sehwag, whose tendency to get bored means he constantly under-achieves, Gambhir has discovered a reservoir of ruthlessness that enables him to grind the opposition down, to maximize every opportunity he gets. And he’s ridden that strength to a dream run of four Test centuries in sequential Tests, and seven three figure knocks in his last nine Tests. Who would have thought…?

But more than the weight of runs scored, individually and collectively, what caught the eye is the complementary nature of their association.

Distressingly often, we’ve seen — and commented on — the phenomenon of one batsman’s struggles, or even his deliberately obdurate defense, taking the wind out of the sails of his partner. Sehwag and Gambhir provide a lesson in the opposite: when his partner was struggling early on in his innings, Gambhir took the onus on himself to score runs at a fair rate so Sehwag could find his feet minus pressure. More on Sehwag’s innings here, and on the theme of batting in pairs here.

Once the two Delhi mates team up to construct a platform [233 runs in 41.2 overs at 5.6 with Gambhir contributing 98 to Sehwag’s 131], the rest is mathematical for this batting lineup  against what by then was a dispirited, disheartened fielding side [the loneliest man on the field must have been Mahela, who should have held Viru before he had scored but for a tyro keeper distracting him].

With Dravid and Tendulkar at bat and looking in goodtouch, and Laxman, Yuvraj and Dhoni to follow on a wicket currently vying for high honors in the batting beauty pageant, the better part of day two should see more of the same. Or so one hopes – India can easily undo all the good work by getting into attritional mode, and letting the Lankan bowlers and fielders get a second wind.

On a day that saw 413 runs being scored, though, the best blow was probably struck some 15 minutes before start of play, when MS Dhoni won the toss and took first strike.

The last Test played at Green Park lasted all of three days, and by the third innings the wicket was already so bad, Harbhajan Singh opened the bowling for India against South Africa.

Commentators are already salivating about this track breaking up by day three and turning at impossible angles, but I suspect that is half hope, half hype; the wicket will likely turn [which takes no expertise to predict, given this Test is being played in India] but I suspect from what I saw on day one that the turn is going to be on slow bordering on very slow.

SL could well collapse – but if it does, it will be the weight of runs that breaks its back, not raging turn; I’d even go on a limb and suggest that Ojha and to an extent Yuvraj could be more influential than Bajji in his current flat-and-quick avatar.

Batting, though, was always going to be at its best on days one and two, and Dhoni did his team a favor by getting the coin toss right [maybe it is a science after all].

The question is, now what? The wicket is already on the slow side and will get slower [the best indication is that Dravid and Tendulkar have already begun playing the ball, especially the spinners, as late as they possibly can]. India is punting big time on Sreesanth as Zahir’s opening partner [the gamble would be that his time in the wilderness has given Sree enough motivation to prove himself]. Bajji hasn’t for the longest time been half the bowler he can be, and it is hard to see a turnaround here. That leaves Ojha, on a test drive before the selectors and team management makes up its collective mind whether he is worth the investment [IMHO he is the one to groom as your spin spearhead].

All of that translates into an under-strength attack against a good batting lineup. The morning of day two might not seem the best point in time to call a game – but what odds are you giving me that this match will get progressively more boring as it goes along, and we end up with a second successive draw?

PS: Appreciate all the kind words and good wishes on my post about moving to Yahoo. Unable to reply individually cos these next few days look to be fairly chaotic, for reasons you can appreciate. Oh, and for those asking, the blog will remain active even after my move.

Viru update

“There is little I can do. At the moment I would leave for London with my wife (Aarti) and son Aryaveer,” Sehwag said.

The injury and after, from Viru Sehwag.