Slow and Steady

My first exposure of cricket was cricket in whites , first generation cricket where West Indies dominated through their pace bowling,  the subcontinent had quality spinners,  England and Australia were regarded as superpowers and wielded considerable clout in the framing of cricketing rules .  The Packer era was just in its initial phase and people in colored clothing were regarded as rebels of the establishment.

I watched cricket as a game where the batsmen were supposed to grind out the runs without hitting out , the bowlers would entice him to go over the top as much as possible with flight and the pacers would bowl bouncers to unsettle the rhythm . The game was leisurely with rest days in the middle of a test match and games would start and end in earthly hours.  Any semblance of a fading of light would be regarded as light bad enough to stop play since the red ball would hardly be visible even more when Marshall would be bowling with it.

In this generation, we saw more grafters , people who could play the waiting game .  The black and white era of cricket had  Hanif Mohammad of Pakistan who scored 300 + runs over two days of the game blunting the West Indian pace attack. I never watched Hanif Mohammad play but probably his son Shoaib came close to the slow plucky customer who could never be dislodged. Mudassar Nazar was also in that league, but I can remember Anshuman Gaekwad in Jalandhar playing almost two days to get a 200 against Pakistan and he was strokeless in many portions just blocking what Pakistani pacers bowled at him.  This I remember was the match where Kapil Dev had got an inswinger to curve in to Mohsin  the first ball of the match. Whatever happened to Jalandhar as a venue ,  I dont know of,  but it produced one of the most benign pitches very close to Faislabad where patience , concentration, application were the foremost of cricketing traits.  That match also had batsmen like Shoaib, Zaheer, Miandad, Mudassar on the Pakistan side and Gaekwad, Gavaskar , Mohinder, Yashpal who had limitless energy to play on accumulator surfaces like these.  

Many people would not have heard of Rizwan uz Zaman , but few people would know the innings which he played on the red clay of Motera .  It was extreme concentration to play out around 200 balls to get 50 odd  where Rameez Raja was sprightly in getting to 21 off 75 balls. I distinctly can recollect the deliveries which he blocked off using his pad and bat and not giving away even an inch to the bowler.  No wafts, no stepping down the wicket against the spinner , no ramp shots ( they didnt need to play it !! ) just plain dead batting each delivery.  This was an innings where you could switch off the TV at times , have a nap and then come back to see the same batsman offering the same shot to the bowler without a hint of discomfort.

Cricket today still has some batsmen who can do a Rizwan or a Gaekwad , Chanders would be the first one to come to mind , who bats in two gears the lowest in test matches and the highest in one dayers ,who has all the shots in the book but plays out a maiden over without the ball crossing the square on either side.  Faf played a similar innings for South Africa against Australia at Adelaide when SA had to play out a whole day and saved the test.  This was an innings from the generation gone by and he didnt give Australia a sniff and played probably session by session or in more minute terms over by over without letting his concentration lapse. 

Probably in the modern era, all these innings would be called slow and dreary and like a steam engine passenger train of the bygone era stop, take stock of the situation and move ahead to the next stop probably the next drinks break or the end of the bowling spell but what comes to the mind is the dedication to preserve one's wicket and not give it away cheaply and make the bowler earn it. 

Tendulkar was coached by placing the Re 1 coin on stumps to inculcate concentration and the value of his own wicket. Many first class players seem to have lost the art of patience to the science of hitting the ' ball out of the park if it is in the arc'.  Cricket has changed , definitely for the worse in terms of patience where many a batsman admonishes himself after playing a rash shot and pressure is felt even after playing a single dot ball.   Patience and concentration are traits long forgotten now in this era where bowling machines are used for who hit the most distance contests. Test matches get over in three days not because the batsmen have played loose shots but have gifted away their wickets to not so great bowling.  Watch videos of  Rizwan Uz Zaman or Faf  and you would know what to learn and unlearn.

Opening Challenge

When my captain indicated that I should open the innings in the match we were supposed to play during a tea time chat,  it immediately started giving me butterflies in the stomach, the ones that people say are when facing the first ball.  Immediately I came up with an alternative which would involve me batting in the middle order , a little higher than my position at 7.   I had opened before, not in the league's longer version which lasts 30 overs but in a sixes tournament where I was  in for a left - right combination at the top so that the bowlers would give some extra freebies called wides which counted for 4 runs.

There was a week in between and a nets session as well and while everyone felt it was an opportunity to get extra batting, I felt it was a punishment. What if the opening bowler would get me out first ball, the ball being new , fielders being up and I was not the type who could open my shoulders, stand beside the line of the ball and hit it over the top of mid off.

After having sized myself up with some shadow practice at home ,vowing to concentrate hard and watch the ball till the end , I dragged myself up to the ground.  It was afternoon and sweltering hot , normal for Singapore and I was breaking some extra sweat because we were batting first.  It was good that we were because there was no pressure of knowing how much the opposition had got and wanting to be ahead of the runrate and so on.  I padded up , had some throw ins, where I promptly was beaten by the first throw.

My partner piled on my misery by asking me to take strike as well ,  thought to myself that I wouldnt be in the dubious league of players who got out without facing a ball. Suddenly some thing told me that the bowler would bowl a jaffa which would make sure that though I had one bite of the cherry which would be the last.

Eventually , I persuaded my partner to take strike , used the experience tool since he had been opening before. Chatting to the umpire normally helps and I did that as well, tried to do a Sehwag by singing a Hindi song and that was it. After 2 balls in the first over and some running to do , finally I had the strike. After surveying the field, they did change some fielders for the lefhandedness in me, but nothing much that I could spot a gap and play it there.  I took guard , looked at the bowler running in from behind the umpire and the ball was a full toss on leg stump. It flew off my bat to deep fine and my feeling was that I had scored a boundary off the first ball I faced. It was just one run since the fielder had cut it off at the boundary my obvious disappointment.

Though a cliche and oft repeated that the first ball is the most difficult one to face, though I never thought so in the numerous instances of watching cricket on TV, it is in any form of cricket.  It definitely takes a lot to hit the first ball you face over the top.  Having survived the first test , still slotted to open in the next match , the butterflies are making a comeback, till the first ball that is...

Indian Roots

The IPL season-5 has come and gone.  Long drawn neverthless , but this was the first IPL where the team strengths were relatively equal , last ball results and at least 6 teams in with a chance of making the play offs.  Must be said though that the champion teams didnt exactly acquit themselves very well.  CSK in the league stages, DD and MI in the play offs .  The team which eventually triumphed , KKR was by far the most consistent of all, played to their strengths,didnt lose many home games, the team was also picked for the low and slow wicket of Kolkata with Shakib and Narine playing all the games at home.  Led ably by Gautam Gambhir who didnt overdo himself like Sehwag and scored runs to pull the team through many a time.

I watched many of the games ,not many of them fully especially the 8 pm one being more tougher to watch in the Singapore time zone with the slow over rates and Munaf Patel fair plays!!.   What struck me was in this season , more Indian cricketers seem to have got the hang of the game and the pressure situations which come with it.  Though some overseas cricketers did stand out, teams that had more Indians performing in crunch situations came up triumphs on the given day.  In a long drawn league, the stars will fail at some point and consistency has to be made do with some good Indian performances and Mandeep Singh, Awana,  Bisla , Anirudha made a name for themselves.  Matches were won or lost based on good or bad performances by the Indian fringe players.  When Mishra started tossing up his leg spinners and Piyush landed his googly , Deccan/Punjab  looked to be playing better. Badrinath and Murali Vijay made it count in the end by helping Chennai get monstrous totals and Bisla was required when KKR had to overhaul the target in the final , though helped in no small measure by Kallis. Pune was struggling because Uttappa was going nowhere and won the match where Ganguly came to the fore with the ball.

At last the Indian Premier league seems to have rediscovered its Indian roots and the crowds also came to the venues and rooted for the home players and their Indian heroes.  True that IPL performances dont count for Indian team selection but the selectors and the media have put a Paul Valthaty on the selection radar and wont take much time to discover the Bislas and the Mandeeps.

Finally it was apt that Manoj Tiwary scored the winning runs , many Indians who saw the Australian dominance  in Chennai yellow , were happy that their reign had ended and that stood out for me as the defining moment of the league which is of the Indians , for the Indians and by the Indians.

Let us keep it this way...

By the Book

In the current times , when the Switch hit and the Dilscoop have become conspicous  even in the tests, bowlers have a lot to worry in this batsman's game.  The one day rules have been tweaked but the outside leg stump rule of lbw remains, but I guess this will change only if DRS can be used for every game.   When Sidvee tweeted about one incident from the archives where Gavaskar had batted left handed against Raghuram Bhat in a domestic game, took me back to the times when we read of these incidents in "The Hindu" ,nicely boxed and in bold to get noticed. 

Gavaskar was a legend,a person who wore down attacks with his perfect defensive technique  , one of the better ones being his last test innings played in Bangalore and it was absolutely out of the conventional textbook.  He was nearing the end of his career and had achieved the highest run getter tag already and he practised his own theory that you give the first hour to the bowlers , you can have yours after that and score big runs. Pakistan from the time they were put in were in trouble and both the captains had not expected the wicket to turn so much.  India didnt do better either and the lead gained in the first innings was hardly enough to put pressure on Pakistan .

The die hard Indian supporter in me definitely wanted an Indian win.  Thankfully I had a friend of mine who had a TV near the school and since our school gates were monitored , me and 2 of my friends scaled walls , gave some crucial classes a miss to catch a glimpse of this wonderful knock. It was defensive alright but still the more he played and didnt get out, Indian hopes rose and the victory was getting closer.  The other Indian batsmen were simply not there or not up to the challenge.  The wicket was turning square ,portly Iqbal Qasim and the lean mean Tauseef Ahmed were getting regular breakthroughs.  Tauseef was flatter through the air as always and looked more like a one day bowler but you needed one of this kind to bottle up one end so that Qasim could get  going at the other end.  Akram bowled just 2 overs in the first innings and Imran didnt bowl at all in the second was ample proof that pacers were making up the numbers.  When he finally got out , 4 short of the century, the 8th wicket, caught off the elbow guard , wrongly of course , we had witnessed one of the greatest batting displays and Imran's dream of winning a series in India had come true.  Negotiating spinners on turning tracks was something which came naturally to SMG and he was a master at the soft hands technique and I am sure even this day with all the modern equipment, the ball would have not carried to any of the close in fielders.

The scoreboard as usual doesnt reveal much but what has been preserved in the record books is here
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/63456.html ,  what has been etched in my memory is far greater from the numbers shown.

Fatherly Passion

Recently during one of our pre-lunch conversations , a colleague of mine was mentioning the experience of watching a cricket match with his father.    It took me back many years and a trip down memory lane as one might call it and  recollecting these moments is as interesting as the journey itself.  Appa was a strict disciplinarian to my other siblings and not so much to me, last borns are the most pampered ones I guess. This made me take some extra liberties during my early days and doing things which I wanted to do and others could not, one being watching as much cricket as possible.  During my earlier years, both in Cochin and Hyderabad,  he used to make me clutch the cricket bat explaining the position and the style of the grip and give me throwdowns with a tennis ball in our garage or on the road.  Like the modern coach today , there were no visible signs of tiredness on display and the straight bat  and the V were emphasised and cross bat shots were despised equally.

Having picked up the game at an early age,  it was natural that anything connected to the game was loved . I was an avid listener to radio commentary as well especially during the 1983 World Cup on BBC.   'The Hindu' was a major source of information and R Mohan's cricket articles were talking points between me and my dad in the early 80s since we didnt have the luxury of a television.  The discussion stretched some times to the dinner table ,bed time and always it was my digested statistics pitted against his assimiliated analysis. He listened to me intently on the statistical part only to have differing views on the quality of bowling and batting.   In my memory archives, what lingers on are some highlights particularly  the Gavaskar century against the West Indies watched on the T481 Dyanora Black and White TV where I rushed back home only to find that Gavaskar had just got out to the spin of Larry Gomes.  I got a gist of the match from him over the dinner table and you could see the passion for the game in the unbiased narration.  India were winning close to nothing as a team and individual brilliance of a few individuals like Gavaskar and Mohinder Amarnath stood out.  He was a fan of Mohinder for his unflinching attitide against hostile pace bowling and how he played the hook shot.  In fact that was Gavaskar's most aggressive innings in a test match and hook shot was played often in this.

During the 1985 World Series, though I was appearing for my board exams , I was allowed to watch many a match in the day time after bunking classes.  If it was a day match in Australia, up by  4 am waking my dad for the start of the match  was an unbelieveable experience , especially in winters when you yearned for the first drop of coffee which would be prepared with the left over milk of the previous day but not before 6 am when my mother would wake up. The second dose as it is referred to , would come much later with fresh milk after half past 7 when one innings would come to a close.  My friends would know that I would not be attending school if there was a cricket match especially a one dayer to watch or the last day of an interesting test match.  When we watched together , I would keep the commentary on a higher volume since I loved the energy of Bill Lawry on Channel 9 , but he was one of those mute variety and  he felt you didnt need commentators for a game if you observed it keenly. 

The only hitch to uninterrupted cricket watching was power supply,  in summers we had power cuts for almost 4 hours in Hyderabad and during rainy seasons ,we had falling trees dislocating power lines.  Our normal schedules were not a problem since the temple and social visits of the evenings were conveniently rescheduled to suit match timings.   The last set of  matches I watched with him was  the World Cup of 1999 and I distinctly remember the India - England match which carried on from the previous night to the next day evening.  He was never a fan of  instant cricket and today's T20 matches would have been a definite NO

From the tar roads and self prepared pitches at Hyderabad , the cement tennis courts of BITS Pilani and even some gully cricket in New Delhi, Baroda to some school grounds in Madurai and Ambas and now to the green outfields of Singapore , cricket has been in my genes .These days when I turn up at the cricket ground wearing whites for some serious cricket in the league, I can't help feel that he would have sat through each one of those matches enjoying the occassion , admonishing my cross batted hoick  and emphasising the need to stay till the very end.  When Tendulkar looks up to the skies after every landmark crossed, looking for his father's sure blessings, I can't help think that the person who shaped my love for the game will also be doing likewise when I do something eventful on a cricket field however miniscule it may be.

Under and Down

The test series is almost coming to an end.  The viewership has evaporated on the TV channels. With one test to play and the captain Dhoni out on the ICC ban , the average Indian is cursing the team in toto.  In England , it was a spate of injuries which could be converted as convenient excuses but in this tour , it has been proved that the Indian batting has its frailities.  

The bowlers have not been great either but India have always won when the runs are on the board and it would always be greater than 400 for a test win surely.  The Indian batting has never looked lasting beyond 60 odd overs , blame it on the T20 which all the players play or the one day champions which they are. So scoring 300 + has been a distant dream and the only time they were past 300 was in an inconsequential 4th innings where they were chasing a huge mountain of runs.  Starts have never been good , middle order has not fired and the old and experienced are looking slow and tardy even while batting.   Youngsters are still warming the benches and the only change India has made, Vinay Kumar has not worked at all.

As Gambhir said , the whole Indian team should take responsibility and it would be unfair to blame any one of them.  But the retirement decisions have to be taken and the sooner the better.  It would definitely have been good had Tendulkar got the 100th ton against West Indies at Mumbai and released the pressure on himself.   India had come a long way from the dependence on SRT and rewinding the wheel to precisely where it started would be foolish.

Where do we go from here,  to the one day internationals and the T20 , the whole series would be forgotten.  Further down , Indian team is scheduled to play a year of test cricket in India and where the Yuvraj's and Rainas will score tons of runs.  Time has come to plan ahead, have a replacement for Dravid ready in Pujara, form the nucleus of 20 year olds who can make the Indian test team what it was and take it to the top in 3 years flat.  Time for the BCCI to make sporting pitches and some fast ones and not the Ranji Trophy final one at Chennai where Saxenas would score and it would count for zilch at the end.  It is indeed surprising that the Chennai pitch which had considerable bounce and carry has been reduced to this state.

The avid cricket fan in me would not go away but it would be better to follow a winning team rather than a team which doesnt last a day in batting and loses matches in three days.