Cricket India

Finally the suspense is over. The Indian test squad to play the first match has been announced. Nobody had any problems with the retention of the one-day team for the last two matches against South Africa. And nobody really believed that there could be any major change in the composition of that team. That was the consensus regarding the test team also. All decisions except one were on expected lines too. Laxman and  Kumble came back into the team, Gambhir, Yuvraj and Kaif retained their places. And Agarkar, Dhoni and R.P.Singh walked into the team on  the strength of their one-day performances. Karthik gets the nod as it is a domestic series. Of course the big four- Dravid, Tendulkar,Sehwag and Pathan selected themselves.

Yes, Ganguly's selection has raised quite a few eyebrows. Ganguly, for the last season or so, was searching so badly for some kind of form that he himself considered his century against Zimbabwe,  a major landmark. Lack of batting form and atrocious fielding pulled him out of  one-day contention. A few days back, Kiran More justified his non-inclusion by pointing to his poor captaincy. Actually Ganguly was holding on to his place in the team only because he was the captain. The same More says now that one should look at his record. No one questions Ganguly's past performances. But that unfortunately is history. A century against Zimbabwe and a couple of good scores in Duleep Trophy, won't be enough for one to get back into this team which has any number of promising youngsters on the bench,.The description of Ganguly as a batting all rounder at the highest level is too naive a position to take. There was a time I too thought he should be given a long rope and he was given just that. But he couldn't make use of it. He kept on sliding further downwards. When the selectors dropped him from the one-day team against Sri Lanka and anointed Dravid as the skipper, everybody thought Ganguly might need quite some time to convince the selectors of his eligibility for a comeback. If at all he deserved a berth in an Indian team, that should have been the in the one-day team. With a change in his batting position and a few tidy, useful overs with the ball, he would have been of some use to the team, his miserable fielding notwithstanding.

Now look at the possible batting order if he is playing. Sehwag, Gambhir, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman will be followed by Ganguly. At the expense of either Yuvraj or Kaif. if India chooses to play five bowlers. Yuvraj and Kaif are the more senior players  among the youngsters. The decision to keep these two good batsmen who are wonderful fielders also, out of the team for Ganguly, I feel, should not claim any cricketing wisdom.

 

The new series has finally got the flavor it was supposed to have. The first match at Hyderabad seemed to tell us that India would find it difficult to scrape through even in one match. And I had a feeling that this resurgent India did not deserve such a negative image.  South Africa is a  strong team no doubt but even a very powerful team would find it quite tough to overcome Indian conditions. This applies equally to both the batsmen and bowlers.

Of course, they are here after wiping the floor with the hapless West Indians and  Newzealand which is a team to reckoned with in the shorter version of the game. But India is a different kettle of fish altogether.

In the first match at Hyderabad, so much was achieved by the toss. The pitch gave quite some help to the new ball and Pollock and Ntini  destroyed the Indian top order in the first hour of play itself. Once the pitch lost its spite, the Springboks lost their sting too and Yuvraj with the help from the lower order took India to a position  once thought unattainable. Yuvraj showed us a new facet of his personality. He had a mission. To remain in the Indian team and for that a good score was essential. That and India's pathetic condition helped Yuvraj to dig deeper into his reserves and discover   hitherto unexplored areas of patience and determination. All knew he had the strokes but the will to tune his innings to the needs was missing. He had helped India to recover from several crises but never before on a pitch like this. His not-so-great technique was compensated by his grit. This kind of recovery is not normally associated with India and is usually seen when India bowls.

It obviously was not a match-winning score by any means as the pitch had eased up dramatically. Even then Indian bowlers stuck to their task and they almost  made a match of it.

At Bangalore the toss played the role of a villain for S.A. Dravid got the benefit of having five frontline bowlers and later the services of Gambhir. The pitch there was a slow turner and the Indian spinners- both the regular and irregular variety- made the most of it but their job was made easier by Pathan's effective spell. The three wickets he got may not reflect his skills as some of them were caused by the poor shot selection by the batsmen. Anyway three down for less than thirty was an excellent platform for the Indian spin to demolish the remaining  batting.

When India batted , the pitch still had some turn but India found the going comfortable as  the ball had lost some of the purchase because of the dew and as they did not have the bowlers to trouble the Indian batsmen brought up on a diet of spin. But the opening overs by Pollock had forced Tendulkar and Gambhir to be very cautious. But once his spell was over, Indians settled down to careful batting and at no stage looked in trouble.

Virender Sehvag, it seems is more useful to the team at two drop. He doesn't have to negotiate the new ball and even after the PowerPlay has the strokes to score freely. This experiment has to go on to know how comfortable he is in that position.

There is a touch of gamble in the Super Sub arrangement now. Without knowing who bats first, there is not much logic in choosing a player as the sub. In the first match India had problems with the Super Sub. Gambhir was forced to bat and Kartik had to sit it out when India bowled. This time Gambhir came in to bat after all the five Indian bowlers had the chance to bowl. It is at this stage something like a lottery.

All the three remaining matches will be played under lights. The major factor it is argued will be the toss as the dew will play a significant role in these day-night matches. I don't know. I have my own doubts about that. The theory is that the team winning the toss will bowl first as the team bowling second will be handicapped by the dew. But on normal one-day pitches the team batting first can put up a substantial score and put pressure on the chase. The dew may pose some problems to the spinners but as the ball may skid a little the batsmen may find the faster bowlers a yard or two quicker. The ball may keep a bit low also. I don't think there is such a big advantage in fielding first. 

 

 

 

 

The kind of transformation that has happened to India is, by any stretch of imagination, unbelievable. Why it exploded right in your face is because you were not at all ready for such a dramatic change in India's fortunes. The tour to Sri Lanka was rightly an extension of India's recent one-day form and not many were surprised when Dravid's men again demonstrated their traditional weakness against Sri Lanka. Moreover the routine defeat in yet another final also made everyone feel that nothing could change India.
But everything changed for India! Its batting, bowling and fielding responded to the changed cricket environment and to crown the whole thing, Dravid's leadership also revealed hitherto concealed nuggets of genius. What is responsible for this change? Chappell's excellent conversion of his soaked-in-cricket-wisdom vision or Dravid's brilliant captaincy or the wonderful way in which the Indian players responded to Chappell-Dravid duo's demands? Or is it the comfort one feels on home pitches? It could be a mixture of all these.
But it has to be labeled Chappell's series. He planned everything in detail. For that he researched Indian cricket in great detail. And formulated a course of action which was a heady mix of Indian individual magic and the rigors of discipline. He allowed the Indian batsmen freedom to do what they did with comfort. but that had to mixed with Chappell's guidelines. The lofted shots when vast expanses of country invitingly remained vacant, seemed to be Chappell's way of countering India's spineless approach to bating. When the non-Power Play overs saw the fielders hugging the fence, waiting for the very same shots, Chappell asked the boys to scamper for those sharp singles and twos. And the unsettled facade of Indian batting order made things more difficult for Sri Lanka but for that the Indian boys had to be as creative as their leadership was fearless. Chappell must have known very well that these moves might have boomeranged on him. He would have been forced to revert to traditional methods or might have faced the music. None would have been there to lend a supporting shoulder to the man who came to cleanse the stable. Chappell came here obviously not to get into anyone's good books. Instead, he had a vision about the future of Indian cricket. And its execution in his own way, required some stunners and fortunately for him and for Indian cricket it fired on all four cylinders!
Sure, India did it against the second ranked team in world ODI rankings. But more tests are awaiting Chappell. One eventually has to lose the advantage of surprise. and one can't be a continuous source of creativity. But Chappell's quiver may be full of cricketing arrows, custom-made to suit the martial methods of the opposition, be it South Africa, Pakistan or England!

The return of Pathan and Harbhajan has made it very clear that the Indian bowling supremacy at least over Sri Lanka, is real. During the entire series, the visitors could perform with a reasonable degree of confidence only in the fifth match when these two were absent along with the batting maestro. Even though the bowling hero here was R.P. Singh, it was the pressure applied by the team which consistently made the Sri Lankan batting go apart.
India has settled into a nice rhythm and looks capable of better deeds. But the main test will be when these boys will play on those pitches where the ball seams, swings and bounces more. While the bowlers would lick their lips in anticipation, the batsmen may need a lot of help in making the necessary adjustments in their game. History shows that such efforts have not worked wonders with the previous tourists.
But it is almost certain that we are in for exciting times in Indian cricket. Will it hold course and sail to the Carribeans with the same momentum?