Wah! Bharat!!

Call it an insane flight of fancy, but the announcement of the Indian team for the World Cup, reminded me quite curiously of Mahabharata. No, not the Veda Vyas authored mythological epic - the one full of incredibly graphic descriptions of wild sex, hot extra-marital affairs, suppressed carnal desires, numerous attempted rapes and general all-round fun, like all good religious books are supposed to be. But the immortal Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron version of it, which had Satish Shah’s corpse playing Draupadi (don’t ask!).

Why? Well, there hangs a tale …

Just humour me for the moment, will you and join the ride …

Just build up a picture of Yudhishtir in your head. You must have met the sample in your school days, the amazingly proper pain-in-the-ass Class Monitor who does everything by the rule-book, including the latrine breaks. And the one who agrees with whatever the teacher says, without question. His only vice is a sense of inflated self-worth, which leads him to believe that he deserves more respect from the world than he is currently getting. And he gambles everything he has on that belief, including sending his elder brother Karan to the enemy camp. Too bad he has a battle to fight, he can’t think beyond the last time he played second-fiddle and hated it. Someone please dial 123 for a shrink

Karan, on the other hand is a seriously screwed up specimen. His world came crashing down around him, with the discovery that, the guy who brought him up, is not his father at all, but a small-time middleman out to earn a fast buck. The one who did not bat an eyelid while disowning him. Now the poor soul does not know who is father is and is pissed at brother Yudi for stealing the one thing which was dear to him. It’s hard for him to learn new tricks (something as incomprehensible as running between wickets or stopping singles within the ring) at this age, but then, he can’t survive on a year’s supply of Sona Chandi Chaywanprash, can he?

Karan’s one time partner, Arjun is also suffering. It’s either his back, or his elbow or (mostly) his middle stump. They just don’t seem to hold up and breaks down at the slightest hint of pressure. Add to this, the weight of expectations which he carries being the best in his team and you have a disaster waiting to happen. He’s tired of mouthing excuses about how he cannot be a curly haired teenager all his life, but no one listens. The famous hand-eye coordination which used to be his hallmark is now barely enough to lift a can of Pepsi to his mouth. The eyes which could not see beyond the eyeball of the target is now fixated on retirement benefits. Maybe he will show us just who he is one more time and maybe, just maybe Pepsi cans would fly.

The case of the heavyweight in the family is also peculiar. Bhima can carry the entire load of his aged brethren on his ample shoulders, but his strength strangely deserts him outside the boundaries of Indraprashtha. No wonder, outside his home turf he is perceived as little more than a long-haired caricature, trying desperately to be cool with generous helpings of Brylcream. The huge hits over the boundary as well as the human turbine routine with the yorkers are little more than an occasional curiosity, spread thin as they are in between funny attempts at swinging the heavy mace without contact with anything substantial.

Arjun’s son Abhimanyu has learned all about the swinging ball (not swinging by the balls, mind you) in his mother’s womb. He also boldly goes where no one has gone before, the dreaded #3 spot where his senior and more experienced family members have screwed up spectacularly. You can blame Indian Oil Extra Premium for his delusion, but the kid never knows when he is out of gas. One would have thought a break from the grueling schedule of getting hit out of the park would have led to some self-introspection, but here he is back again, dying for another thump. This time his case may be terminal.

With all this dysfunctional family shit happening around you, you can’t fault Chief Selector Bhishma for turning celibate. He keeps wondering whether all this is worth it. Doesn’t help one bit that people are blaming the sudden and inexplicable downturn in his favourite pupil’s fortune on Mayur Suiting, which paid for his school building. At least he managed to show Nakul / Sahadev, the door. Effigies can keep burning in Northern parts of the country, but you can’t always depend on energetic fielding to tide over non-existent technique outside off-stump.

Shakuni Mama, in the meanwhile is happy rolling dice and mouthing platitudes about "youth", "long-term planning" and "constant experimentation". Anybody else wonder, whether he is actually working for the other side?

Dhritharashtra, being blind, can only hear the running commentary while his empire crumbles all around him like his sugar factories. The only consolation is this new deal with SET Max which comes packaged with Draupadi in noodle straps.

No wonder he is looking at us for charity ... lets switch on our TV sets and start praying !!!

The gulf between bat and pad

This is what I posted on desicritics.

Specially relevant after yet another spectacular and inexplicable collapse of reputedly the best batting line up in the world at Capetown. As Sambit Bal says in Cricinfo, "India might still go on to the win the match. But if they don't we know where they let it slip."

With every sports writer on the net fixated on the concept of Best of 2006, time to do something different. Time to analyse what happened to the batting powerhouse that was India. How the team which was effortlessly piling up 500+ totals in 2003 and 2004 plumbed to four spectacular last day collapses against Pakistan (twice, Bangalore / Karachi), England (Mumbai) and SA (Durban). And when was the last time you saw India save a test match by batting out the last day? (Actually, you might not have to go too far, Wasim Jaffer and Dravid spared the blushes in Nagpur against the English in March 2006, but what came in Mumbai after that was sheer madness).

So lets try to figure out what's happening. No Ganguly, Kaif, Yuvraj in the analysis as they have been at best fringe players in this period.

Sehwag : Last 20 matches, 35 innings, 1576 runs @ 47.75 with 4 centuries and 4 fifties. Not bad on first sight. But take out the four big innings (173, 201, 254 and 180) and the average falls to 26.48 over 31 innings. Sehwag has always been a hit or miss player, but his misses seem to be overwhelming the hits at the moment. Has he been caught out by the International bowlers? His pattern in his recent dismissals, mostly caught behind / caught slips / caught third man would suggest so. Can he change his game to counter this? Maybe going down the order to #6 would give him some time to ponder on this.

Shot to think over : Airy drive outside off-stump against the moving ball. N'tini has your number, mate.

Jaffer : Last 15 matches, 27 innings, 940 runs @ 33.57 with 2 centuries and 6 fifties. Strangely enough, Jaffer has been more consistent than Sehwag in this period (in spite of Sehwag's higher average) and has surely shown he belongs at this level. Strange shot selections after getting set have always been Jaffer's bane in the domestic circuit and he seems to be falling prey to the same disease here. While he has not been bad in his second chance at this level, the sheer expectation from a #2 in the batting order is much more. And no more of THAT pull shot, please.

Shot to think over : Square cut on deliveries too close to the body resulting in catching practice for second / third slip.

Dravid : 20 matches, 34 innings, 1735 runs @ 57.83 with 5 centuries and 11 fifties. Clearly the standout performer over this period, but hasn't he been doing that for some time, now? The over-dependence of the batting line-up on Dravid is evident in the hue and cry raised over his small scores in the SA series. The sheer burden of the captaincy is not adding to his joy and is sometimes reflected in his batting. Is it just my imagination or has his stance become more open leading to uncustomary flirting outside the off-stump? I have a feeling too much one-dayers are to blame for this. Is Rahul listening?

Shot to think over : The one-day special, steer to third man. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Tendulkar : 15 matches, 23 innings, 747 runs @ 33.95 with 1 century and 4 fifties. The form slump which has become the national obsession. Is it the tennis elbow, is it the sprained back, is it the ageing body or is it the mental cobwebs? Whatever it is, this Sachin is someone we do not know at all. The one whose feet are moving in slo-mo, whose first attacking shot unerringly picks out the fielder positioned just for this purpose, the one who gets bowled comprehensively in 1 innings out of 3. A straight drive still sparkles sometimes, but the wunderkid terrorising the bowlers all over the world seems to be history. A more mature Sachin playing within his limitations? The thought is hard to bear, but can you really think of any other Indian batsman replacing him even in this form?

Shot to think over : The ever-so-slightly cross-batted flick to mid-wicket on balls on the middle-stump. The shattered stumps are a sight Sachin fans could do without.

Laxman : 15 matches, 25 innings, 903 runs @ 43.00 with 3 centuries and 5 fifties. The perennial under-achiever managed to keep up the tradition in the period under review by alternating between sublime and pedestrian. With Laxman you are far more interested in "what could have been" rather than "what happened" and its really up to him to physically lift himself to the greatness which he has been promising for so long. After all, does he want history to remember him for only that one innings?

Shot to think over : The lazy waft outside off early in his innings. Now why do you want to play that shot, when you can send the next delivery crashing to the mid-wicket fence?

Trademark shots

It’s happened countless times...

After getting relatively set, Sachin plays one of the straight drives which has the purists drooling. And the commentator (Mr. Manjrekar / Mr. Shastri being the usual suspects) observes, "Now that he has found his timing, he looks set for a big one."

No, this is not about our national obsession of whether Mr. Tendulkar is past his sell-by date. It’s not about what Mr. Manjrekar's views on the subject are. And it’s definitely not about Mr. Shastri's receding hairline and his increasingly shriller views on the fitness levels of the Indian team (coming from him, that’s a bit thick!).

This is about the shots which makes the world’s top batsmen what they are. The shots which are deeply etched in the collective consciousness of the viewing public. The shots which some have made their very own.

Tendulkar – A natural tendency is to go for the straight drive or the (rarely seen anymore) lift over mid-wicket. But my personal choice is the punch off the backfoot through backward point. The bend of the front leg while going back and across and the blade descending in a blur, ahhh … this would always be Sachin for me.

Ponting – Nothing else but the audacious front-foot pull off fast bowlers. The bat starting at right waist and ending up over left shoulder to deliberately lift the ball over the boundary. Just to show all the Ntinis and Harmisons of the world, who’s the boss. And some catching practices in the crowd for added fun.

Dravid – A toss up between the textbook cover-drive and the on-drive played with magical wrists. My vote for the on-drive, simply because of its difficulty levels against faster bowlers and the way Rahul finds the gap every time with this one early in his innings. A special mention to the lofted extra cover drive, something seen infrequently, but oh what a shot !

Sehwag – A popular choice would be sword thrust flaying the ball in the general direction of point / cover point. But for sheer amusement value it’s the inside-out cover drive which he plays off spinners while going towards the leg side and exposing all his stumps. A shot to give Geoff Boycott the shudders and Shane Warne a particularly bad migraine.

Lara – Undoubtedly the scissor like cut played off spinners. I have no choice but to quote Osman Saiuddin here who sums it up most evocatively – “That back lift, golf-like, paused and poised briefly at the top of its arch, is almost as compelling as the shots that it eventually manufactures. The real wonder is how he coordinates so many movements - the shuffling, the back lift, the bendy wrists twitching at the death to find gaps, lifting the knee - into just one picturesque image.”

Ganguly – The one which shortened the domestic careers of many a left arm spinner and which I am sure still gives Ashley Giles some sleepless nights. Its all there - the quick judgement of the length, the lightning step-out and the dramatic finale laced with delicious timing sending the ball to the mid-wicket stands. (And Tony Greig repeating those stupid words for the umpteenth time, “They are dancing in the aisles, out there.”) It’s a pity we may never see its like again in an International match.

Gilchrist – The thump over mid-wicket to perfectly good wicket taking balls on the off-stump. The ball ricocheting off the boundary boards before the bemused bowler completes his follow-through. And then a wide good-natured grin to show the bowler “Well, that’s life, mate! Nothing personal in it, ya know.” In case you could only record what the bowler wants to say at that moment, it would have put the Amar Singh tapes to shame !!

Left handed complement?

Extract from Peter Roebuck's article analysing Australia's defeat.

"Australia's bad start with the bat proved costly. None of the senior batsmen could blame the pitch. Ponting's footwork let him down and Damien Martyn drove indiscreetly. Watson did not last long enough for any impressions to be formed. Settling upon the right opening pair is the team's most pressing need. Considering the quality of the numerous candidates, it seems odd the job has gone to an unproven part-timer. However, it is not right to chop and change after one setback. At least Watson is a right-hander, a breed rapidly becoming extinct."

Indeed? Prompted me to check the teams playing for Champion's Trophy for batsmen and all-rounders ...

Australia - 4 LH (Gilchrist, Hussey, Hogg, Katich), 5 RH (Watson, Ponting, Martyn, Clarke, Symonds)
England - 2 LH (Strauss, Yardy), 7 RH (Flintoff, Bell, Pieterson, Collingwood, Dalrymple, Read, Clarke)
India - 4 LH (Mongia, Pathan, Raina, Yuvraj), 6 RH (Dravid, Dhoni, Kaif, Powar, Sehwag, Tendulkar)
New Zealand - 2 LH (Fleming, Oram), 7 RH (Astle, Fulton, Gillespie, McCullum, Marshall, Styris, Vincent)
Pakistan - 3 LH (Farhat, Iqbal, Abdur Rehman), 7 RH (Younis, Yousuf, Hafeez, Afridi, Akmal, Malik, Razzaq)
South Africa - 1 LH (Smith), 9 RH (Gibbs, Dippenaar, Kallis, Boucher, de Villiers, Hall, Kemp, Pollock, Bosman)
Sri Lanka - 3 LH (Tharanga, Jayasuriya, Sangakkara), 5 RH (Jayawardane, Atapattu, Dilshan, Maharoof, Kapugedera)
West Indies - 4 LH (Lara, Chanderpaul, Gayle, Hinds), 6 RH (Sarwan, Baugh, Bravo, Morton, Samuels, Smith)

Total - 23 LH / 52 RH

Huh? What is Roebuck talking about? Maybe, he was talking about left handed medium pacers. There's been a surfeit of them lately.

22 yards in 21 inches - Part I

Does everyone remember the first cricket match they saw on TV? I certainly do. It was a winter morning in New Delhi, when Ravi Shastri, a relatively obscure left arm spinner plucked out of the Mumbai Ranji team (some say, not without justification, only because SMG wanted him) came out as a nightwatchman against Willis and Botham and scored 93. The year was 1981 and and I was hooked.

In those pre-historic days without cable tv, there was just good ol' DD to introduce you to the collective charms of Dr. Narottam Puri, Kishor Bhimani, Ravi Chaturvedi, Akash Lal and Anupam Gulati. The language was archaic, the coverage sometimes bordering on ludicrous, with the camera focussing on the wicketkeeper rather than the fielder chasing the ball and the breaks were not commercial but the rather more conventional off-break and leg-break. But just maybe, the cricket was much closer to the heart.

So rather than defending those romantic notions about black and white televisions, white flannel and batting without helmets (and generally sounding old and utterly boring) what I will try and do is to piece together some arresting visuals I remember from those days. It is not in any order of significance, its just what I remember.

1981-82
A struggle between two ultra-defensive captains as to who will bore the crowds more. India winning the Mumbai test quite unexpectedly. SMG scoring a rather painstaking 172 in the second test at Bangalore. Arrival of the original dashing opener, KM Srikkanth. Ravi Shastri playing that gutsy innings in only his second series. GR Viswanath (222) and Yashpal Sharma (140) sharing a quite sublime partnership in Chennai in what turned out to be GRV's swansong.

In those golden (hmph !!!) days of test cricket a draw was the most likely outcome for any match. I remember people getting mildly surprised when a test actually produced a result. Let alone a result, it was difficult to complete an innings each in lots of cases. And obviously the preparation of those flat bat beauties had a lot to do with our great captain being mortally afraid of losing a series. One really felt for Kapil, bowling his heart out in those conditions. And those lovely late outswingers ... how come no other Indian bowler has come even close to reproducing those gems. And how come people like Mukul Kesavan are bemoaning the current sad state of test cricket. Has he forgotten this series?

1983
What else but the world cup ! The crowd invasion after every match ... Kirti Azad turning out to be the killer bowler against England .... Sandeep Patil and Kapil holding their nerves in that tense semi-final ... Srikkanth cutting, driving and pulling Holding, Roberts, Marshall and Garner with such mighty disdain in the final and still scoring only 38 in what will ironically be the highest score of the match.

Balwinder Sandhu bowling the delivery of his life ... the banana swinger which Greenidge shouldered arms to ... Richards cracking 7 boundaries in his 33 ...... Kapil running back 20 yards to catch him off his right shoulder .... Amarnath bowling Dujon with his dollies .... Kapil lifting that cup ... Chika smoking in the Lord's balcony.

So how did this bunch of no-hopers run away with greatest prize of them all? How come, Kapil never ever reached that pinnacle of his batting prowess again ... the cliff he so effortlessly climbed in that famous morning at Turnbridge Wells. And how did so many people get out to the collective wiles of Roger Binny, Madan Lal and Mohinder Amarnath? Well some mysteries will always remain unsolved.

1983-84
The season when the team came down to earth with a thud. The friendly series against Pakistan in which the teams played out two well-mannered draws obviously did not prepare the Indian team for what was to come. The abiding memory of the Ind-WI series will be SMG losing his bat against Marshall in the Kanpur Test. It really set the tone for the series which had so many other moments to cherish .... WI 157/5 at Kanpur recovering to 454 through their unlikely batting heroes Dujon and marshall ... SMG equalling the Don with that blitzkrieg in New Delhi ... Mahinder Amarnath putting up an international telephone number (001000) with his scores .... Kapil with his unbelievable bowling at Ahmedabad .... SMG leg glancing Wayne Daniels to go past Boycott and the highest test score ... India still managing to lose the test within four days ..... Desmond Haynes out handled the ball in Mumbai ... SMG out first ball at Calcutta ... someone shouting "Guest Artist" from the Clubhouse stands ... WI again recovering from 213/8 to 377 courtesy the man they used to call Supercat .... Holding bowling 5 unplayable balls to Vengsarkar in one over and then clean bowling him with his 6th ... Andy Roberts 200th test wicket is SMH Kirmani's middle stump flying towards Dujon .... SMG coming at No.4 in Chennai to avoid Marshall ... that idea backfiring with India sliding to 0 for 2 .... the birth of "strokeless wonder" NS Sidhu .... if only people knew how he his going to make up for those missing strokes with his motoring mouth later on .... the double century to erase Bradman and Vinoo Mankad from the record books.

What struck me the most in this series was the wide gulf between the teams. I mean the sustained hostility those four horsemen of apocalypse could generate every single day of that series and which none in the other team could match. And the way they blew apart the much vaunted Indian line up .... after all M/s Gavaskar, Gaekwad, Vengsarkar, Amarnath, Shastri, Kapil Dev wasn't so bad on paper, was it? It has to be the familiar argument of "lack of spine against genuine pace", then. And that favourite remedy being offered " let's make bowler friendly fast wickets in India to train our batsmen for the challenges". Pray how will we win the home series' then?

[To be continued]

The decline of the sub-continent ....

Around this time last year, Indian cricket was at their (arguably) all time high after managing to perfectly ruin Steve Waugh's farewell party at Sydney. What was supposed to be red-hankie waving crescendo of a Australian white wash over India turned out to be a run-fest by an unusually reticent Tendulkar and a usually brilliant Laxman. And with Kumble (of the steely glare and gritted jaw) making sure Australia lived on tenterhooks all through the fifth day, it was by far the biggest wet dream come true for all Indian supporters.

To generalise a bit, India's refusal to bow down to the great Australians led by greater Waugh was to be the beginning of the rise of the Indian sub-continent teams. The Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan teams which were regularly had for breakfast by the Pommies, Kiwis and Aussies at Headingley, Dunedin and Brisbane were supposed to stamp their dominance on the world stage. The sheer batting class of M/s Sangakkara, Jayawardene, Sehwag, Laxman, Youhana, Inzamam which was so much in evidence to their respective supporters suddenly became apparent to the cricket fraternity (including those jingoistic English writers who still think Grame Thorpe has better technique than Brian Lara). Kumble, Pathan, Vaas, Shoaib, Sami, Murali seemed to be almost an embarassment of riches in terms of bowling talent.

Sadly nothing seems to have changed one year later. Aussies beat Sri Lanka 3-0 (in Sri Lanka), India 2-1 (In India) and Pakistan 3-0 (in Australia). India and Pakistan seem to have spent so much of their collective energies in battling each other that they could barely get up for the Aussies.

Actually, the apparent paradox of sub-continent teams having such abundant individual talent and so little collective results can be analysed from any of these angles:
1. The Hayden angle - sub-continent players play for themselves and their records and not for the team.
2. The Boycott angle - sub-continent players lack discipline. They need to be whipped by their moms regularly.
3. The Sunny angle - There is no such problem which revamping of domestic cricket and more Mumbai batsmen in the team cannot solve.
4. The Dalmiya angle - Its all a conspiracy by racist ICC.
5. The Ganguly angle - At least we are the second best team in the world in terms of whining about pitches (England still remain the undisputed numero uno).

Jokes apart, is it something mental? The sub-continent teams just seem to fizzle out at the most critical part of a cricket match after having the upper hand. Blame my opinion on watching the recent Aus-Pak series, where Pakis reigned supreme for about a day and got soundly thrashed for the rest 2.5 days in each of the tests. (My arithmetic is not so bad, no test actually lasted beyond the fourth day).

Whatever it is ... right now the things are not hunky-dory at all for sub continent cricket. India looks capable of beating only Bangladesh and Zimbabwe (well maybe the West Indies) on current form ... Pakistan must be still shell-shocked .... Sri Lankans really don't have the firepower to consistently win test matches outside the sub-continent.

So what ... does that mean Tendulkar will open a vada-pao joint after the failure of "Sachin's"? Will Sehwag make an educational film about his happily married life? Will Zaheer Khan start acting in Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahi? Will Harbhajan live off Priya Reddy's income? Will Kumble open a tutorial class for engineering entrance? .... the mind boggles at the possibilities .... My bet is as long as there is Bangladesh (and if Dalmiya is lucky, Kenya, UAE, USA, Holland and Hongkong), there is always hope. And maybe the new "Harsha Bhogle" does not have to resort to a career at All India Radio, after all.