Cricket: From the Far End

Zaheer Khan and Anil Kumble made it to the ODI team for the South Africa series, the first match is on Nov 19th. But V V S Laxman still didn’t. The reason given is his lack of fitness, which he later denied. I thought most fitness statements are fake, but those usually are to hide the real reasons for omission and the player is usually aware of those!

Unless there is something the selectors know that we don’t know, Laxman should have been there. First thing is his replacements like Raina haven’t been able to make any significant scores. Okay, he may not be the best fielder in the side, and doesn’t stand out in typical home conditions when everybody scores at least 50 but he has some good scores outside India. To me, he is the batsman most likely to make a good score in a crucial match in tough conditions.

The other and even more important reason is if he plays a few matches there and gets familiar with the conditions for about a month, it will be most valuable for the test matches that will follow. They will surely select him for the tests and if he is fit enough to play for five days, I doubt it will be so bad that he is overlooked in favor of somebody who is an excellent fielder but can’t score beyond 20-30!

There is a scene in the TV serial “Friends” where Chandler is trying to flick a matchbox from a corner of a table into a nearby glass. Joey comes and moves the glass a little farther from Chandler. Chandler tries and still misses it. So Joey says “You suck, but at least now you suck in a man’s game”. That’s what I felt after India’s performances in this tournament. So we failed, but at least failed on pitches that we are likely to find everywhere else in the world, especially in South Africa next month.

The batsmen surprised me a little by putting on a decent total against the Aussies, but the bowlers didn’t, and must have immensely helped Shane Watson become the new Aussie hero. The guy has only 4 fifties in 50 matches, two of them against India and one against Kenya. Whether we find a hero or (mostly) not from our team, we invariably make one ordinary batsmen from the opponents into a great one all the time!

It has been a while since Tendulkar scored a 100 against Australia, then took a few wickets to win India the match. He in fact did it once in the first Champions Trophy tournament in 1998. We are surely hoping for something like that either from him or somebody else tomorrow.

Otherwise should we even bother following this match? Unless they are coming up with some last minute magic to play this on a pitch that will suit India more, this game will be on a pitch with bounce and seam movement. In the past, in such situations the batsmen seemed to be in a hurry to get back home, because mostly such situations came up on tours abroad. There, it’s a familiar script: Most of them will just swing their bats in frustration, somebody will get a really unplayable ball, somebody will score some 70 ball 40 and half the team will be back for well below 100. Then the tail will grind it out to somewhere around 200. The bowlers will test the opponent batsmen with short and wide stuff, one bowler will bowl well but overall that will be it for India. The captain and the coach will provide routine comments - nowadays about processes being in place and each player performing any role (except may be his own) - and look for positives, which typically are one player doing well with the bat or the ball, only to fail in the next series.

That it is likely to happen in India is quite strange. The last time India faced Australia in order to qualify for some next big match was in 1996 in the Titan cup triangular tournament, with South Africa as the third team. That time India beat them in a close match, but that was the time when Tendulkar invariably played well against Australia. Even this time he is in a very good form, so most likely the pitch, conditions and the bowling won’t matter to him. I guess he will play his shots and try to take the bowling apart. I think India’s best chances are if Tendulkar succeeds.

I know it sounds very negative but in the recent past Indian batsmen have fought it out only when the conditions suited them. Then every now and then they encountered tough targets or fast pitches, they have just given up without a fight. They get another chance to show to the fans whether they should bother watching them playing in tough conditions and that too against Australia.

Here are the averages of top 5 Indian batsmen in the last 10 ODI games: Tendulkar - 53.12, Dravid - 14.88, Sehwag - 28.55, Raina - 17.00, Kaif - 25.28 (Yuvraj not playing tomorrow). The last 10 match average against Australia: Tendulkar - 40.70, Dravid - 10.66, Sehwag - 18.22, Kaif - 8.20 (7 matches for Kaif, Raina has played only two).

Now against this backdrop they face Australia tomorrow knowing well it’s a bouncy track, knowing well that the captain has called for the batsmen to perform, and knowing well that Aussies have never won this trophy before. There will be thousands watching this at Mohali, the least the team can do for them is fight hard.