Sourav Ganguly is a threat to cricket writing

Some weeks back, Ganguly — the 40-year old, running backward, his sight on the ball which is up in the air; Ganguly in inertia for a moment and then his fall, one arm below his body, his cry of agony — provided a poetic moment for the lensmen and T.V audiences. But for us the writers, if we had written, we would have had to do with cliches like ‘aged warrior’ and ‘falling hero’. The better among us could/must have played around with symbolisms: ‘the monument crumbles’, ‘a hero in denial’. But could we have produced in words a cinematic equivalent?

Find out more in my article for SportsKeeda

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Winter is over for Captain Cool

These are transitional times again: the seniors have reached the fag end of their careers, the juniors have rough-cut talent. We need a leader who can stand up and dictate; a leader who can dominate — over his own men if need be. A leader for whom a player can say, “I’m ready to die for such a captain.”

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The Burden Of Loss

he camera purposely focusses on the grim faces and justly relaxes on the wrinkling three. The trio, who had taught us to deny odds and conceive miracles as possibility. The trio, who for us in our childhood were no less than the Supermans and Batmans. The trio, who had, not more than eight years ago, on their tour to the same land pulverised the same opponents with 1,496 runs from 16 completed innings at an average of 93.5. Now, people say they have paled. They look palely at each other; and at those at the stage with a look of non-existence.

Far outside the television box, life toddles normally. No grief, no sorrow. Do they not watch cricket? A woman hangs her head down — I assume it to be the bow of shame. A moment later, she picks up her face, giggling through her mobile phone. She smiles. She laughs. She doesn’t watch cricket.

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Ricky Ponting, our last credible enemy

Ponting finally reached the triple figures. He dived for a single run to complete it. We saw him emerge from the dust. He pointed his bat toward the pavilion, toward the crowd. His whites splattered by dirt. He smiled childishly. He knew the drought was over. 

And yet amidst the jubilation we knew, this is not the Ponting we knew. Not the man with whom even in off-seasons, we would not have wanted to mingle in a pub. Not the man who, even in a passing conversation, would never escape our curses. Not the Ponting, I had conceived after my one and only meeting with him 16 years back. 

This is an excerpt from my piece written for Sportskeeda. To read more about my brief meeting with  Punter you can visit: Ponting, our last credible enemy

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Turnbuckle: It took a Patil to pet the Aussies

Sandeep Patil hit back with vengeance

It was the beginning of 1981. India had lost the first Test of their series against Australia by an innings and 4 runs. Greg Chappell, in his very first outing against India had scored a monumental 204. The visitors were bowled out for identical scores of 201 in both innings, their 11 batsmen batting twice failed to eclipse that one individual score.

Yet it wasn’t this shameful in those days. No one took us seriously nor did we take ourselves; a draw was synonymous to a victory and a loss (not an innings defeat) felt almost like a draw.

In a batting line-up which trembled like a pack of cards, only one man provided some resistance. And he was no Gavaskar, Kapil Dev or Vishwanath, but a series old Sandeep Patil who stroked a handsome 65 off 78 balls before falling prey to a Len Pascoe bouncer — he had to retire hurt.

Wisden noted in its almanack: “… Patil, who drove with great power against anything overpitched until his vulnerability to the short-pitched ball got him into trouble”

Over the next 18 days (yes, you may laugh over the slow and languid tours), India had rejuvenated themselves. At least it seemed so from the body language of a few players.

For the second match at Adelaide Oval, Australians were put in to bat and they posted an even larger total of 528, courtesy Kim Hughes’s 213 and Graeme Wood’s 125. India started steadily with captain Sunil Gavaskar and Chetan Chauhan adding 77 runs for the 1st wicket, before the former lost his stumps to Pascoe. While Chauhan continued playing his natural game, the players on the other end were leaving like travellers. Night-watchman Shivlal Yadav could manage only 16 runs, Vishwanath and Vengsarkar couldn’t even reach double figures. From 77/1, India were down to 130/4. Patil, bludgeoned in his last outing, was the next man to step in.

“I detected a growing tendency among the patriotic Australians at the ground to brand the pitch so docile that the three pacemen who have slashed their way through all opposition at will, were bowling under hopelessly unfavourable conditions.” - Bill O' Reilly 

We, Indians are superstitious: a sneeze here, a passing cat there can often deter a well-planned journey. So, to say that Patil’s start was inauspicious would not be exaggeration. He survived a chance off Bruce Yardley’s bowling, while on 2. Had he been made to pay for his benevolence by the man standing at short mid-on, writing the post-match report would have been a matter of Cntl+C and Cntrl+V.

But Patil, it seems, did not care much about the journalists. Over the course of his innings, which lasted 301 minutes and 240 balls, he showed he didn’t care much about any one. Be it Lillee, Yardley, Hogg or Pascoe, he spared none. And his treatment of Pascoe with special brutality was only expected. Twice in succession, in one over, Patil hooked his tormentor and both his shots cleared the ropes.

A series of bewildered and incredulous gestures followed. If you plan to watch the video again, do watch out for that moment when the commentator in bafflement confuses the batsman with Chetan Chauhan and then corrects himself.

In The Sydney Morning Herald on January 27, the former Australian player and cricket writer Bill O’ Reilly, in an article titled My hat off to Sandeep, wrote, “I detected a growing tendency among the patriotic Australians at the ground to brand the pitch so docile that the three pacemen who have slashed their way through all opposition at will, were bowling under hopelessly unfavourable conditions.”

Reilly being an Australian, people who are usually averse to the idea of praising their opposition, this part of his article sums up the impact of Patil’s innings.

The article goes, “I rejoiced in the spectacle. I have been waiting for far too long to see a top-class batsman go to the work on Australia’s pace pack and cut them back to size”

Sadly, in the second innings Patil failed to be third time lucky for his team. Needing to hang on for four and a half hour to force a draw, the Indian batsmen were down to 128/8. It took 9.2 overs of battling from the ninth wicket pair of Karsan Ghavri and Shivlal Yadav to save India the blushes of another loss.

Sandeep Patil’s Test career lasted for another four years. He retired at the age of 28, when most players only start maturing. He did play a few more entertaining innings — once he hit Bob Willis for 24 runs in one over, during his unbeaten 129 runs innings against England. But for a career which started with such promise, it faded faster than any spectator from Adelaide Oval would have ever expected.

This article has been published on SportsKeeda

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Drought in the land of Baggy Green: Fall of the Aussie Empire

Clarke and Crisis

he Frank Worrel trophy, 1995 is considered by many as the turning point of modern cricket. The series which marks the shift of power from West Indies to Australia, was controversial for many reasons and at the centre of the controversies was Steve Waugh, who was to later pivot his nation to cricket’s pinnacle.

Mark Taylor’s Australia won the series 2-1, beating West Indies at home after 22 years. Waugh gathered 429 runs at 107.5 a match, also collected a few bruises and went to sleep with his team jersey, socks and cap on, after the final match. It wasn’t just a victory of one nation over another. In many ways that series symbolised the triumph of grit over power, determination over raw talent and aggression over gentility.

In the first Test at Barbados, he was accused of dishonesty for claiming to have taken the catch of Lara, which T.V replays showed to be doubtful. Lara’s dismissal triggered West Indian batting collapse and eventually led to their loss. The second incident came in the third Test when Waugh collided with none other than the Carribean giant Curtly Ambrose. Ambrose exchanged intimidating glares and the Australian responded with verbal abuse, the incident went so far that the bowler had to be dragged away by his captain Richie Richardson.

With the transfer of crown, cricket was never the same again. Australians were a brute force. If you could not retaliate, you did not exist; if you could, well, you stood a chance for a hard-fought draw. In their heydays, I would not have expected an Australian bowler to replay Walsh’s courteous act of the 1992 World Cup. It would have been too foolish for a self-respected Australian to let an opposition batsman survive, so what if it is in the name of ‘sportsman spirit’.

The historic scuffle between Waugh and Ambrose

And that is what Australian cricket was about. Call it whatever you may, they took pride from it. John Arlott in his book, Concerning Cricket, published in 1949, defined ‘Australianism’ as a “single-minded determination to win”. Though written more than six decades ago — when cricket was still war but fought predominantly between England and Australia — Arlott’s sentiments echoed in our minds till even half a decade ago.

In their days of dominance, Australians were invincible; they could make the opposition’s conduct look ridiculously perfunctory. They could decimate the best of the players to the status of schoolboy cricketers. They could mock you, laugh at you, spit profanities and swagger out of the cricket field with medals and trophies.

Steve Waugh’s famous words, “You’ve just dropped the World Cup” (directed at Herschelle Gibbs after the latter dropped his catch during one of the defining matches of 1999 World Cup) had a distinct cocksureness that, given the fact that his team were playing against the tournament favourites and weren’t even in the semis, could have come from only an Australian’s mouth. Australia went on to win the match and then beat South Africa again in the semis and a match later they were world champions.

Nothing was impossible. A few beers down, they believed the word never existed and we should be thankful that they seemed perpetually drunk. To borrow from Arlott again, “Where the impossible is(was) within the realms of what the human beings can do, there are(were) Australians who believe(d) they can(could) do it.”

We loved to hate them. Hate Ponting for fake appeals. Hate Symonds for the monkey-gate scandal. And so on. But there was always a peculiar assurance that their empire would never cater to archeologists’ fancy. Call it colonial hangover, but most people would agree that there are few events scarier than to witness your ruler’s demise; for even if with disgust, you had always looked up to them.

So, seeing the Australians fold up for 47 runs against South Africa, earlier this year, was anything but heartening. That was not all. They struggled against a rather average Kiwi attack and were bowled out for 136 runs in the first innings of the Test match at Hobart — New Zealand won the match by seven runs to register their first win in Australia after 26 years.

he talks about the fall of the Roman Empire often conclude with riddled arguments. While there is Edward Gibbon’s theory of waning civic virtue, Ferril’s blaming military decline, and Toynbee and Burke’s calling the Empire rotten from the root, the post-Roman romantics have never been able to reach a consensus.

Similarly, for even the best of the chroniclers and finest of raconteurs it is hard to talk in exactitude about when and how the mighty Australians fell. Was it in India in 2001 when Sourav Ganguly’s men halted the Australian juggernaut in the historic series which ended 2-1 in favour of the hosts? Was it in 2003 when the same Indians drew a hard-fought series back in Australia’s own backyard? Or was it in 2005 when a resurgent English side snatched the Ashes away from where it had rested for almost 19 years?

You could pick any or agree on none. Rot never spreads in a day; it takes routine dumping to build a wasteland. However, if you look at the mentioned dates carefully, you would see a discordant pattern. Clamours rose in incoherence. They were omens of decay. But the ageing stars showed individual flashes and we were transported back to our reveries.

I understand the difficulty to part with proven warriors, who for so long had stomped the battlefield, never flinched, mastered their own wounds and the wounded alike. But being Australian they could have avoided such emotional hyperbole.

Since the start of 2009, Ponting has scored 1,959 runs at an average of 35 and if you consider this year alone, his average is down to 26. He has scored a hundred against New Zealand recently but it came after a wait of almost two years. Mike Hussey, whose performance is better than Punter but nowhere near the Mr. Cricket we knew, has scored 599 runs at an average of 37.43 in the last 12 months. And this I say without mentioning Hussey’s poverty-stricken average of 15 against South Africa and 7.6 against New Zealand.

What baffles is the kind of support they still garner from the country’s brightest brains.

Former Test batsman Dean Jones when asked about Ricky Ponting’s continuity replied saying, “Cricket Australia made the call that the criteria was to pick the teams that will play in the 2013 Ashes and the 2015 World Cup. I’ve got the feeling Ponting still wants both of those.”

Ponting goes down after his team's loss to India in this World Cup

It is hard to believe that the same Australians dropped Mark Waugh and more importantly Steve Waugh while at helm, and never allowed them to play another One-dayer after one dismal series in 2001. Similar fate ended ODI specialist Michael Bevan and wicket-keeper Ian Healy’s career before that. Michael Slater, part of each of the 16 Test winning Australian team became a burden only half a year later. Jason Gillespie was dismissed after scoring a double hundred, and Damien Martyn was divorced with heartless silence.

It was during the end of the Warne-Hayden-McGrath era when they attempted the oriental tear-jerking tradition and have since been dwelling in “interesting times”. Warne, McGrath, Hayden and Langer were all given extended run. And that Warne was reportedly asked to reconsider his retirement was possibly the final bolt on Arlott’s Australianism.

Still on a more consoling note, we could pardon their selectors and fans for the blur that covered their foresight. Apart from Michael Clarke, Mike Hussey,  Shane Watson and Brett Lee, Australia in the transition period has failed to produce players, who forget dominating could even stand up and compete in fisticuffs. David Hussey and Brad Hodge were way past their prime when they were drafted in, the selectors never showed any love for Martin Love and Stuart Macgill never benefited from being Warne’s understudy.

“Where the impossible is(was) within the realms of what the human beings can do, there are(were) Australians who believe(d) they can(could) do it.”- John Arlott

It is appalling to see that the team which could once afford to make players like Darren Lehman, Stuart Law, Damien Fleming and Andy Bichel watch from the sidelines, are now throwing up average domestic talents in every next series. Since 2008, 26 cricketers have made their debut in ODIs and a staggering 27 players have bagged the baggy green; while from 1995-2008, only 41 and 34 new players — in the respective versions — could earn national calling.

While, one should not ignore the fact that Phil Hughes, Tim Paine, Peter Siddle, Shaun Marsh and Marcus North have all shown considerable promise, either injuries or the strobe lights of international cricket have intermittently blighted their budding careers. And Mitchell Johnson, possibly the best of them all, now stands as an allegory which combines both these ailments.

Johnson paints the trite story of ‘what could have been’. The lanky player, who in 47 Tests has 1,287 runs and 190 wickets to his name, was once called thebest fast bowler in the world, by none other than Peter Roebuck. Now he looks “like someone auditioning for the part of snarling Australian fast bowler, not the chosen one,” at least in the words of cricket writer Osman Samiuddin. But the latest studded and tattooed look apart, injuries have never allowed him to perform to his capabilities and secure a regular place in the team.

Cameron White and Steven Smith, both of whom were popularly billed to do the undoable — to fill the vacuum left by Shane Warne — have looked clueless and flustered under enormous expectations. While Smith is still 22 and has time on his side, White’s Test career seems almost over. That’s not to say that White himself escapes blame. Some fatal tendencies of the Australian cricketers like preferring fishing over cricket (remember Symonds?) and pub brawls over press conferences remain unfathomable.

There are hopes that an ageing Doug Bollinger, a young James Pattinson or Pat Cummins will lend his fingers to the team’s revival. Still hopes they are and they float in limbo. It is ironical that there was a time, not many seasons ago, when one could not think of a better place to groom a budding cricketer than Australia. What has gone so awfully wrong and so soon in their cricket schools remains an enigma.

At times I am lured to give in to the thought that the world is being too harsh on the current crop. Like second generation celebrities, like lab mice, they are being treated with a mixture of cruelty and curiosity. I know it is too soon to measure Michael Clarke’s captaincy to that of Waugh, Taylor and Ponting’s. To compare Cummins and Pattinson to the calibre of McGrath and Gillespie would be absurd. But the Australians had taught us to stretch our imaginations beyond the facade of possibilities. And we had accepted their mastery even when they harried out batsmen, pushed our bowlers and demoralised our team in pre-match conferences. Twenty six years is a lot of time, enough to enslave you to habits, and time is what we need to realise that ‘Australianism’ needs to be redefined in our dictionaries.

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Sehwag and the Circle of Seasons

It was one of those occasions when deserted by your own vernacular you seek consolation in else's vocabulary and when even that is found to be depleted, you are left haywire–fixated on fixing a proper adjective to your newfound emotion. That emotion which allures both but falls neither on the lap of joy or sorrow.

Like it occurs to me quite often nowadays, I was dumbfounded and then appalled at my loss of words in describing Virender Sehwag's double hundred.

As I missed out on the live telecast of the match, (for reasons best known to the people in my office, the television was tuned to Aaj Tak) I had to rely on ESPN Cricinfo for score updates. "Sehwag reaches his 100 off 69 balls. And runs out Gambhir off the next ball. 176 for 1," tweeted they. All merry on this side. Viru had, after months of waiting, reached the triple figure and keeping the upcoming Aussie tour in mind its timing could not have been better.

Moments had passed in my juggling between Twitter and Facebook when someone updated their status pleading, "Sehwag, for heaven's sake don't score a double". The immediate response was to laugh; laugh out loud. I did and then regretted. The profundity of the Facebook status was much greater than seen. For what Sehwag was chasing was not a mere figure. For a generation born a couple of decades ago, it was a brutal invasion on their years of growing up. The childhood, the adolescence, there was so much to trade; so much to be traded to fill the next generation’s kitty. And as it often happens in periods of transition, our kin were reluctant to fritter away their remains. And trade but for whom—an impostor of our idol, a porcelain replica?

I remember this miserliness did not fall from nowhere; it's an inheritance we are carriers to. Somewhere in 1998, if not mistaken, I got into a minor war-of-words with my dad when he dismissed Sachin Tendulkar (at the pinnacle of his career) away calling him a debaucher. In his words, Azhar was the artist. With the touch of his brush, he had painted many of their dreams.

If the proverbial: "Miyan Kaptan Banoge? (Man, do you want to be the captain?)"—Raj Singh Dungarpur's casual offer to Azharuddin over a cup of tea — gave birth to the new-age casualness; Azhar also brought a necessary face-lift in the way we approached the game. The era of Jadeja and Robin Singh, was pioneered by their carefree captain. Much before Kaif, Yuvraj and the Rainas learned to dirty their laundries, Azhar, one of our finest fielders, had mastered the art of mud-mingling.

The small-town boy's rise to fame, jostling past the elders to elderliness, extra-marital fling, eventual divorce and re-marriage: Azhar gave them their first celluloid cricketer, before he himself robbed them off.

Of Azhar, it could be said that he was brash and unpolished.  There were stories about him being aloof, always being at loggerhead with the seniors of the team—even convicted of ending the careers of luminaries like Kapil Dev, Navjot Sidhu and Ravi Shastri. The media talked about his linkups with the underworld, with bookies.

Vinod Mehta in his autobiography The Lucknow Boy, recollects an incident where in a match against Pakistan, Azhar on winning the toss, pocketed the coin and blatantly claimed to have lost it to Aamir Sohail.

His crimes were fragrant, not that he cared to hide. And it was this puzzling impunity that separated Azhar from the rest.

Rohit Brijnath writes in his column for Cricinfo, "He (Azhar) was my favourite because no sportsman ever made me struggle so much, no Indian athlete demanded so much inner debate, no cricketer so confused the senses." He was liked because he wasn't perfect; he was liked because he never tried to be liked.

However, the turn of the decade changed it all. In the match-fixing fiasco, which still rests like an indelible scar on the face of Indian cricket, Azharuddin was found to be the most culpable of all sinners. And this blow was hard to swallow for even the most ardent of Azhar followers.

Somewhere between all this, but hardly under anyone's shadow, emerged a curly haired kid. His rise was inversely proportional to Azhar's fall. By the time the fixing scandal broke loose, he was already an established star. Tendulkar stood in contrast to the former’s frivolity. A complete antithesis, he was more consistent, hardworking, disciplined and lacked the petulance which his long-time captain was inebriated with. Our fathers' invention was fast-slipping out of their own embrace, they knew, still it was shameful to adopt the insignificants' imagination.

To the generation gone by, all things we found cool were scornful luxuries: Burgers, Pizzas, the new Colas, the word 'cool' and every other evil liberalisation brought. Sachin seemed to emblemise this change; he was fast, his batting was fizzy in a way and he could also be described using that word, if I am allowed to use it thrice in one paragraph. They looked at him with childish cynicism as if he was the reason why Campa Cola lost its vitality.

Our Tendlya would dance down the ground, swat the balls all around, score at run-a-ball (if not less than that) and then in between would endorse everything from Power shoes to VISA power. The coming generation of engineer-cum-writers, doctor-cum-actors, accountant-cum-singers who were bent on breaking conventional barricades had gotten their multi-tasker to look up to.

Around us all revolves a halo, a circle, which takes from one generation and passes to another. Before your bond of memories mature it gets transferred to someone you had once known to be unknown.

For some, Sachin exceeded the game itself. I know people who remember the exact Sachin innings which coincided with the appearance of their first pimple, and also those who would tell you when they first parted with the budding patch over their physiognomy and Sachin scored a duck and for months they never picked up a razor again.

Amidst all adulation and idolisation Sachin kept his conquest on. Undeterred by the flurry of out-field activities; he continued stretching boundaries, waitressing to the insatiable millions. Sehwag showed up and vanished and showed up again.

On his debut, which he made in a One-Day International against Pakistan in 1999, much less stouter than he now is, Sehwag looked totally innocuous. He scored only one run, before falling LBW to Shoaib Akhtar and went for 35 in the three overs he bowled.

His positioning in the batting order — at number seven, below the likes of Saba Karim, Khurasiya and Robin Singh — showed that even to the team management he was as inconsequential.

In his next outing in national colours, which came after almost two years of wilderness, Sehwag performed admirably well. In the fourth match of our Tri-series against Zimbabwe and Australia, he made 58 (off 54 balls) and then picked up three wickets to bag the Man-Of-the-Match.

So far so good. Sehwag did shine in the series but so did Vijay Dahiya. Conceiving him as a utility player, I even made him a regular in my favourite game, book-cricket.

Due to Sachin's unavailability for the tour of Sri Lanka, he was promoted to open the innings. Sehwag delivered a hidden message in his 69 balls century against New Zealand. I failed to decipher. It was the third fastest hundred by an Indian. But accidents do happen, I had said to myself.

However, he started chasing himself. In every innings thereafter, he started giving tuitions on hard-hitting. The nineties were nervous of him. Even when on 99 he would attempt for the big hits and if and when he faltered, there was no shame, no discontent. The jatt from Najafgarh who had hardly envisaged fame and feat would walk towards the pavilion with a self-assured contentment.

Blasphemous comparisons to Tendulkar were made. Stance, shots and even physical attributes were measured and when human vision failed, they resorted to graphics.

As if the need was to establish a dummy. During most part of the nineties when Sachin scored in losing causes, I had seen placards asking for 'Ten more Tendulkars'. Those statements were laudatory, these comparisons bordered on lunacy.

But soon, the dummy started looking livelier, at times shining brighter than the deity. Sehwag soon formulated his own brand of atheism. He preceded a number of players who would wear their heart on their shoulders, cover it with their armbands and advertise it to their fancy.

Harsha Bhogle's tweet after Sehwag reached his double hundred was, "I wonder sometimes if Sehwag achieves these landmarks because he doesn't worry about achieving them." It is true. Nothing bothers. Nothing worries him.  For nervousness had been parted with, when he parted with the placenta.

Wanting not to fall prey to the rules of evolution; not to let my dream become a requiem so soon, I have tried various tricks of sustenance. To my little cousin, in eulogies—guised as lullabies, I would preach how great a batsman Sachin was. How much faster he still was and how much more responsible and steady.

Flashbacks, now remind me how in stages of life we all are juxtaposed; and in clockwise alignment how 'me' and 'my cousin', 'dad' and 'me', we all stand. Around us all revolves a halo, a circle, which takes from one generation and passes to another. Before your bond of memories mature it gets transferred to someone you had once known to be unknown.

My cousin, who was barely four or five years old, at the time of my preaching, soon gave up all I had infused in him. He must have celebrated Sehwag's double-hundred. Sehwag, in the process of scoring also surpassed Sachin's 201, which was previously the highest individual score by any player in a 50-overs game. But the next time we meet, I will brag about how my hero still remains the first one to reach there. Bring it on.

Published in Cricinfo blogs and SportsKeeda
    

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Why I hated Rahul Dravid

While in school, I used to dislike two guys in particular. First was the one who sat in front of me, wore a shirt yellowed by sweat and stank unfailingly after Tiffin-break every day. Now looking back, I forgive him. Poor chap, I reckon, was a victim of hyperhidrosis. On second thoughts, also a sufferer of peer-pressure which made him stand and answer every question the teacher would pelt at us.

The second one was more annoying. On being bullied, he would stare and smile. Whack after whack, his grin grew. There was a hint of seductiveness in his buck teeth. He was not the victim, just a veiled puppeteer. On some days, he resembled Gandhi. He made me pity the plight of the British in front of the never-say-die, never-say-done half-naked man.

Rahul Dravid, being a combination of both my nemeses, I couldn’t help but look at him with distaste. He made me believe he could sweat in-arms with polar bears and make even the coolest heads grumble.

For his fans it is never enough. You call him ‘wall’, they will throw bricks at you; you call him 'dependable', they might sue you for understating. 

He trotted along his own plains, clinically oblivious of things and beings around. He was always painful to his opponents; on many days, his snail-paced innings could inflict as much pain even on his most ardent admirers.

But I admit the blame partly lay with me and maybe the mind which planned the Indian batting order. Chappel-like occasional reshuffles earlier in his career would have spared Dravid world of curses.

For the most part of his hitherto 501 matches, he batted at No.3 which meant his coming in to bat would often mean Sachin’s departure in One-dayers and his survival could delay my master’s arrival in Tests. I would swap T.V channels, would rather switch to a movie. After the hiatus when I would return, Dravid would still be there. He would bow much like that masochist prick from school and then tumble a helmet full of water, showing me what he had accumulated in my hours of ignorance.

Yes, he annoyed and over the years I learned to ignore him. But however I tried, I could never bring myself to ‘hate’ Dravid, for he gave no reason. Dislike and distaste were always there yet hatred seemed too terse a feeling one could have for a man whom even the buzzing mosquitoes were likely to admire. My mind often played with the thought: “has he ever landed his palm on any of those tiny sanguinary beings”. His face never showed any change of expression. Maybe he did in seclusion, during commercial breaks. He was way too polite to get involved in such buffoonery in front of live T.V.

The engineer in him always had a measured approach, pitch-perfect and inhumanly: a smile should look like a smile, never meandering to the boundaries of smug or even a full-fledged grin.

Leave aside Dada of Lord’s, how many times can you recollect seeing Dravid jump in joy? Forget Kambli of ’96 World Cup semis, it belongs to an ignominious day, how many times have you seen your wall wail in despair? He was numb in joy, number in tears.

He could woo a million teenage girls, flaunt his genteelness to impress their moms and manage to go home draped in chorus yet crowned unsung.

For his fans it is never enough. You call him ‘wall’, they will throw bricks at you; you call him 'dependable', they might sue you for understating.

He was underrated, often overshadowed “but does all this translate to being ‘under-appreciated’?” asks Siddhartha Vaidyanathan in his blog.

No it does not. As it should never have been, but didn’t fame follow Rahul in a haphazard manner?

He is clearly remembered for a dream debut at Lord’s but in collective memory it falls short of being splendid- splendor deceived by a margin of five runs. His highest score in one-dayers, however magnificent, peeps from behind the curtains of Sachin Tendulkar’s brilliance. His edenic 180 at Eden Gardens remains outnumbered by the very, very, special 281 that festoons V.V.S. Laxman. His 145 versus Sri Lanka in the world cup of ’99 is talked about more for his supporting act in forging the partnership and contributing to Sourav Ganguly’s 183, and sadly his tally of a gargantuan 461 runs in the tournament is written about more for the fact that he lost the player-of-tournament to the charisma of Lance Klusener.

Dravid is not damned, he cannot be. But the fear is that the feelings attached to him are way too mechanical. He is neither hated nor worshipped. He never reached those extremities of fans’ emotions. A hint of Dada, a tinge of Tendlya, perhaps even a pinch of Sreesanth would have made him more talked-about in street corners.

Now as he has retired from One-dayers and abstinence from Test cricket seems on the cards, I don’t have a foresight of where he would stand. I can’t promise my grandkids would pay attention to my ramblings about an Adam who never sinned. But I can ensure thousand Rahuls are to follow. The Eves whose hearts he rules wouldn’t stop anywhere short of cursing their kids by calling them “Rahoool”. What innovative minds… Ehh?

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The dust bowl and desert storm

The great cricket writer Neville Cardus once remarked: "We remember not the scores and the results in after years; it is the men who remain in our minds, in our imagination."
Cardus closed his eyes in 1975. Our man who matters was only a two-year-old then; at the least toddling around his house in Mumbai or at the most busy flailing his tennis racket ala childhood hero John McEnroe.



In all obviousness it is hard to say whether the greatest writer missed the greatest cricketer or was it the other way round. But Cardus, taking into account all the greatness of the Don Bradmans and the Jack Hobbs he had seen and taken account of, had missed one of cricket's rarest gems.

He missed the atrocious plunder of the '3lbs, 2 ounces' willow, missed the frenzied dance down the track and missed the most-deadliest encounter the 22-yard strip has encountered.

The master-blaster started the proceedings with a six off the first delivery of Michael Kasprowicz and from thereon he was unstoppable. He reminded the old of Richards and Bradman and for the youth he was all those heroes of the Arabian nights rolled into one.

Shane Warne was a phenomenon. He would walk in with his tongue held out like a hungry alligator, place the ball wherever he wished to and yet manage to smile back smugly at bedazzled faces of batsmen, as they walked past him, after the autopsy had been done.

Sachin Tendulkar, on the other hand, was the wonder-boy back home. He had conquered oppositions, topped the 1996 World Cup run table and had drawn comparisons with contemporary greats like Brian Lara and Mark Waugh. But the red cherry on the cake was still missing.

By the beginning of 1998 season, the aroma was all around and the hungry crowds were smacking their lips over the Sachin-Warne contest that was to be dished out.

In the Indo-Aus-NZ tri-series held in Sharjah, India had put up an equal dismal show in the tournament as New Zealand and faced the uphill task of either amassing Australia’s 283 or scoring at least 253 runs to leap-frog the Kiwis to the final.

The Sachin-Saurav opening duo made a steady start before the latter departed for 17 with 38 runs on the board from 8.3 overs. There was an urgent need to kick up the run-rate and wicket-keeper batsman Nayan Mongia, promoted up the order, was given the license to go unbridled.

But faith rested and fate depended on the able shoulders of the 25-year old. Placards flashed: 'Sachin is India and India is Sachin'. No one blinked as it was a common sight then and a bit of afterthought would have confirmed it to be true.

The pair of Sachin and Mongia piled up runs at ease and managed to push the total above the hundred-run mark. But Mongia departed with the score on 107 and Mohammad Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja came and went like window shoppers.
At 138/4, new-comer VVS Laxman walked in. The 'very very special' Laxman was an ordinary traveler in the team then. Defeat looked ominous. And as if that was not enough a massive sandstorm came up from nowhere forcing the match to halt for about half an hour.

The target got readjusted from 283 runs in 50 overs to 276 runs in 46, and the new qualifying total was 237 in the same number of overs.

"Don't worry, I'll be there till the end," were Sachin's parting words to the Indian coach Anshuman Gaekwad as he headed back to the pitch after resumption of play.

The master-blaster started the proceedings with a six off the first delivery of Michael Kasprowicz and from thereon he was unstoppable. He reminded the old of Richards and Bradman and for the youth he was all those heroes of the Arabian nights rolled into one.

The novice Kasprowicz was taken to cleaners which eventually forced his international hibernation. Damien Fleming was dealt with ferocity and Shane Warne was reduced to a mere caricature. A virtually unplayable Warne was decimated without warning.

The genius had known his nemesis to be a master of turn and had chalked out his plan accordingly. Before the ball could touch the pitch, Sachin would be up dancing and before the leather could take its turn, the heavy willow would send it to its destination over long-on.

By the time Sachin departed with a gritty 143 (off 131 balls, 9 fours and 5 sixes) India were well past the new qualifying mark. The scoreboard read 242/5 off 43 overs but the on-field batsmen could add only eight more runs and India failed to win the match.

Sachin could not stand till the last ball, fell inches short of his words but his knock was enough to take India to the final and another 134 in the cup-decider that was played on his birthday got India the trophy.

The assault was ruthless and the aftermath nightmarish as Warne would recollect after the match.

"I'll be going to bed having nightmares of Sachin just running down the wicket and belting me back over the head for six," he said.

Since then time has passed but little has changed. Thirteen years, 68 hundreds and heaps of runs later, the man behind the monolith has remained same, unruffled and unblemished in this arduous journey. Most importantly, to all his followers their nation still remains Sachin and they, proud 'Sachinians'.

published: www.cricketnext.com

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Innings unmatched and that great catch

As BBC puts it: “The grandeur of Lord's may have played host to India's memorable 1983 World Cup final win, but the momentum of that unlikely victory was founded in far less salubrious surroundings.”

It happened that day; the stage was Nevill Ground, Royal Tunbridge Wells and the date was June 18, 1983.

Twenty-twelve was not known of and Titanic- the movie was not yet made, maybe the world was not used to unexpected disasters.

Under overcast conditions, India won the toss and elected to bat against minnows Zimbabwe. The pundits might have expected the elite list of Indian batsmen to plunder the toddlers of international cricket but it was not be. 

Two unknown commodities, Kevin Curran and Peter Rowan proved to too hot to handle for the Gavaskars and Srikkanths of India. Both the openers bagged ducks and soon Indians were trembling at 9/4 then 17/5 on a damp Kent wicket. 

There were creased eyebrows and thumping heart beats, not only in the Indian camp, even the organizers were worried that the match might get over by the lunch time.

The BBC saw major disaster news coming their way- ‘a Zimbabwean victory’. They even phoned Dave Ellman-Brown, then chief executive of Zimbabwe Cricket Union, intending to come over and do an interview. David replied, "The game is not over.” And was he Oracle in disguise?

  
First it was Roger Binny with whom Kapil forged a steady 60 innings stand. It gave the team ephemeral relief as soon the cards started to fall again. First Binny, then Ravi Shastri with a rash stroke and India was reduced to 78/7. By lunch they somehow crawled to 106/7 but the show was yet to come.

What was there in Kapil’s lunch is a mystery even Sherlock Holmes has not been able to solve, till date. The captain courageous came back with renewed vigor and Curran was the first player to feel the heat when he was hit for successive sixes.

Soon he had put up a 62 run partnership with Madan Lal and by the time the latter departed Indians were 140/8.

Syed Kirmani joined his captain and they put up a record 126 runs partnership for the 9^th wicket that remained unbroken till the next 27 years. Kiri’s contribution in that partnership was 24 (off 56 balls) and if this you think speaks volumes about Kapil’s dominance that day, thinks again!

Kirmani was the second highest scorer at 24 after Kapil’s 175 that day. India did the impossible and won the match by 31 runs and as Gavaskar recalls, “That 175 has to be in my view the greatest knock in the World Cup."

That knock got India to the finals but facing West Indies in those days did not call for any celebration, it only attracted more sleepless nights. Indians crumbled down to a meager 183 and with the likes of Lloyd, Richards, Greenidge, etc. the total was just a number. West Indies were 50/2, courtesy a wicket each by Sandhu and Madan Lal. But Viv Richards was looking at his ruthless best.

Things looked awry and Indian fans had lost all hopes of resurrection. It is said Gavaskar’s wife was there to watch the match but she left, once she sensed Richards in full prowess. Then something unusual happened.

Kapil recollects, “Maddipa (Madan Lal) literally snatched the ball from my hands and went on to bowl that over.”

Madan Lal’s gentle medium lured Richards to an aggressive pull and that shot too seemed to be headed for safety.

"I still don't know from where did he (Kapil) come to take that catch. When Kapil was running back waving to nearest fielder to get out of his way, I knew my time was over,” says Richards. 

Kapil ran back more than 20 yards to take that impossible catch and the rest as is explained by Madan Lal, who after listening to the Kapil saga again and again, finally said, “Bas karo yaar [Stop it mate], I bowled the damn ball."

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Kings were two good

I don’t rate Viv Richards above the game but he was in a genre of his own. In an era when cricket was still in its well-ironed shirt and pleated pajama, Richards was no masquerader. With rolled-up shirt, chewing gum in mouth, flailing his bat he would come, see and conquer just as lyrically as it would be had poetries been written with sledgehammer. 

That day was no different. West Indies was off to a bad start losing Haynes, Greenidge, Kallicharan and Lloyd in quick succession and with just 99 runs on the board. Now it was up to Richards and his new found ally, the unheralded, Collis King and what followed was heartless slaughtering. Collis matched King Richards shot for shot and such was his impact on that day that he made, even, King Viv look like a defensive bat.

 Finally when King departed, the duo had already put 139 runs on the board in just 77 minutes and the scoreboard ticked 238/5. 

But the calypso tiger was still waylaying for more flesh. He completed his hundred in the very next over and continued the game in same vein holding the tail-enders. There were array of shots from his bat but the one most remembered was his six off Mike Hendrick off the last over. 

Hendricks had bowled 11 overs and bowled well, conceding just 36 runs. With no. 11 Colin Croft on the other end, Richards kept strike throughout the over not risking a folly. He accumulated 8 runs from the first 5 balls and it was the sixth ball hit that became a masterpiece. 

There no fielding restrictions in those days and England had placed all their players near the ropes, knowing Richards well enough. 

"I had sussed with his long-off and long-on back that it would be fullish to allow me one or two," Richards recalls. 

"It was the correct ball, much fuller but slightly off the line and I stepped to the off side and flicked it."

It was as casual as Richards’ persona. He took a few steps outside his off stump and effortlessly flicked (yes flicked!) a perfect delivery way over square-leg’s head and into the stands. 

Rest as Viv recollects, "I left the field thinking, ‘That shot is my invention’.” 

Though Richards, personally felt, Collis King was better that day, newspapers, that day, were filled with stories about King Richards' innings overshadowing that of the other, lesser known, King. Even there his last-ball hit attracted special mention. 

In a post match commentary, Tony Cozier said Richards dismissed the England attack (that day) “ as if they were net bowlers".

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Garner and his English prey

Fast bowlers look up to him for inspiration and batsmen never looked into his eyes- had you said this, any one would have believed, after all he was 6 feet and 8 inches above the ground like a betel nut tree add to that the late afternoon gloom and the shade would almost engulf you into its realm.

Jokes apart, Garner garnered respect and educed fear for his impeccable line and length, combined with ruthless pace, deadly bouncers and toe-crushing yorkers. And England got them all in the final of 1979.

The stage was set by Vivian Richards’ 138 and Collis King’s swashbuckling 86 off 75 balls. Courtesy, those masterly knocks, West-Indies piled up a rather respectable 286/9, after early hiccups. The Poms sauntered when the need of the hour was to run with open laces. A sluggish 129-run opening stand between Geoffrey Boycott and Mike Brearley took them to 183, at the loss of two wickets, by the end of 47 overs.

"We were grateful to England for their tactics," Garner recalls. "By the time they [the openers] were gone it would have taken a superhuman effort to retrieve the situation." 

The asking rate was soaring up and it was not yet the Yusuf Pathan days. The scorecard asking, 103 runs off 13 overs could have made many gentlemen in white pajamas sweat. But England still had eight wickets in hand and the list included Randall, Gooch, Gower, Botham, etc.

In the 48^th over, wily ‘Super cat’ passed the ball over to the ‘Big bird’ and the rest, it is said, was England’s epileptic fit. 

Garner lived up to the expectations of Captain Lloyd and the next eight English wickets were back in pavilion with only 11 runs between them. 

Graham Gooch was done with a trademark yorker and three balls later it was Gower’s defense to be broken. After Colin Croft wiped clear of Ian Botham; the tail enders- Wayne Larkins, Chris Old and Bob Taylor were mere formalities for the lanky fast bowler. The impact of Garner’s 3^rd spell was such that in 11 balls he collected 5 wickets giving away only 4 runs.

Many people still feel Garner missed out by a whisker when it came to the ‘man-of- the match’ which eventually went to Vivian Richards.

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When big cat crossed the Aussie way

The carpet was laid for the show to be absorbing, the house was full as much as it could afford but what followed was Shakespearean Romeo-Juliet told in James Bond style. Romantic action or action in romance- It was complete panache, totemic of the calypso kings. 

“If you are going to lose, the man you’d like to see beat you is Clive Lloyd,” says Ian Chappell, the losing captain 1975 World Cup, in remembrance of their loss to West Indies that day.

Mind you! Aussies are sour losers and this coming from the captain of the crew speaks volumes about Lloyd and his innings. 

 The venue was Lord's, and the game's Mecca was bathed in bright sunshine as Australian captain Ian Chappell won the toss and elected to field. It was a smart decision. After 18 overs the mighty West Indians were struggling at 50 for 3. With Fredericks, Kallicharan and Greenidge back in pavilion, Aussie pace quartet was spitting fire. 

In came the be-spectacled, mighty Lloyd. People say he had college professor looks, maybe that was the day of spanking he chose for his Aussie pupils. He joined his ‘childhood hero’, the 40 year-old batsman Rohan Kanhai for the fourth wicket and then whatever followed Kanhai could only stand a silent spectator to. The 50-run stand came off 49 balls, with Kanhai's contribution being 6.

It started in the very first over when he clipped Dennis Lillee through midwicket, and when the bowler responded with a bouncer, Lloyd eased the ball over backward square leg into the top tier of the Tavern Stand. 

Max Walker, whose first seven overs had only yielded 22 runs, came back and Lloyd launched a perfectly decent first ball high, back over his head for a one-bounce four to reach his half-century. Walker's next five overs went for 49, including a seemingly effortless swish from Lloyd high into the grandstand to bring up the century partnership in 89 minutes.

For Aussies, death didn’t come without chances for survival. There was a golden chance, early on, when ball deflected off the 3 pound weapon with Lloyd still on 26, but that extra butter on Ross Edwards’ fingers proved to be too costly for the Kangaroos. After that, the storm continued till next 36 overs and when it finally abated West Indies were comfortable placed on 199/4. 

The blitzkrieg comprised of 12 boundaries and 2 sixes. When he finally left, being caught brilliantly by Rod Marsh off Glimour, 26000 spectators rose to their feet in awe. 

“I have to pay tribute to Clive Lloyd, his innings was magnificent and it was this that changed the game at the first place…,” said Ian Chappell, after the game got over.

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Gilmour- 'Six for' and a bit more

"You never knew with Ian Chappell what was going to happen until it happened," said Gary Gilmour, in an interview with The Age, much later after his name got embalmed in pages of history.   

It was unexpected, to say the least, or else, who would have expected the water boy of the previous matches to leave the royal Brits gasping for water, that too, in their own backyard. 

Throughout the World cup, Gilmour had been warming the benches, swatting flies and minding his mane. It was sheer serendipity that Gary (or Gus as he is fondly called) got included in the playing eleven for the semi-final against England. 

More surprising was the fact that he was called in to replace Ashley Mallet, the only specialist spinner in that Aussie side of flame-throwers. 

But this event, however fortuitous, wasn’t much of a cosmetic makeover for the game.

Even without Gilmour, cricket would have remained the same. Pretty much like the apple from the tree: had it not fallen before Newton, we surely wouldn’t have been walking upside down. 

Still both are much cherished historical incidents. While the former remains naked to literary and scientific mutilation, the latter stays safe in attics of those who were present at the Headingley stadium on June 18, 1975.

That field at Headingley would have been any swing bowler’s dream. The sun pampered by the cotton cloud; the pitch, a patch of luscious lush green- what more could a 2 match old bowler ask for? 

"They kept shouldering arms and the ball swung back in and did the rest," Gus recalls. "I wanted to bowl and bowl. I didn't want my overs to run out."

He was trusted to open the attack with Deniss Lillee, ahead of the more popular Jeff Thomson. Chappell had intended bowling him from the Kirkstall Lane End, but Lillee wanted to come downhill. So the junior bowler, as customs suggest, had to switch to the other end. 

His uninterrupted 12 overs from that same end with figures of 6/14, spares me from elaborating further. While, five batsmen fell for his in-swingers, Tony Greig was the only one to edge an away-swinger to an air-borne Rod Marsh. 

England’s innings ended, but that wasn’t a full-stop on the day’s affairs. If his six wickets were a session of stormy love-making, the much-pampered leather, soon, parted loyalty and, almost tragically, had run into the arms of the opposition.

England, folded up for a paltry 93, came back with reinstated vigor in the form of Chris Old, Geoff Arnold and John Snow. It was coin’s flipside, and the Kangaroos were reeling at 39/6 when Gilmour came in to join Doug Walters. 

Credit for heroics must partly go to his fly swatting exercises while sitting idle. He swung the blade left, swung it right, made the more-experienced Walters stand audience, and then put a full-stop on England’s Cup dreams. 

Gus had smashed a run-a-ball 28 adding to his 6 wicket glory. 

"It was one of those days," he says, "that happen once or twice in your lifetime."

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