… a bad win

(A kind of a sequel to ‘A good loss…’)

As India was serenely marching towards a hopefully progressive loss to Sri Lanka in the test series yesterday, England compounded their worries by winning the dead rubber test match against South Africa. Well as Kevin Pietersen captained and batted, well as Steve Harmison bowled (and batted) and well as England turned in a good all-round performance, the Pyrrhic victory can, if not seen in the proper light, cause more harm than good for England. For England’s selectors might well be tempted to brush some of the niggles in the team composition under the carpet and start seeing visions of yet another glorious victory parade at end of the next season.

Unlike the Indian team, this English team perhaps does not seem to need a large scale transformation. But there are some areas they need to watch out for, if they want a repeat of mirabilis 2005 and not of horribilis 2006-07.

The first act England has to get right is their thinking on the wicket-keeper’s slot. Sure, people like Adam Gilchrist and Kumar Sangakkara have given us the concept of the wicket-keeper-as-specialist- batsman. But let’s not forget that both of them (and Mark Boucher, another more than useful bat) are wonderful glovemen. The first job of the wicket-keeper is behind the wickets, and if he’s not good enough for that, a few runs in front of the wicket doesn’t compensate. Moreover, if the wicket-keeper has a bad day on the field, it is bound to reflect on his batting. Ask Tim Ambrose, Matt Prior and the few dozen others who turned up in English colours in the last few years. The flip side is true as well – a good performance behind the stumps can make the ‘keeper bat better. Look at Prasanna Jayawardene’s brilliance behind the stumps in the test series against India, and his then more than useful batting at a crucial time in the third test.

Now that we have had our fill of his grand appealing and not-so-grand fielding, it’s time to focus on Monty Panesar’s day job. While his performance has not been particularly bad, the fact remains that he does not seem to be a strike bowler, a bowler capable of singlehandedly winning test matches. Good for a few good spells, good for the odd wicket, but not much more than that. A glance at his records suggests that he has a problem bowling well in both innings of a test match. Apart from the one 10-for against the West Indies and the eight wicket haul against Pakistan (interestingly both at Manchester), there has rarely been a game when Monty has shone equally well in both innings. And in most test matches, you have to dismiss the opposition twice to win.

The England top order, in the absence of Michael Vaughan and the return to form of Paul Collingwood looks misleadingly settled. Pietersen is good as they come and Alastair Cook is looking settled, even if unable to convert enough half-centuries into centuries (his fielding inconsistency is a bit jarring as well). But in Andrew Strauss and Ian Bell one senses a soft spot in the top order. Strauss has never been the same after the selectors kept misusing him as a stand-in captain. (Even his success in that role seemed to make things more uncomfortable for all concerned, including himself.) The self-doubt, and the corresponding uncertainty of footwork and shot selection was well capitalised on by South Africa and the Aussies wouldn’t need much invitation to do likewise. Ian Bell needs to be a bit more than just a useful scrapper – apart from those three centuries in the 2006 series against Pakistan, his other five test centuries have been too far apart from each other. And whispers of his being a flat wicket bully are mounting. His coming in at No. 3 can put pressure on Nos. 4 and 5.

The English bowling line-up also presents a deceptively potent face. But James Anderson and Steve Harmison are both loose cannons, so the best England can hope for is that one of them fires in a match. (And don’t bet on Harmy going off kilter again.) The steadiness of a Ryan Sidebottom complements them well, one only hopes he sustains his momentum and keeps himself fit. And then there are the all-rounders.

I can’t remember when England had last had the luxury of two all-rounders (no, Ashley Giles was not an all-rounder, he could barely bowl), but in Stuart Broad and Andrew Flintoff (hopefully fully fit) they have that potential now. Except that the role definitions of these two blokes needs to be clearly charted out. Broad, notwithstanding Geoffrey Boycott’s irrational exuberance in comparing him with Sir Garfield Sobers, is clearly a bowling all-rounder – bowl about 20 overs a day and support the late middle order with some useful runs. If he starts focusing on those 50s and 100s as a batsman, he’ll be heading back to Nottingham sooner than he’d want to. As for Freddie, KP can’t afford to do the Vaughan and overbowl this man. Freddie can be talismanic to the team, and hence needs to be preserved. He’s not quite a Kallis in terms of stamina in both roles, so he needs to be used as a high-class bits and pieces player, oxymoronic as that expression may sound. Except in exceptional cases, get him to bowl about 15 overs a day and score some useful 50s at No. 6.

The good thing for England is that they seem to have cottoned on to a good captain, a captain who deserves his place in the team, who is perhaps the best player in the team, who is aggressive and who can take control of a game. He may not have a history of being a people’s person, but if he manages to get his aggression and performance to rub off on the others, he would’ve done his job. And yes, it will help if the Englishmen don’t train him to become too English in his approach. The South African in him is important if England want to benefit from his captaincy.

A good loss...

While a series loss is not a thing to celebrate, it was good that India lost the test and the series today. Imagine if India had contrived to win at the SSC today (in a reprise of Melbourne 1981, as a colleague fervently hoped). The gaping holes in the middle order would have been covered up with the inevitable explanations that accompany a heady victorious feeling: ‘They’re just one good knock away from success’, ‘It was just a one-off failure’, ‘They are great players, they will bounce back’… The spin twins would have been forgiven, why, even feted for their game efforts. And the general feeling would’ve been that all is well with Indian cricket.

Thankfully (no, I am not being cynical or defeatist here), India lost. Which means, hopefully, questions will be asked. And more hopefully, answers will be found. Sweeping changes are generally seen as over-reactions but may be it’s time to bring the broom out.

I believe there are possibly six slots open in the Indian test team. And that’s not counting the wicket-keeper’s slot into which MS Dhoni will surely walk in when he wants. (Is Dhoni indulging in his privileges a bit too much, one wonders, but that’s not the point of this post.)

Rahul Dravid has not been the same player ever since he resigned from the captaincy – even that tour of England, his last as captain, was forgettable for Dravid the batsman. He has managed just one hundred in some 12 test matches after that English tour, and even that was on the Chennai featherbed against South Africa. More than the loss of form (to counter those ‘form is temporary…’ arguments), Dravid looks positively agonised at the crease (and on the field – remember the catches he has dropped) – surely things we don’t know are going on in the man’s mind. It’s tempting to conjecture, but let’s move on.

It is sacrilege to talk of dropping Sachin Tendulkar, you might as well ask for God to be deemed human. But Sachin, his fans (remember to include me in that gang) and the selectors will have to face the hard facts. The wizard’s performance in Australia is certainly something to savour but one cannot forget that he is aging and the injuries have become more frequent. The scores in this series – 27, 12, 5, 31, 6 and 14 – surely don’t present a pretty picture, but more than the runs, the manner of the dismissals make for some really depressing viewing. Not reading Muthiah Muralitharan off the hand in the first innings of the first test, chasing a wide Chaminda Vaas delivery in the second innings of the second and twice padding up to incoming deliveries in third – fairly village, to be honest.

Sourav Ganguly may feel that he is the most under the scanner every time India under-performs. But then, considering he has the lowest batting average among the fab four should mean something. Moreover, after that dream series against Pakistan, barring a couple of fighting fifties at Sydney, a fifty in a losing cause against South Africa at Ahmedabad and another match-winning one against the same team at Kanpur, Sourav has done little to help his cause. The predictability of his dismissals – poking to slip seems to be his stock shot nowadays – makes him a sitting duck nowadays.

VVS Laxman may statistically have been the best of the four in the series, with scores of 56, 21, 39, 13, 25 and 61 not out, but those numbers are hardly Bradmanesque. Moreover, Laxman’s inability (it seemed as much unwillingness to me) to marshal the tail came to the fore again. This time it suggested a clear focus on playing for his place in the team rather than for the team, and that alone is reason enough to go the distance with the man. A round 6000 runs in test cricket is perhaps appropriate for this stylist, and ending tantalisingly short of 100 tests (he has 96 now) is also fitting for the man who, with a test average of 43.79, remains perhaps one of the bigger underachievers in Indian cricket.

It’s also worth looking closely at the performance of our spin twins, Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh. In a series in which Ajantha Mendis and Muthiah Muralitharan decisively grabbed 47 of the 60 Indian wickets to fall, Kumble and Harbhajan managed 24 out of the 38 Sri Lankan wickets to fall, 15 of which came in the second test. But while the M & M gang took wickets in a manner that was aggressive and confident, the same can’t be said of the Indian duo. There is a certain defensiveness about both of them, a certain lack of faith in their own abilities, evidenced by how they let Mahela Jayawardene manipulate them at will in Kandy and Kumar Sangakkara likewise at the SSC.

Time to go, gentlemen.

The original cricketer

You thought that when it was said of Ranji that he “never played a Christian shot in his life” it was just a figure of speech? Well, it appears there is more to it than that, it was perhaps an almost literal reference if this recent story is true: it appears that Jesus played cricket as a child. Read on here.

Action replay

Watching Ajantha Mendis bowl is a sublime pleasure. A smooth unfussy action, a grip as unique as anything we’ve seen in world cricket and a beguiling bag of tricks (especially the carrom ball) that makes batsmen wonder whether they would be better off signing up for the ICL. The sight of Mendis in action sent my mind back to all the bowlers I’ve seen in action in the last 25-some years, to the bowling actions that are still vivid in my mind purely for the fact that they were different from the rest of the pack. Here are ten picks, not in any particular order and not by any means comprehensive. And just to reduce the recency effect, the list does not include any current players.

It cannot be otherwise, a list of unforgettable bowling actions has to start with the man with the most evocative of nicknames, Whispering Death. While I’ve seen a YouTube video of that over to Geoffrey Boycott, my memory of watching live action of Michael Holding is mostly from the evening of his career, when he cut down his pace and was more a line-and-length second change bowler. I remember feeling sorry for the man because he once snared a batsman out caught and bowled. ‘Caught and bowled? Isn’t that a spinner’s mode of dismissal?’ thought my youthfully ignorant mind. But the grace of the man’s bowling action was no less even in those twilight days of an indisputably great career. Just for the perfection of his action, he deserved one more wicket in his test career – 249 is just not Holding.

The only thing I shared in common with this great was a lack of height relative to my cricket-playing school mates. But that was precisely what made me try to imitate his action: the energetic run up in short strides, the little leap before delivery, the chest on posture before delivery with the hand framing the face in a perfect right angle, all culminating in a vicious wicket-taking delivery more often than not. OK, I didn’t manage that last part too well but Malcolm Marshall certainly did, with 376 times in test matches.

He’s considered the most creative fast bowler to have inhabited this planet and few would disagree with that assessment. Years after Alan Davidson, the world had a left-arm fast bowler of genuine class when Wasim Akram was plucked out of nowhere by Imran Khan. The bustling run up, the pendulum-like action, the whippy action almost off the wrong foot, the follow through that was more of a run-through and the limitless variety made him one of the most watchable bowlers in world cricket. (I remember the phrase ‘bends the ball’ being used for the first time in connection with Akram.) And then there was the appealing and the subsequent celebration – sheer ecstasy. Remember his celebrations after dismissing Krishnamachari Srikkanth and Mohinder Amarnath (in successive balls) in the Bangalore test against India in the 1986-87 series?

It’s an action I rate as imposing as Michael Holding’s, probably more fearsome even. Augmented by the sun cream on the lip that made him look even more formidable, Allan Donald was truly a sight to behold. Marry that with some genuine pace and unrelenting aggression and you get a great career record. The brilliant smile after getting one more opposition wicket matched the ferocity of the wicket-taking act itself. I find the term White Lightning tautological and a touch pejorative, but there is absolutely nothing amiss in Donald’s action.

Back where I grew up in small town South India, jaggery used to be made in the street in the market area. Rows and rows of men used to stand barefoot on mounds and mounds of the raw material and pound at it with their feet. Never mind if you’ve never seen this act in your life, if you’ve seen Patrick Patterson at the top of his run-up, you’ve seen a very good imitation of it. Except that the batsmen didn’t find the end-product too sweet. A pity he didn’t play more than 28 test matches, but then a bowling average of 30.90 just wouldn’t do for the West Indies in those halcyon days.

English cricketers of the last two decades may not believe it but England actually had a medium pacer who played a significant role in an Ashes victory. Running in from between cover and mid-off, Richard Ellison focused on outswingers that almost mirrored his run-up (in helpful conditions) – ask Allan Border and his cohorts about that delirious (if you’re English, that is) fourth day of the fifth test of the 1985 Ashes as England took a 2-1 lead in the series. Ellison continued the good form into the sixth test as England wrapped up the series 3-1, but his record either side of these two test matches was rather moderate though he ended with a career average of just a dot under 30.

Choosing to be a spinner in the 1980s in the West Indies was as wise as writing capitalist slogans on red curtains. May be Clive Lloyd got fooled when Roger Harper started off from the top of his run-up – those clearly were a fast bowler’s strides. As Harper reached the crease, he slowed down to a complete halt. Then came the graceful high arm delivery, almost in slow motion. Soon Lloyd and his successors (and most of the opposition batsmen, one must admit) saw through Harper’s action, and he got to play only 25 tests, though he ended up with a perfectly respectable bowling average of 28.06. Of course, the one lasting image of Harper in your mind is almost certainly likely to be the run out (or stumped-and-bowled as one commentator gloriously described it) of Graham Gooch in the MCC Bicentenary match in 1987.

The two back-to-back limited overs tournaments in early 1985 constitute perhaps the most glorious phase for the Indian team. One image that stays in my mind from that time is that of Laxman Sivaramakrishnan twirling the ball from one hand to another before beginning his run-up – a friend referred to it rather uncharitably as an elegant version of milking a cow, but that instinctive mannerism of Siva was one of the more mesmerising images of that season. The stumpings of Javed Miandad at the MCG and Imran Khan in Sharjah were sheer magic. A pity the man came to pieces immediately afterwards.

Finding an Australian to fit into this list was the toughest act of them all (I’ve given up on the Kiwis and the Sri Lankans) – nothing wrong with their actions except that they were all so normal and orthodox. Sure there was a buzz when Shane Warne runs in, but it has nothing to do with the action, more with what he made the ball do. Greg Mathews I considered for his tendency to bowl with his hat on, but that was more an eccentricity than an action thing. Bruce Reid looked different only because he extremely lean and lanky. Then the current coach of Pakistan (is he still?) came to mind. Geoff Lawson seemed to have a double action – in the last shuffle before his delivery stride, he almost looked like he was going to deliver the ball. It was another action I attempted to imitate in my school days, but with little success.

Yes, I did mention early on that I have considered only current players for this list, but I sneak in Mushtaq Ahmed because I don’t think he will play any more international cricket, not even for the nation that is known to be the most indecipherable in its selection logic. Mushtaq’s action was impishness itself. You may argue that Abdul Qadir was the original – I agree there are similarities, but I would put Mushtaq’s action ahead of Qadir’s. There was a certain boyishnees about it, the run-up was more energetic and the dimple in the cheek (even the beard he currently sports cannot hide it) as he breaks into a wide grin after befuddling yet another Englishman was a sight for sore eyes. You’re tempted to imagine that if he had been handled better by the selectors, he would have done much better than finish with a rather modest 185 wickets at 32.87 in 52 tests.

What other names come to your mind?

Oh captain my captain

It is no surprise that Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood have given it up – it is not easy captaining the English cricket team in today’s era. The demands are just impossible.

To begin with, the selectors, the media, the public all want their captain to score runs. Where would they have found Mike Brearley if that had been the condition in the 1970s? Or Mike Denness before him? Even Vaughan resigned because such inhuman demands were placed on him. There’s one of two things he can do: pat his bowlers in the back after grounding yet another catch or launch into a flowing cover drive. Which would make a bigger difference to his team’s fortunes you think?

The media in particular (and we know how they rule the selectors’ minds, don’t we?) wants the captain to be kind to their representatives as well. So when Vaughan questions the cricketing records of a journalist, he’s pilloried. There’s no place for a candid captain nowadays, is there? Now who else does this expectation rule out?

As I write this piece, national selector Geoff Miller comes up with a new demand: he wants one person for both the test and the limited overs captaincy. It’s a shame on Andrew Strauss, isn’t it? May be he can offer to keep wickets in one-dayers. He does have a successful precedent in India’s Rahul Dravid, doesn’t he?

Some sections of stakeholders (selectors, officials, media, the public, the blogerati, the neighbourhood dog) are beginning to ask for experience in a captain as well. Come now, imagine the kind of people whose services England would have lost out if such a silly demand had been taken seriously in the past – Tony Lewis and Chris Cowdrey are just two illustrious names I would like to mention. I fear we may have lost the services of that wizard, Robert Key, for good (or bad, come to think of it). Alastair Cook, as an extension of the same logic, may be deemed too green just now.

Finally, and this is surely the work of a Tony Greig baiter, there are ear-splitting whispers that the selectors should stick to true Englishmen as captains, not people who adopted England as their country. So that puts paid to the hopes of Kevin Pietersen – he can win matches for England with his bat, no problem, but he can’t use his brains to lead them to victory. The English have a nation to defend, what is a few losses on the field?

So who does that leave us with? Andrew Flintoff? Will he behave with the media? Ian Bell? Isn’t he likely to be too aggressive? Ryan Sidebottom? Now why is no one talking of his candidature?