The First Test

(On the occasion of the 132^nd birthday of test cricket, I look back at the first test I watched live on television.)

It was the days when I had just got initiated into this game called cricket, the days when the names of Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev (G R Vishwanath was my favourite though) were beginning to become familiar when we played street cricket.

I had listened to some radio commentary earlier with some friends, when Pakistan toured India, and to our delight, India won. But the concept of watching cricket on television (and live cricket at that), was still not even a thought in our minds. It was the days when television was not an assumed appliance in all households, at least not whereabouts I lived, this town called Tiruchirapalli, in the heartland of Tamil Nadu.

School closed for Christmas on Friday, 18 December, ‘81 and was scheduled to re-open on Monday, 4 January ‘82. The plan for the fortnight was the usual – play cricket on the streets until we get dirty and tired, come home to wash and eat, repeat process until the sun decides its time to stop. Then sit outside the house of one of us and talk about what we played until it was dinner time. Except that my dad had a surprise in store for me.

It was Sunday evening, and we had just had our dinner. Then my dad said to me, ‘I am going to Kumbakonam on Tuesday. Do you want to come with me?’ I was wondering why I should go to Kumbakonam of all places. Yes, a couple of my uncles lived there, but the children of one were much older than me and those of the other, mere tots. So what will I do there? ‘Raju uncle [the older uncle] has a television at home and you can watch the England-India test match there.’ Ah, now he was talking.

On the evening of Tuesday, 22^nd December, I was packed and all set to travel the 150 kilometres that separated me and a live test match on television. The uncomfortable bus journey barely registered as we reached Raju mama’s home at some nine in the night.

The third test match of the series was due to begin the next day. I remembered reading about India’s victory in the first test. I recalled how I felt Madan Lal was the better bowler in the England second innings because he conceded only 23 runs in 12 overs while Kapil Dev was profligate in giving away 70 runs in 13.2 overs, and they took five wickets each. The difference between dismissing David Gower and Graham Dilley had not sunk in yet. I also remembered the drawn second test for Krish Srikkanth’s first test half century (65 off 88 balls – a rapid-fire innings for those days, especially for that series) and Gavaskar’s monumental if dreadfully slow (even for those days, even for that series) 172.

I woke up on the morning of Wednesday 23 December 1981, bright and eager. My first test of live cricket on television, and I was justifiably excited. Morning coffee, bath, dressing up, brunch, all done by 9.30 am, well in time for the 10 o’clock start.

It didn’t strike me then, but later years made me reflect on it, it seemed like I was not the only one who was excited with the prospect of the test match. Raju uncle’s son, Ashok, much older to me, was also enjoying his Christmas vacation, so he was also all set to watch the game. Ashok’s grandfather also was a cricket freak and he was with us as well. So were a couple of uncle’s assistants (uncle was a lawyer), for whom, I suspect, it was a way to be at work but not work.

So, the clock slowly crawled to 10, and Doordarshan brought cricket to the drawing room. Keith Fletcher won the toss and, expectedly, chose to bat first. Graham Gooch and Geoffrey Boycott were the openers. The little cricket I knew then told me that Gooch was the more watchable of the two. But on that monumental day, there wasn’t much to separate the two. How I wish by that I meant Boycott played aggressively! But no, Gooch decided to emulate his senior partner and ground his way to 71 runs of 176 balls. But even then he outscored his partner, the score being 132 when he got out. Who should succeed him but the Boycott-clone Chris Tavaré, and between the two of them they batted the day out, England finishing on a rather pedestrian 190 for 1, Boycott having inched along to 86 with Tavaré on a relatively quick 25.

It wasn’t a great day of cricket in terms of the action, but for me it was still exciting. Of course, I had a sinking feeling that India won’t be able to win this test. But this was the 1980s, so a draw was still good enough, and I fancied our chances on that front.

Day 2 was relatively breath-taking. Boycott got out soon after reaching his century, and I guess even the English must have felt relieved to see him go, making as he did 105 in 285 balls. But what followed next was even more exciting for me. That stylist, David Gower made his way to the crease, and I was looking forward to some exciting stroke-play from him. But he lasting only three deliveries, falling leg before to Madan Lal. If it was a dodgy decision, Doordarshan didn’t explain overmuch. But two wickets on the same score had me salivating. And I knew Fletcher, who walked in next, was on a second wind, and hence should not be difficult to dislodge. However, it was the featherbed called the Kotla, and Fletcher stayed. Tavaré played perhaps the most aggressive innings of his life as he ended the day with 133 (his maiden test century), having made 108 runs on this day alone – he must’ve gone to confessional that night. With Fletcher making 51 off 107 and then Ian Botham coming in and taking the bowlers on with a frightening innings of 47 not out, England finished the day on a comfortable 428 for 4.

The next day was December 25 and was thus the rest day. It was the longest day of my life until then. Sure the cricket was not riveting, but when there is no cricket, what do you do? I was in a new city, I had no friends, I had no books. It was worse than watching Boycott bat. But, like with all things good or bad, the day got over.

The third day made for good viewing because England kind of collapsed, losing five wickets for 17 runs, Tavaré ending on 149, a career-best as it turned out in the ultimate analysis. To protect Bob Willis from the frightening pace of Madan Lal, Fletcher very kindly declared at 476 for 9. Time for India to bat. Srikkanth started with a boundary, but flattered to deceive, falling for 6 off just four deliveries. Dilip Vengsarkar struggled to 8 off 43 before perishing to Derek Underwood. Gavaskar was marching serenely albeit slowly at the other end when his brother-in-law Vishwanath joined him at 41 for 2. And Vishy was class itself. He lost Gavaskar at 89, but that didn’t deter him as Sandeep Patil joined him. The two were comfortably established as India closed the day on 172 for 3, Vishy on 67 and Patil on 30. Draw was already loudly written on top of this test match.

Day 4 did not start very comfortably for India. Patil perished after adding just a single to his tally, Kirti Azad made a quick 16 and departed, Vishy reached a classy hundred and decided enough’s enough, and Kapil Dev went for 16, out to his all-rounder opponent Botham. At 254 for 7, India was even in danger of being asked to follow on. This was when Syed Kirmani joined a young Ravi Shastri. Neither of them were mugs with the bat, but they weren’t great batsmen either. Shastri was in his early days, and his batting skills hadn’t come to the fore just yet, and Kirmani was but a useful scrapper lower down the order. But today was their day. It wasn’t pretty cricket, but they hung on and took India to 376 for 7 at close, behind England by 100, but close enough to ensure a draw. Shastri not out 48 and Kirmani on a more belligerent 67.

Kirmani fell early on day 5 when that perennial bits-and-pieces man of Indian cricket, Madan Lal joined Shastri with India still 94 runs adrift of England. But the two carried on from where Kirmani left off, and took the score past England’s, before, at 486, Shastri fell to the gentle medium pace of Gooch, seven agonising runs short of what would have been his maiden test century. Immediately afterwards, Madan Lal also fell to Gooch and India ended at 487, a first innings lead of 11. Gooch finished with flattering figures of two for 12 off 8.1 overs. There was just about 90 minutes of play left in the test match, and Gooch and Boycott indulged in some batting practice, stroking 72 off 19 overs (with Gavaskar and Srikkanth turning their arms over as well) before the umpires decided to pull the stumps.

Thus it was, my first test match. Utterly unforgettable, utterly forgettable. Poignantly summed up by who the man of the match was: Christopher James Tavaré. After such a debut, why do I still follow test cricket, you may ask. Well… ask yourself that question too.

The scorecard

Oh for those days… redux

If  it was the memory of Les Taylor and David Gower yesterday, it’s BC Pires’ turn today to make me yearn for the halcyon days when cricket was a game. Pires wants to pit Shoaib Akhtar and Allan Donald against Sunil Gavaskar and Ian Botham. But it’s not the matchup that interested me. It’s Pires’ reasoning to arrive at the choices.

…my choices are living cricketers whose grace and elegance captivated me. Never mind their averages: these are men I could watch bat for duck or bowl 90 overs without taking a wicket.

Oh well…

Oh for those days…

Some random surfing on an idle weekend led me to a certain Leslie Brian Taylor, one of an illustrious line of anonymous seamers to have played for England in the 1980s. The Leicester lad played just two test matches, against Australia in that glorious summer of 1985, when England won the Ashes on the back of David Gower’s dream run with the bat. England won both the tests Les played in, but that is not the point of this post.

Les was apparently a genuine No. 11. In a county game against Surrey, Les walks in after the 9^th wicket falls, with Leicestershire still needing 20 to avoid the follow-on.  The bowler is that gentle medium pacer, Sylvester Clarke. And what does the Leicester captain David Gower do? He says, “I just can't do it,” and declares.

99.94

Some great videos on the great man to mark his 100th birth anniversary here, on a blog rather brilliantly called 99.94. May be we should’ve celebrated the birthday one day ahead to celebrate that tantalising test batting average of the man. Here's the link again.

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?

The pilgrimage

Despite at least half-a-dozen visits to London over the years, the Lord’s Cricket Ground has always proved elusive. Finally, the visit happened over the weekend, on Saturday, 1^st March 2008.

You step out of the tube at St. John’s Wood, and a bright sign greets you at the exit gate: Lord’s Cricket Ground 400 yards. Not a long distance, you think and start hitting the road, ignoring the Beatles’ coffee shop peeking at you from the corner. The first entrance you encounter, the North Gate, is, sure enough, just about 400 yards away. Except that this is England and we are dealing with the MCC, aren’t we, so this is not the entrance that lets you in; you’ve got to walk a further 200 yards or so, before you reach the real portal, the Grace Gate.

So I finally arrive at the Grace Gate at 10.25 am, all ready to be buried in history, tradition and the good doctor’s beard. Except that the ground tours start at 10 am and at 12 noon – too early for the first and too late for the next. After wandering around outside the ground for another hour (wondering about the people living in the vicinity and whether it is good or bad to live around the ground), I come back 11.30 am and start off by making my contribution to the running of the game - £12.

There’s still about 30 minutes to go, so you loiter around the museum. Considering Lord’s claims to be the home of cricket (as the signs outside modestly proclaim), it’s interesting that there are very few articles of interest in the museum outside of England (and, of course, the Ashes). Oh yes, there is a Brian Lara exhibition, on temporarily for Lara’s charity. One of the more interesting exhibits is a bat signed by Sachin Tendulkar with the following inscription.

The whole world knows Brian Lara as a cricket but I am fortunate to know you as both friend and cricketer.

Oh well, I suppose it’s a milder comparison than the monkeys and weeds that seem to be in vogue nowadays.

The tour starts with the long room, which is er, rather long at 90 feet. It feels a bit like a chapel – but surely that’s just the guide’s tone that makes it so. On match day, you can imagine members being too busy with their wine and other assorted liquors to be thinking of much else, oh a bit of the game perhaps, dear chap.

Then we move on to the dressing rooms, the home team’s (England, MCC, Middlesex) and the visitors’. It’s a nice feeling to be in the dressing room balcony, where Sourav Ganguly took his shirt off not too long ago (he was apparently chastised for breaking the dress code). And the walk from the dressing room – down the stairs, past the members and their wine glasses and through the wicket gate – no wonder debutants and first-timers at Lord’s tend to be nervous. But apart that, this is a ground, not a stadium, as the guide emphasises. It’s just a game, not a performance. Indeed.

The honours boards in the dressing rooms lend themselves to some genuinely useless trivia questions. As reward for still reading this post, here’s one for you: Who is the only player to figure in the batting (there’s a clue for you) honours boards in both dressing rooms? (Write in if you know the answer, free publicity guaranteed.) It’s also interesting to note the names that don’t figure on the honours boards – Sunil Gavaskar, Ricky Ponting, Sachin Tendulkar among the batsmen; Imran Khan, Shane Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan among the bowlers, to name just a handful.

The committee room where all the board members meet looks like nothing more than a board room of a corporate organisation. The view from here into the ground seems to be blighted by the sight-screen, except that the sight-screen at Lord’s is a nifty thing – the material is translucent (bordering on the transparent) from the inside and opaque from the outside. Should’ve been canvas or cloth, shouldn’t it, with all the tradition and stuff.

Oh yes, no photography inside the long room or in the dressing rooms. Too sacred or too secret? Just so our cameras don’t go to waste, we go to one of the stands (opposite Father Time, just in case you’re interested), from where we keep going click-click. A sunny day with blue skies affords some splendid scenery – write in for pictures, and I’ll let you have them for a pip.

The Media Centre at Lord’s looks a bit like a mobile phone in a pyramid, but it certainly is swank, well-equipped and roomy. And it affords a fantastic view into the ground. It is from here that one gets a good sense of the famous Lord’s slope – 8 feet 6 inches from one side of the ground to the other. (Considering how well Glenn McGrath exploited it, may be it should now be called the Pigeon’s Beak?)

The Lord’s Shop that rounds off the tour is, not to put too fine a point on it, disappointing, especially the book section. Considering Mike Brearley is the MCC president now, surely The Art of Captaincy should be available? And some of the other classics? The only one I find (and pick up) is A Majestic Innings, a compilation of articles by CLR James.

Membership at about £400 a year does not seem quite too forbidding for Lord’s, except that by the time you get through the waiting list (about 18 years), England may have stopped playing the game.

And the award goes to . . .

The man deserves all the accolades he’s got – upwards of 3500 runs in both tests and one-day internationals and more than 800 wickets between the two forms is no mean achievement. And to upstage an uncle of such calibre as Graeme takes more than just an elegant cover drive with the willow and nagging accuracy with the cherry. Yes, Shaun Maclean Pollock has to count (he may not agree with the choice of word here considering what happened in the 2003 World Cup) as the greatest all-rounder South Africa has produced, and one of the best in the world.

But there is one thing that perhaps should not have gone Shaun’s way. The reference here is to the man-of-the-series award Shaun received (albeit jointly) in the just-concluded one-day series between West Indies and South Africa. Figures of six wickets in 47 overs in the five matches and an aggregate of 43 runs surely didn’t decide the series? Of course, the man was parsimony itself, conceding just 131 runs in those 47 overs, but that’s hardly series-deciding material, is it?

The choice of man of the match and man of the series is one that can be as fascinating as it can be frustrating. Batsmen seem to have the advantage; wicket-keepers never seem to get noticed; and increasingly, a heroic performance in a losing cause doesn’t seem to attract much attention.

In the WSC games of the 1980s (as also in some tournaments at Sharjah around the same time), quite often the choice of the man of the match was made (and even announced) before the game was over. The World Championship of Cricket in 1984 tried a unique points system for deciding the man of the match. Thankfully, it was abandoned – no one outside of those who conceptualised it thought it would really work. And England still has the practice of announcing one player from each team for the man-of-the-series for test matches. (More often than not, that was the only way to fill up trophy cupboards in England, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.)

Rambling time over; it’s time for a stroll down memory lane. Here are five individual award decisions from the 1980s that stick in my mind.

The magnificently named Robert George Dylan Willis, if not for his commentary stints now, could well have become the forgotten man of English cricket. Yes, 325 wickets 90 tests in no mean achievement (especially considering he didn’t manage a single ten-for in a match), but the man seemed to be perennially battling his own demons and peers with more personality. But there is one thing Old Bob can dangle in front of his more publicity-savvy peers – a man-of-the-match award for captaincy in a World Cup game against Sri Lanka in 1983. Rum thing isn’t it, for he who was never really considered captaincy material before this game? And, as it turned out, after?

The fallacy in the points logic for deciding the individual award in the World Championship of Cricket in 1984 stood out starkly in the semi-final between New Zealand and India. Ravi Shastri bowled well enough to take 3 for 31 off his 10 overs, but Madan Lal had picked up 4 for 37 in 8 and Kapil Dev had bowled tightly as usual for figures of 1 for 34 in 10, and he had led the team astutely as well. And when Shastri holed out for a laborious 53 off 84 balls, India was left with 105 runs to get, at, if memory serves me right, close to eight an over – an unthinkable proposition in those days. May be Kapil Dev didn’t think – he just went after the bowling, finished with 54 off 37 balls, and with Dilip Vengsarkar contributing a relatively sedate 63 off 59 balls, India was home with plenty to spare. Man of the match? You got it, Ravi Shastri for his “all-round performance.” Well, he made the game competitive all right. And oh yes, he went on to pick up the man-of-the-series award as well, though that seemed a touch more deserved.

Cut to the Rothmans Cup at Sharjah in the same year. In a series where no batsman really got going, Sunil Gavaskar ended up as the man of the series. Surely 2 runs off 9 balls and 20 off 50 are not match-winning knocks? Well, the little master picked up five catches in the two matches, including four in the famous 125-87 game between the sub-contintental giants.

When Courtney Walsh picks up four wickets for 31 runs in 9.4 overs and Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes slam half-centuries in a nine-wicket rout of Pakistan at Sharjah in 1986, surely one of them should’ve been the man of the match? But a small man came in the way – Gus Logie pocketed three sensational catches (and was involved in the odd run-out as well), and the individual trophy in the bargain.

Chetan Sharma would probably rank as one of the more unfortunate cricketers to have played for India. He was the only one to take a test match ten-for in the golden tour of England in 1986, but that’s not even a trivia question in a local quiz competition. And when he takes the first hat-trick by an Indian in a one-day game (and a World Cup game at that, in the 1987 edition in the sub-continent), the victims are Ken Rutherford, Ian Smith and Ewen Chatfield, not quite tigers with the bat. And to rub salt into the wound, Sunil Gavaskar comes in and plays a thunderous innings, a one-in-a-lifetime affair, and walks away with the man-of-the-match award. But hold on, Gavaskar remembers poor Chetan’s feat, and the award gets shared. Now if only Javed Miandad had been half as generous…