INDIA TRIUMPH AGAINST AUSTRALIA

One of the great pleasures in my life is watching International Test Cricket. It raises passions, draws exceptional performances from those who play and, over a five day period, the ebbs and flows, ins and outs and the highs and lows of the game can result in a sporting experience unmatched in any other game. Even the current fetish with Twenty-Twenty and One Day Games, whilst they can be hugely exciting, can’t bring out the chess-like thrusts and parries which only a five day game can generate.

The number of national teams in the World which can compete at the highest level does not reach anywhere near double figures. As I write, the two best teams on the Planet, India and Australia, are locking horns in the second of a 4 match series in the sub-continent, so the TV is getting a fair amount of use.

MY FAVOURITE BATSMAN, VIRENDER SEHWAG IN ACTION

It is not easy to identify many things in life where Australia lead the world, but sport in general is one where they have punched way above their weight for many years. Swimming, Athletics, Tennis and Golf come immediately to mind, but in the field of Cricket, they have been the World No. 1 team on average for the good part of 70 years. Yes, there have been times when England and the West Indies particularly, have had the upper hand, but it doesn’t seem to last for too long.

PONTING TRYING AND FAILING TO RUN SEHWAG OUT

For the last 15 years or so however, they have been THE team to beat – except that almost no-one has managed to do it. England managed it in 2005, but only just. They’ve almost come to expect winning and domination as their right. But, over the last year, we’ve seen the major stars in a blindingly good Australian side depart the stage. Gilchrist, Gillespie, Warne and McGrath were all the best in the world at what they did, and they’ve all gone. Today, Hayden is on the wane, Ponting has had his share of injuries, and, all of a sudden, to me they look vulnerable, rather than dominating and all conquering.

India, as well, have been in a state of change. Many of their great stars are reaching the end of their careers, and they have started a wholesale “move to youth”. In the next year or two, we will see the end of great players like Kumble, Tendulkar, Gambir and Dravid, and time will herald a new order of Indian players. You can see it already with people like Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ishant Sharma, Amit Mishra and the like who are well on the way to replacing these elder statesmen.

There must be something rather reprehensible in me where I get more pleasure than I should by seeing Australia under the cosh. In this match, they were not just beaten, they were utterly outplayed in every department of the game, with India registering their most emphatic Test win ever. I mean you just don't beat Australia by 320 runs.

But for once, the Aussies took it on the chin. Ponting recognised they had been thrashed and set out to move on, Be in no doubt, they’ll be back, but with no spinners in the team whom the captain trusts with the ball, Hayden playing most bizarrely, Brett Lee for once looking very ordinary, Ponting getting in all manner of difficulties facing Sharma, and only Clarke and Johnson showing any resistance in the Australian’s second innings, you wonder what’s going to happen to turn it all around for them in the next seven days.

It does beg the question as to whether we’re seeing the sunset performances of the Aussies for a couple of years. If you were Kevin Pietersen, you might be thinking that the stars are lining up in just about the right alignment for next year’s Ashes contest in England.

I, for one, can’t wait.

Tags:cricket,
india,
australia,
test matches

VIRENDER SEHWAG'S STUNNING INNINGS

SEHWAG, CAUGHT BRILLIANTLY BY A "SUN" PHOTOGRAPHER

Regular readers of this tiny corner of the Internet will by now, have picked up on my love of cricket. Having just watched England, over the last few weeks, dutifully beating a depleted New Zealand team, the interest has now switched to a “Top of the Table” Test Series in India, where the home side takes on South Africa.

If you assume that Australia are still the best side in the world (and I’m actually not quite sure about that), then you’d probably say that this series is between the second and third best sides in the World at present, playing to become heir apparent. So there’s a lot to play for.

Day Three of the First Test has just finished, and I’ve just watched the most blistering innings I can ever recall. Over the first two days, South Africa fought their way rather effectively to a tremendous score of 540. Alright, it was on a batting paradise of a wicket, but it still left India a massive psychological task to knuckle down and match such a huge score. If it had been England under the cosh, you would have worried every ball about a batting collapse, to be followed, as night follows day, by a humiliating Follow On.

Not India - they’ve just finished the day at 468 for 1 wicket, with Virender Sehwag unbeaten on 309. Triple centuries are very rare beasts, and on a day when temperatures were stratospheric and the humidity was a bit like a sauna, Sehwag blasted his way to his 300 score in 278 balls. This is the fewest ever in Test cricket, beating Wally Hammond’s record which has stood for 75 years by an unbelievable 77 balls. If you don't accept Hammond's record, where the number of balls was estimated, then the next best is Matthew Hayden, at 360 balls. Just do the maths, and marvel!

TAKING THE PLAUDITS - HE PLAYED FLAWLESSLY

To my simple mind, when this guy is “on song”, he is the most exciting batsman on Earth, only Sri Lanka’s Sangakkara being remotely comparable. He hits the ball all over the ground with an arrogant ferocity which must put the fear of God into any opposition captain. You could see the despair in the bowlers – there was nowhere on the pitch they could bowl that was safe from him. So far in this innings, he's hit 41 Fours and 5 Sixes. As a comparison Alistair Cook, England's opener, hit his first Test Cricket Six ever (out of nearly 3000 runs) in New Zealand the other day - and that hit was a fluke top edge over the Wicket keeper!

And this all came from a man who is not sure of his place in the team! A very revealing comment from him after the day’s play shows just how much difference there is in the mindsets of Sehwag and several of the current England batsmen. When asked how he managed to concentrate (he was batting all day and some of yesterday, with almost no errors made) – “It hurt when I was not in the team so I had to prove myself and I want to get back my seat so that's why I can concentrate and it's good for me and I think I'll continue in the next two Tests." I bet that makes South Africa really happy.

Goodness knows what awaits us tomorrow, as India need to carry on, still trailing by 72 runs. If things go well for them, you could easily see them carrying on for most of another day, with the mouth-watering thought of Sehwag playing the highest Test scoring innings ever. He only needs to score another 92 runs – about 10 overs at the rate he can score, if he gets going! And if you want to look at another record, India were the team on the end of a farcical score of 952 for 6 (it’s the 6 wickets that that makes the knife really twist), made by Sri Lanka 11 years ago, so they might even think of getting that record erased if they think a draw is likely!

From South Africa’s viewpoint, you could feel their demoralisation when they saw what they thought was their dominating total of 540 being taken brutally apart by some of the most inspired, and inspiring hitting you will ever see.

It was an absolute joy to watch. Thank goodness for my Sky+ box. It’s just gone Midnight, and I’m going to sit through it again.

We need to get the England team to watch it all. Actually perhaps not. This would blow their confidence wide apart, and with India visiting these shores in a couple of months for a Test Series against Mr Vaughan and his Merry Men, I think we’re going to need all the help we can get.

Tags:sehwag,india,cricket,south africa

SLEDGING PUTS CRICKET ON SLIPPERY SLOPE

I have spent the last few days swanning around in Norfolk, walking the dogs on the beach and generally doing not very much. Apart, that is, from ringing work colleagues up to ask them what they are doing, and timing how long it takes for the torrent of abuse to start.

As anyone who reads a newspaper will now be aware, Australia played India in the 2nd match of a Test Series over the last few days. I (or more precisely my Sky+ Box) spent the nights diligently recording the play live, and I then spent the days, and the aptest word here is undoubtedly INDOLENTLY, replaying the action. I have to say, if you’d watched it as a Cricket match, with the sound turned down, you’d have got to the end with extremely mixed feelings, but having watched a real Roller Coaster.

It was a very, and I mean very, exciting match which veered, and on occasions careered, from one side to the other remarkably quickly. Firstly Australia, down and out at 134 for 6 (out of which please note – Ponting lbw bowled Harbhajan Singh - 55), ended up making a further 329 runs before their last wicket fell at 463. Andrew Symonds played a majestic, mature, intelligent and remarkably responsible innings ending up with 162 Not Out. The only real problem from the Indians viewpoint was he was unarguably out to a thick edge when he was on 30. But there you go – that’s cricket.

The Indians were 1 down for 8 runs, and you thought – here we go. Dravid scraped his way rather agonisingly to 54, and was given out wrongly, and badly wrongly, by Umpire Bucknor. But VVS Laxman made an excellent 109, and Tendulkar, who, it must be said, struggled at first, but played with terrific grit, concentration and flair in the end, ended up brilliantly unbeaten on 154. Harbhajan Singh (it’s him again), their off-spinner, added 63 runs of his own, in a great 8th Wicket partnership of 129. I love watching the fielding side getting increasingly pissed off when the rubbish tail-enders put a really good score together. The Indians, extremely unexpectedly, ended up with 532, 69 ahead of the home side.

Australia went at it again in their second innings, and seemed to bat for ever. They got to 250 for 2 (including Ponting c Laxman b Harbhajan Singh – 1). With good centuries coming from Mathew Hayden (123) and Mike Hussey (145 Not Out), they crawled up to 401 before declaring, leaving India to get 333 on the remaining part of the last day, in very short order. Once again in the 2nd Australian innings, the Indians must have felt the umpire was playing 12th Man for the Home Side when he gave Hussey the benefit of a microscopically small lbw doubt when he was on 20.

The rest of the story is History. It looked for almost all of the day that Ponting had been too greedy, and the Indians would play out a draw. In a last ditch, “try anything” effort, Ponting gave the ball to Michael Clarke, their No 5 batsman, who then ended up 11 balls later with the hysterically improbable figures of 3 wickets for 5 runs, and the Indians in despair. In his proper job as No 5 batsman for the Australians in this game, Clarke scored a total of 1 run, and was in the middle for a total of 5 balls. Bizarre.

To say the Indians felt robbed is an understatement, and it is difficult not to feel a huge amount of sympathy for them. Suffering from some of the worst umpiring I’ve seen for a while, they could point to a little matter of 257 runs scored by Hayden and Symonds when both had been clearly out, as well as Dravid being cut down just when he’d started to play some decent strokes. But, if you want a One way then the Other way type of excitement in a Cricket game, watch a copy of this one. You can't come to any conclusion other than that crass umpiring cost the Indians the game. they would not have won, but they would not have lost either.

But then, of course, we get the Harbhajan v Symonds “monkey” discussion. And who knows where that’s going to lead? Why can’t these guys behave like grown ups, at least when they’re on a cricket field playing fro their country?

Perhaps the real cause is that we have an International Cricket Board who seem to have no idea how to address the issue of “sledging”. Here we are in Australia, where, in its modern form, it was invented, honed, polished and turned into an Antipodean Art form. It’s been going on for decades – and, on occasions in the past, in a much wittier form. As an aside, try Bill Woodfull, Australia’s captain (note the country of origin even 70 years ago) in the Bodyline series of 1932-33, responding to Douglas Jardine's complaint that a slip fielder had sworn at him: “All right, which one of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?”

Trawl the Internet today and you don’t need to look far to find pages of the “Best 10 Sledges of All time”. The interesting thing is, for the first one I looked at, 9 of the 10 involved, guess who – our Australian friends.

I have no idea whether Harbhajan Singh called Andrew Symonds “a monkey”. Whether the comments are about race, colour, size, sexuality, their opponent’s wives, their appetite for other men’s wives (and their pets), these goings-on have been going on for too long, and it strikes me as childishly and naively inappropriate to jump on the issue in such a ham-fisted way. The authorities can’t be stupid enough not to realise what the potential consequence of their actions was likely to be. Why can’t either of the Umpires get the message to the team captains on the field? Are they so emasculated now? Why can’t the match referees feel the collars of the worst exponents, and advise them that the clock’s ticking? Why can’t the authorities make it unequivocally known what they wan’t and what they are going to do if they don’t get it? Why can’t they befuddle this particular issue to give them time to build an intelligent and workable strategy to combat it all?

But look at who made the complaint in this match. One Ricky Ponting. Now I think Ponting is arguably the best batsman in the world. But here’s a man who has been dismissed by the man he is now accusing, on 8 occasions in the last 8 Tests they’ve both played in. Ponting almost looked in the second innings here as if he was under a Harbhajan spell - and he got 1 run and stayed in for 4 very jittery balls. You could be forgiven for thinking rather cynically that with Harbhajan properly out of the way, he might just be able to get a decent score going in this series. Just a thought.

It does irritate me, at least, after a terrific cricket match, that Ponting either felt the need or allowed it to escalate this in the way he did. There’s a feeling of “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”, or is it “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”, or possibly “Stop being a Great Wus”, about it all.

No-one doubts that the whole “sledging” issue needs to be addressed. But why do we seem to have people in charge of the game who seem unable to understand that there are more ways of killing a cat than smashing it over the head with a brick.

I was going to suggest the Authority's approach should be “Softly, Softly, Catchy Monkey”, but that would not have been in the best possible taste.

So I won’t.

Tags:

ponting,
harbhajan,
australia,india,
cricket,
test match

DID ENGLAND'S SLOW OVER RATE LOSE THE MATCH?

What a good Test match it’s been. And how heartening to see a relatively new set of England bowlers coming together in such a great way. Sidebottom, Tremlett, Anderson and Panesar is not a list you’d expect to see playing a top class line up like India, and it’s only like that because of major bowling injuries for Harmison, Hoggart and Flintoff.

I'VE BORROWED THIS TERRIFIC SHOT OF RYAN SIDEBOTTOM FROM GETTY IMAGES

But, to a man, they all played terrific cricket, were not fazed by it all, and did a first class job all round. It will make the “first pick” bowlers sleep a little uneasily to watch, particularly if they can repeat the performance in the second Test which starts on Friday with an unchanged side.

England so nearly made it, but it’s worth some statistician poring over England’s over rate today. I got the distinct feeling all during the day that, with a little more captainly foresight, knowing the Weather forecast as he would have done, that they could have bowled a few more overs than they did. And who knows what that might have resulted in.

It’s easy to be critical, sitting watching a TV set, but the low over rate of modern test Cricket is one thing that does continually niggle. Usually, it ends up not mattering much, but today, I was left with a real feeling that the result of the match could have been decisively affected by this one issue.

Apart from that, from England’s point of view, it was a pretty good game, especially by their bowlers. Off now to Trent Bridge.

Tags:

cricket,
england,
india,lords,
test match