An Australian summer with a difference

It is 5.25 am on Thursday the 8th of November and I am up with a cup of hot tea in my hands, my eyes on the television screen waiting for the test season to begin. For as long as I can remember this is a ritual I have followed. The fact that it drives my wife up the wall has not deterred me from being up and ready to watch the first ball of the Australian test season for years now. In the eighties though it was more in hope, as till 6 am Indian standard time one could only hear the hiss and crackle of Radio Australia or the ABC and not the clear tones of Alan McVilgray’s commentary or the expert comments of Lindsay Hassett. The season of 2007-08 however could be different for Australia and the rest of the cricket following world as it would not be Glenn McGrath who would open the bowling, nor Justin Langer who would be running out to the crease ahead of Mathew Hayden and significantly there would not be the theatrical appealing of Shane Warne to follow when Australia had to bowl or the stylish stroke play of Damien Martyn. If the expectation was that Australia would stutter against Sri Lanka, they sadly did not at the Gabba. They won by a small margin of an innings and 40 runs and cantered to their thirteenth straight test match win in a row. Phil Jacques who has been waiting in the wings for ages for one of the openers to break a leg, scored exactly 100 and Mitchell Johnson who took the new ball took crucial wickets. Significantly Stuart MacGill got his 200th test wicket with a classic leg break that turned a mile with an admirable loop that would have gladdened the heart of V V Kumar, a bowler of my time and home state, yes Madras! Ponting, unlike some of his earlier counterparts enforced the follow on and the match went on till lunch after the fifth day thanks to the inclement weather and some unexpected resistance from Vandort, the tall, gangling left-hander. Muralitharan got two wickets closer to Warne’s record and is now within shouting distance, though Australia will resist his bid stoutly at Hobart and Cricket Australia has already blocked news agencies from covering the games at least till the time of writing. I am sure the Englishmen will oblige as they normally do when they tour the troubled islands later this month and photographers will be waiting in Sri Lanka to capture the exploits of the record-breaking off spinner. So the Australian dominance continues as they won the first test match without breaking into a sweat although they did get a bit wet. Australia have not lost a test match at the Gabba since 1988, a reflection as much of their dominance as the reluctance of the rest of the world to challenge them at home and outside.

On to Hobart and I had to get up half an hour earlier as the match started at 5 am Indian standard time. Australia won but not with the same embarrassing ease that they had exhibited at Brisbane. Sangakkara who was injured at Brisbane played a mind-boggling innings but still could not prevent an Australian win, which took their record to 14 consecutive wins in a row! The team that will complete the rest of the Australian summer will be our own team that is led by Anil Kumble and it looks on course to beat the Pakistanis quite easily. Here I am getting ahead of myself but clearly this Pakistan team is sad, striven by strife, unable to field to save its life and missing our brilliant runner between wickets –Inzy! Pakistan has to play out of its skins to win the remaining two test matches and India must play as badly as they can do in our worst nightmares to lose! Neither of these scenarios seems too likely to me today as Pakistan has just lost the first test by six wickets and unless we play really badly we should win the series quite comfortably.

Kumble the short-term captain
Typically the BCCI or is it the selectors, whoever it was, started with their grandiose long term thinking of appointing Kumble the captain for only the three-match test series against Pakistan. What a show of confidence in a new leader! What a way to treat our most committed cricketer and leading wicket taker who has shown more resolve in the face of adversity than lesser cricketing mortals in India who have received greater recognition. But such is the mettle of the man that he will take it in his stride and actually use it as an incentive to do even better. He has started brilliantly by being the leading wicket taker in the first test, batting responsibly and using Saurav with great flair.

We can upset Australia
Kumble can lead India to a great win over Australia and stop the juggernaut in its tracks like Saurav’s team did here at home. For that we need to make runs and a lot of runs. Australia struggled at Hobart with an unfit McGill on a good batting wicket. All the games we will play in will have good wickets, albeit with a little bounce, definitely more than what we are used to. But people like Dravid, Sachin and Lakshman have all scored heavily in Australia and can do so again. May be Sehwag too could rise to the occasion. Harbhajan in my view will have a limited role and at Sydney we should play Murali Kartik or Piyush Chawla, though how we will travel with four spinners seems to be a big question mark. Muralitharan’s limited success on the recent tour makes one believe that wrist spinners and left armers might have a larger role to play in Australia. Kumble has the experience and the maturity to not get drawn into pointless controversies or back off in the face of hostility on and off the pitch. He is a wily old fox and Australia will be wary of him. In fact the mind games have started. This could be our biggest challenge. Will we return as heroes conquering the Holy Grail or return like other teams with our tails between our legs? Write to me.

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of One Land, One Billion Minds.)

Help! There’s a sneak in the dressing room!

Can you remember the bloke you hated most at school? The most reprehensible? The emperor of Pittsville? Surely you couldn’t have forgotten him! The class sneak! The guy who ratted on your most innocent [!] capers and turned them into federal offences. The guy who got you into trouble and who often ensured that you stayed late or wrote impositions. I always used to wonder what the motivation for those creeps used to be. Now I know. It is the royalty on the sale of books! Duncan Fletcher the former coach of England has turned out to be only slightly less diabolical than Robert Mugabe, the dictator of the country that he belongs to by ratting on England’s premier all rounder Andrew Flintoff in his forthcoming book, making him out to be a compulsive drinker who amongst other things came drunk for practice.

Duncan’s claim to fame

Duncan Fletcher was the English coach when England won back the ashes after 17 long years in the summer of 2005. He was rated by some Englishmen at least (not by Geoffrey Boycott definitely) as the greatest thing that happened to English cricket. He cocked a snook at the rattled Ricky Ponting by frequently having substitute fieldsmen for his tired stars and one of the substitutes actually had the gall to run out Ricky Ponting with, horror of horrors, a direct shy at the stumps. Yet my submission is that England won because they played out of their skins and Australia played a little below their best. England had an outstanding pace bowling quartet in Harmison (yes Harmison), Hoggard, Simon Jones and most significantly Andrew Flintoff. Australia dropped chances, had the worst of the umpiring and the rest was history. It is also probably worthwhile to recall the contribution of Troy Cooley the Australian born bowling coach who revived the oriental magic of reverse swing. Well all that changed in 2007 as England lost narrowly (0-5) in Australia. This was followed by an equally disastrous world cup campaign where England played marginally better than a hapless India. Duncan Fletcher who is alleged to be the highest paid English coach lost his job and some might say deservedly so.

An assessment of the coach

Enough has been written about the value or otherwise of the coach to a cricket team. It has been argued that the Australians could win even if Ricky Ponting’s mom coached them! Mind you no one said Shane Warne’s mom! But lets look at more mortal teams like England. The new regime of Fletcher and Vaughan which won back the Ashes certainly infused a lot of aggression in the English cricket team whether it was hitting Justin Langer on the head with a bouncer or striking Ricky Ponting on the cheek with a snorter or throwing the ball furiously at Mathew Hayden and hit him when he was within the crease. Aggression in batting and bowling is the way to beat Australia, not sledging and England got under the collective Aussie skin in 2005. How much of that is attributable to the coach is a matter of conjecture though Duncan Fletcher would like use to believe that he was the architect of this transformation. But what is not up for conjecture is that England definitely lost the Ashes in 2007 by such a wide margin because of Duncan Fletcher’s preference for Ashley Giles who kept Monty Panesar out of the team till the Ashes were almost lost. The reason? Giles batted better and fielded better! Fletcher was a defensive coach who did not have faith in his front line batsman. Hence his preference for Geraint Jones as well, who must be the worst international wicket keeper I have seen. The same flawed thinking is apparent in some of the twenty-twenty specialists like Darren Maddy who are so desperately out of their depth in international cricket and yet are lions in the domestic competition. Duncan Fletcher did not really care for the one day form of the game and it showed in the attitude of the entire English team who came to India to play the Champions trophy simply because they had been sent to play it. They played distractedly with their eyes on the Ashes which they sadly lost 5-0. Nothing can take away Duncan Fletcher’s achievements in being the coach for the Ashes winning English team. But it is only fair to talk of the poor one day record when he was coach, the world cup fiasco and the ashes disaster.

Is it the money?

I am certainly not going to read Duncan Fletcher’s new book because I think it is just not the done thing to bring the former English captain who has given his everything for English cricket, injuries et al and who probably had more to do with winning the Ashes than Duncan Fletcher ever had as an irresponsible drunk. I dare say we live in challenging times and everyone has choices which are often difficult to make. Yet some basic principles cannot be compromised whatever the likely gains. Clearly Duncan Fletcher would not be able to meet his school going grand child (if he has one) in the eye. Imagine having a granddad who is a sneak!

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of One Land, One Billion Minds).