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).

Tendu! My Tendu!

It was the fourth day of the Oval test and India surprisingly had decided to bat again. I was at the airport trying to take a flight to Chennai. As I had nothing to do, I parked myself in front of the TV set hoping to catch some action till some airline attendant physically pushed me on board. As my luck would have it, Tendulkar played on to James Anderson and was bowled. It was not a pretty sight with the stumps in complete disarray. I sat in shocked silence even as a couple of co-watchers or participants in my agony said “he has been bowled quite a few times in the last couple of years”.. “and lbw as well” added another. I was too stunned to react as I watched another immortal post war batsman make his way back at the Oval perhaps never to return to the same venue to play a test match. Bradman’s duck as he was bowled by Eric Hollies came to mind as did Bradman’s comment that Tendulkar reminded the great man a lot of his own playing style as a youngster. My mind went back to an Amul Hoarding which used to read “Tendu, Ten don’t” , a reference doubtless to the dependence of the Indian cricket team on Tendulkar to survive if not win matches. Luckily Saurav Ganguly did what many Indian cricketers failed to do in the past on that Sunday and India drew a match that they could have won. Or perhaps Rahul Dravid knew more about the Indian batting’s frailty in chasing a total than I do .Be that as it may, we won a rubber abroad against England, a team ranked higher than us and a team that has beaten almost every team at home in recent years including Australia. But let’s return to Tendulkar and his current standing. Is the immortal batsman who made bowlers tremble and gave captains sleepless nights merely a functional batsman today who will help hold the Indian middle order together? Are his best days behind him? Is he being plagued by the demons in his mind? Is he hanging in there refusing to see the signs of the effects of having borne a billion people’s hopes for so long? One thing is clear - he is not the same batsman who took Shane Warne to the cleaners at Chepauk on a wearing track or the same batsman who dismantled Shoaib Akthar at the World Cup in 2003.

The risk in having a different point of view

Writing about Indian cricket critically can be putting your hand into a hornet’s nest as Mike Atherton discovered recently. Writing about Tendulkar can be several times more arduous, or is the right word hazardous? People like Ian Chappell faced a lot of flak when they wrote about Sachin Tendulkar and how it was time for him to take a long, hard look at himself. When the BSE index scales 15,000 it is hardly seen as significant as Tendulkar’s batting record, such is the status of the little man in this country. Another recent article, again by Atherton is interesting. He feels that Tendulkar still continues to learn and adapt .On being caught fending off a rising delivery he has started taking deliveries on his body and on occasion his helmet. He has eliminated the hook entirely from his armoury. On being given out lbw a couple of times for not offering a stroke to Monty Panesar, he now makes a conscious attempt to play the ball. We must not forget that a younger ,more dominant Sachin Tendulkar had taken major precautions practicing against Warne’s fizzing legbreaks, pitched outside the leg stump by playing on similar worn out surfaces in Chennai before the Chepauk test against Mark Taylor’s Australians. Clearly he is the master of his craft and sensible enough to not let his ego get the better of him. If he has to buckle down to the task he will do it even if it is painful to watch.

Who is to decide?

Clearly a number of reasons can be advanced for Sachin to stay on in the game. He has been one of India’s most successful batsmen in the recent series against England. There are not too many talented young players banging at the door. Clearly India needs him in the dressing room and as a legend to lean back on. But still one feels a sense of unease. Is the great man lingering on? Is he being guided by his country’s needs? Is some sponsor milking him to the last drop, in the same manner that he milked bowlers for years? My reasoning is simple. Tendulkar has given me and thousands of other Indians enormous pleasure, joy and pride in our country. He represented the new resurgence of India which today has become a reality in the world of economics at least, if not always on the cricket field. My image of him is a dominant batsman who on occasion terrorized bowlers and who always made for great viewing.

He has broken every batting record that is there to be broken. But today he seems careworn and only exhibits his earlier exuberance when he is bowling. I would like to remember him as India’s greatest, most punishing batsman and the scourge of teams rather than a person who seems to bat from memory and seems a far cry from the young kid whom we keep seeing every day on Star Cricket. If only they stopped showing the best of Tendulkar things might not seem so bad!! I hope I am wrong .I hope he can treat Lee and Tait with the same disdain that he reserved for some other Australian bowlers .The answer as always lies with the little master. Will he or Won’t he walk away at the right time? Only time will tell.

The author is Ramanujam Sridhar, CEO of brand-comm

Is the “Wall” crumbling?

The Indian tour of England, at least the serious part will be over today. I know ourpre-occupation with the shorter version of the game in this part of the world, and yet having been born in 1952 and having seen, heard or read of some of the greatest test matches of all time, I believe that test cricket is the real McCoy. India had the opportunity yesterday of nailing England in what turned out to be dream conditions for seam and swing but ended up batting again. The result? A pathetic reply, headed by a captain who probably had his worst day with the bat for as long as I can remember. I am sure he would like to forget this day in his life. If only we had selective amnesia! But I think Dravid should be the last person to complain as he has taken the decision, (if not the think tank of the team) he is responsible for the collective mess that we almost find ourselves in. I know that it is no fun being captain of a cricket mad country like India where thousands of passionate and often underemployed (here I speak only for myself) people are waiting to scrutinize every action and analyse every decision till they are paralysed! But the move to bat again whatever the justification, to me at least seems to smack of negativity which incidentally was a feature of Dravid’s batting yesterday. Sadly his batting and captaincy till this appalling decision has been fairly positive. The results are there for us to see as well.

Why? Oh Why?

Dilip Vengsarkar the chairman of the selection committee in a statement later said sealing the series was the first priority. So who is calling the shots, the captain on the field or the Chairman of the Selection Committee? Or is the captain there just to call “heads” or “tails”? We need to remember that India was ahead by over three hundred runs with just two days of play left, with the possibility of rain which is as likely in England as Sreesanth losing his run up!!. At the back of the minds of captains who make decisions like these must lie the very special innings of our own VVS Laxman. But those were different climes and different times. Our bowlers were reasonably fresh yesterday. If media is to be believed, India had decided not to enforce the follow on Saturday evening itself. But surely there was scope for a rethink. Or is our strategy so cast in stone that we are impervious to changing conditions and new opportunities?

Negativity the bane of Indian cricket.

The problem with Indian cricket very often is the mindset. This is thanks to generations of cricketers who were happy to avoid defeat at any cost. Leading the pack is our own Sunil Gavaskar. I am quite sure that some of us do not believe in the philosophy of the Nike slogan “You never win silver, you only lose gold” (At least that is what I remember of it). We had the option of winning comfortably, ensuring that the team that was down was out, coming back heroes with a 2 nil victory, the chance to genuinely become the number 2 test team in the world, but are likely to come back almost second best. England has to merely draw today or the elements have to intervene as they did at Lords for England to feel “well it was a close series, we almost won at Lords”. Look at what a positive mindset has done to Surav Ganguly. I have been fairly critical of him in the past but today I have the highest regard for him. I wish some of his positive mental attitude would rub off on Sachin Tendulkar who runs the risk of ending his career as a struggler, striving valiantly to live up to his own high standards as body and perhaps more critically mind delve in the realms of negativity. I think Rahul Dravid should learn from Ricky Ponting. In 2005 when Australia gave up the ashes after 18 long years or more, so it seemed, Ponting’s leadership came under scrutiny. He was leading by committee. Frequent conferences were held in the middle of the overs even, amongst senior players. The results showed up. But what happened afterwards? Today Ponting is one of Australia’s most successful leaders in a country which has produced amazing captains like Mark Taylor and Ian Chappell who are there in the media boxes as well. Rahul is a wonderful batsman, perhaps the best we have produced. He is a gentle leader who leads by example. He can make a transition to greatness as a leader only by becoming more assertive and more positive. He should take a cue from his own one day batting of recent times. I still hope that Indian wins today. They well might. Much rather that I have egg on my face than Rahul Dravid. He is too nice a person for that!!

Ramanujam Sridhar is the CEO of brand-comm