Taming of the shrew
Parting with his thoughts after the drawn fourth Test between India and Australia in Adelaide – Sunil Gavaskar the Indian cricket veteran came up with a very salient point.
He was pointing a finger at those who initially agreed to the tour itinerary and lamented that the present scenario was not acceptable, where they had to go in for the first Test match without any preparation.
Gavaskar more than blamed the officials who agreed and was very stern in his statement saying that it has to be cricketers who have played the game at the highest level who have to be in charge of these logistics and not just officials who take those vital seats with an eye for filling cricketing coffers only.
His grouse was coming into a gruelling Test series of this nature should have some acclimatising and the result graph of the series amply proved it.
India lost the first Test without a fight, but there onwards their performances began to grow and if not for that below par umpiring in the second Test by Steve Bucknor of the West Indies and Mark Benson of England, the end result of the series may at least have read 1-all. Nevertheless that faux pas by the Western gentry made a world of good for the game of cricket, especially where Australia is concerned. As far as I could see it may be the first nail in the coffin of the Australian cricket empire.
Since the West Indians had done it for over a decade prior to the Australians, they ruled the roost for the past one and a half decades producing some scintillating players who really kept an indelible mark in the annals of the history of this game. The magic was that they came in a row performed as a unit and made winning just a habit. However when they started winning, they also took the status quo as granted. So between the lines they made winning a matter of ‘win at any cost’. In that pursuit they shunned all good ethics of the game. Intimidation and sledging their on field anthem and even the umpires were not spared.
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Appealing is quite a part of the game, what is bad is the aftermath with barrage of sledging which leads to other implications. |
For instance in the earlier series in the second Test against Sri Lanka, the Australian fielders may well have seen the ball not hitting bat of Kumar Sangakkara, but the shout of so loud and convincing umpire Rudi Koertzen fell into the trap.
Then in the second Test against India Australia would certainly have plunged into an abyss had the umpire ruled Andrew Symonds out, when even we seated in front of our televisions thousands of miles away saw the ‘nick’ without the aid of a replay. But, with the grace of another ‘life’ the batsman pulled the Aussies out of that initial trouble. However the irony is that the batsman knew that he snicked the ball and admitted that he should have been ruled out when he was on thirty. However the unwritten ethical grace of walking out never crossed the batsman’s mind. ‘Good’. Finally the Australians with the help of some glaring errors and intimidating tactics won the match and were in a position of not losing the series, while winning for the record seventeenth time in-a-row.
However in that round of sparring Australians rubbed shoulders against the wrong foe. The Australian winning tactics came out in public, and the incident blew out of proportion that even the very-pro-Australian press fell foul with them. There were ‘war’ drums beating all over and the Indian team was waiting to pull out over some ‘monkey business’.
The cricketing brains in Australia, India along with the ICC stormed together and quelled the explosive situation, but, the scars of that fatal game was still carried on to the third match in Perth. Interestingly Indians carried some positive points into this game while the home team who generally considers Perth as their unconquerable bastion came with a load of minus points.
Indians who played better in all departments in all sessions of the game won it handsomely and the general vociferous Australian spirit was like ‘water-melon’.Even in the final Test the exchanges were even, but, on a pitch that had five days of bowlers pock-marks making a little over 232 runs on a fourth innings against bowlers of the calibre of Kumble and Harbhajan Singh would have posed more than a few problems for the Australians.
In the overall show it was exposed that the Australians mostly depend upon their outside pressure of intimidation and subjugation of their opponents to win their matches and minus those tactics they are ‘good’ as any other side in the world and not better.
In batting with the help of a few aging batsmen in Mathew Hayden and Rickey Pointing they hold their own against any attack especially in home conditions, but, it is interesting to see how they would perform outside.
However the crack in their armour is in the bowling department. Beginning from the second innings of the second Test against Sri Lanka no bowler besides Brett Lee was consistent enough to trouble a batsman once they dug themselves in. This summer there were quite a few batsmen who scored ‘huge’ hundreds against their bowling starting from Kumar Sangakkara and ending with Virendra Sehwag.
If one calls the Australian seam attack mediocre one may call their spin department woeful. Both Mcgill against Sri Lanka and Hogg against India cut sorry figures. I will always call Shane Warne a freak. He was born against the tide. He was born in a system where every accent is put on fast bowling and almost none in spin bowling. Yet, he became a champion and held sway on the world stage for over a decade. Now at present the Australian coach Tim Nielson is walking across this small continent looking for that elusive spinner who could get into Warne’s shoes.
Finally Australia may go on for the time being as it is as it were they who have made winning a habit. But, very soon when their opposition could size them up and take stock of how to put pressure on their batsmen the dominos will start falling.
Thank you the umpires who stood in the second Test India vs Australia. You have helped world tame the shrew.
Epilogue
Nevertheless is this the end? All these years Australian cricket behaved like the proverbial school yard bully with their on and off the field antics that wore the opponent down. Now the Indian cricket by chartering a plane as a threatening measure to pull the team out of the country and the triangular series if the ‘Monkey matter’ went against them was equally bad. The Indian action could be described as the treatment given to a spoilt rich man’s son. However this is a good eye-opener to all cricket playing individuals and administering officials including the Australian cricket Chief James Sutherland who said that they do not play tweedledee-tweedledum cricket.
However this column feels that all sort of sledging and putting pressure on umpires should be banned from cricket and it should be played within the written confines of the law so that the team who played best on that given day wins the match.
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