Its Only Cricket

3rd Test: Australia wins Sydney Test (scorecard), South Africa won Test Series 2-1.. T20 & ODI series follows.
Current Cricket Series : South Africa vs Australia, West Indies vs New Zealand. Coming Up : India in NZ 2009.

Our batting must work in South Africa.


I never played the game above school level. In fact, I failed to make it my high school team and was only a "last minute" replacement into a game, where I neither bowled or batted.

So it can be safely said that I don't have any real experience of playing cricket at competitive level, but I do have an 11 year unreplacable experience of watching team India... no matter where they played.

I may be no Greg Chappell when it comes to his cricket achievements or even selector Ventakpathi Raju for his left arm spinners to International batsmen, but I've watched every single "on field" movement of this particular cricket team for enough number of years that I know a few things that even above two gentleman don't.

You can say this will be my 3rd tour of South Africa with Indian team - our players on the field and me watching them on television. And my only suggestion for them is to recognise batsmen who are capable of making runs on South African pitches, persist with them and things will be fine.

Indian team had a Karnataka Trio of Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad and Anil Kumble on that 1997 tour. Even the back up bowlers were called David Johnson and Dodda Ganesh - again from Karnataka.

How good or deserving candidates they were in those days is altogether a different story but what they achieved was brilliant. Indian team never failed in bowling department - they only failed in piling up the runs.

That test squad contained 3 wicket keepers - Nayan Mongia, Saba Karim and Pankaj Dharmani. Media raised too many questions about it and forced Indian team's manager to say - "Who said we have 3 wicket keepers in the squad. we have 5 wicket keepers here - Youngster Rahul Dravid have kept wickets in school days and even I can handle the gloves."

Pankaj Dharmani didn't faced a single ball in South Africa and played his only ODI innings against the same team a few months later. Saba Karim replaced Nayan Mongia for the ODI's on that tour. In fact, if you can find Saba Karim these days, he'll tell you DineshKaarthick.jpgthat the only two good moments in International cricket he had were that six off Allan Donald at Bloemfontein in his debut ODI (Saba made 55 off 48 that day) and the his 26 off 32 balls against Pakistan at Karachi - a match winning effort.

Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly were relatively new commers in those days and together they formed a fairly talented middle order for India. Mohammad Azharuddin and Sachin Tendulkar were also there but Indian batting failed whenever we needed runs. I still remember that final match at Durban when Rahul Dravid hit Allan Donald for six and made him furious. Dravid made 84 off 94 balls that day and even though we lost that match - a fighting Indian batsmen was born.

The revised target was 251 off 40 overs for us and we were 200 for 4 wickets - thanks to Rahul and Azharuddin specials. But we still lost that final as middle order failed.

In simple words, Our Indian bowlers toil lot harder on home wickets but whenever they travel to South Africa and see Grassy wickets - they feel like they can do it. And whenever they control their emotions and stick to line and length - they pick wickets easily. The problem is with batting. Not every batsmen can wake up a morning and play the rising ball, specially when he has spent whole of his life batting on low bounce wickets.

What you must have :

Confidence in your pull/hook ability on those wickets, and if that's not there - you should have the temperament to duck underneath everything that bounces higher than your liking. Akash Chopra - the opener for last Australian tour had this speciality. Akash Chopra had absolutely no back-lift, was a good judge of a single and belonged to Delhi - same as our other opener Virendra Sehwag.

Together these two nearly every single time provided good starts to India and we all know that 2003 Australian tour was one of the best we ever had. That's what Indian team need to find early on this South African tour. Looking at the present ODI squad for South Africa, I feel happy that selectors have included Wasim Jaffer. He may not get too many one day matches but his stay with Indian team before the test series starts will be invaluable.

The doubts :

I have doubts over Mohammad Kaif, Suresh Raina, Dinesh Karthick and Mahendra Singh Dhoni to an extent. All of these are brilliant players and can play pull/hook whenever needed, but when ball bounces on South African "cement like" pitches, they come lot faster than they do on Indian wickets.

Moreover, driving the ball is favourite shot of any any batsmen. But on South African pitches, balls rises little more than what they do in India. The good thing is that the "bounce of the ball" is always even and if you can have it's measure - you can play your shots.

The problem comes when you anticipate less and it's more - and the ball flys to the slips..!!

The solution :

1. We play only two Practice match against South Africa A (a one dayer) before the ODI series (the schedule) and then one 4 day tour match against South Africa A, before the test series.... which is the first mistake. There should have been at least two practice matches before our first International match in South Africa.

Anyways, whoever shows the ability to play rising ball in that first tour match - should be given first priority - even if its Mohammad Kaif, Suresh Raina or Dinesh Karthick. Karthick is there in place of a batsmen (Yuvraj Singh) and he should be treated as one - if he can play the rising ball.SachinInSouthAfrica.jpg

What I mean is if Karthick shows that ability whereas Raina and Kaif don't - he should be there in middle order for the first ODI on 19th November. Not Raina or Kaif because they are batsmen and Karthick a wicket keeper batsman.

Tendulkar, Dravid and Dinesh Mongia are proven pull/hook players whereas Dhoni and Sehwag can't be replaced. Two places remain in the middle order and thus - whoever among Wasim Jaffer, Suresh Raina, Mohammad Kaif and Dinesh Karthick shows the talent first - should get the nod.

2. Sachin should drive ball on the off side. I agree with Ian Chappell that even when Sachin Tendulkar made a double century at Sydney in 2003 - that was probably his worst Innings. Tendulkar had made up his mind not to play anything on the up on the off side and that perticular innings was less than ordinary...

And because of the slowness, Indian team couldn't have enough time to bowl out Australia and win that test series. Sachin Tendulkar is great and he should feel like one.

3. Irfan should understand his responsibility now. He should feel lucky that he is getting his chances up the order when Indian team is full of right handers and he must take them... before it's too late and run making becomes tougher when he will start batting at all rounder's position.







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