(Image courtesy: New Indian Express)L Suresh wonders if there ever will be a twist in the tale when Sri Lanka plays at home.
The ‘don’t even think about it’ list is getting longer by the day in cricket as teams are getting reconciled to the fact that that there are some things that are never destined to be. There will never be another Jim Laker’s 19 for 90 performance. Nor is Bradman’s 99.94 in any danger of being broken. Australia will never be beaten in the finals of a tri-series. And as India has been finding out in recent times, winning a one day tournament in Sri Lanka seems just as impossible. And until someone seeks inspiration from Australia’s ice vests and invents warm shoes as a possible remedy for cold feet, India will find it difficult to break the routine of reaching the finals and running out of steam.
While India has lost count of the number of tournament finals it has played and lost, Sri Lanka has no such problems – such instances have been few and far between, at least at home. The last time Sri Lanka lost a tri-series at home was in 1998 when India rode on the back of a 252-run opening partnership between Sachin and Sourav and took away the Singer Akai Nidahas Cup. In recent years, since the two rain-affected, no-result finals of the ICC Champions Trophy in 2002, India has played Sri Lanka six times - in the Asia Cup and the Indian Oil Cup - out of which five matches went in Sri Lanka's favour. And this time, looking at Sri Lanka's ominous form, it looks like there will be no deviation from the script.
That’s perhaps the reason why the Sri Lankans are unable to hide their grins. They’re playing at home, it’s a tri-series and the icing on the cake is that the Indians are coming. There are rumours that like his fellow southpaws - Hayden and Andy Flower - Jayasuriya has begun going to bed with his pads on, that Attapattu has rushed through the convalescing process, desperate to make it to the team even if it as the 11th player and that Murali walks around with his hands in his pockets to stop twirling that imaginary ball.
Things sure have changed since the times when India whipped the Lankans 6-1 at home. While the majestic lions roared and completed what would perhaps be the first whitewash of England in their backyard by an Asian team (dubbed as England’s worst series in 13 years and Sri Lanka’s best since they began playing at the international level), the Indian tigers whimpered and sniveled as they found themselves snared in a deep hole that progressively got deeper each time they attempted to crawl out of it.
Every time the Indian team departs for Sri Lanka, one can’t help but make odious comparisons to the English team of the 90s that used to be led to the sacrificial altar for that macabre ritual called the Ashes when they would be pounded test after test at home and would then have more of it as they toured Down Under. Like B-grade horror flicks that have mindless sequels churned out, India-Sri Lanka encounters in the emerald isle have become tired rehashes of one another. Each match is annoyingly played to the same script – the audacity of Murali and Jayasuriya bowling the 49th and 50th overs, the horror of the ball taking so long to reach the batsmen that the umpires are tempted to warn it for time-wasting tactics, a posse of spinners and part-timers weaving a treacherous web around the Indian stroke makers who manage to find the fielders with irritating regularity and the explosive hitters suddenly finding themselves out of gunpowder (Dhoni averages 9.66 in Sri Lanka and Sehwag has just one 50 in 12 matches).
Not to be left behind, a slow middle order dawdles even further after a quick top-order collapse. 64.45, 52.72, 51.35 and 47.30 are figures that one would ideally attribute to the averages of the batting stars in a team. During the 2005 Indian Oil Cup, these were the strike rates of Dravid, Laxman, Venugopala Rao and Sourav. Interestingly the tail had a different story to say of the pitch – L Balaji (100), Harbhajan (92.30), Zaheer Khan (166.66), Ashish Nehra (122.22) and Pathan (90.62) had strike rates that showed a tail wagging in a lost cause. Typically success has come in the form of a painful 50 off 100-odd balls – the kind that neither wins a match nor salvages pride for us. The story however picks up pace after intermission as Jayasuriya - with or without his hand strapped in bandages - and his bunch of merry pinch-hitters plunder and pillage and put us out of contention before the first Powerplay is up. It is only to be expected that such predictable fare runs to packed stadiums in Colombo!
While India and Sri Lanka focus on the big names in their batting line-up, South Africa seems to have its own gameplan. Inexperienced batsmen, an array of fast bowlers and an army of bits and pieces players – the team looks more set to play a series in New Zealand than in Sri Lanka. Though the test series has made the lot wiser, one wonders if the thought of spinners crawling from every crack in the pitch and slithering all over them match after match is any more comforting than it was a month ago. Besides, the men for the moment – Smith and Kallis – are missing in action and since it looks unlikely that any of the pitches will let Gibbs repeat his incredible Wanderers’ act of 175, it is left to seniors Boucher and Pollock to steer their team home.
But back home, it will take us a while to look at the other two teams – there’s too much happening here for us to be thinking of others. Sachin is back and surprise, so is Dinesh Mongia. And so are the regular questions that do the rounds – if Mongia is in, what about Venugopala Rao? If county experience counts for getting into the team, what about Zaheer Khan? If a 29-year old can be selected despite this manic focus on youth, what about Kumble? And then there are the secret getaways, the innovative training stints, the army experience… whether these will help the Indian team do what has never been done in recent times – win a tri-series in Sri Lanka – remains to be seen, but credit has to be given to the fact that there’s been no stone left unturned in priming this team up for better times ahead.
Of course, rain would be another crucial factor that India will have to taken into account as their aversion for Twenty20 clearly shows how their chances slide downhill as the game gets shorter. To find out what rain can do to a team, one doesn’t have to go past the 1998 Singer Akai Nidahas Cup tri-series when the Kiwis found the skies in perfect colour coordination with their uniforms and moods, as they spent more time in their dressing rooms than in the middle. Eleven little Johnnies desperately wished for the rains to go away so that they could get out there and play. The series ended with all three matches between India and New Zealand being abandoned. In all, four of their six preliminary matches were washed out, of which two matches were cancelled without a ball being bowled.
But it’s important that India exorcises the ghosts of the past – pretty much the way England took on Australia during the 2005 Ashes series. The first thing they need to keep in mind is the fact that it will be a bowler’s game, a fact that’s in sharp contrast to all those dream games – six against Sri Lanka, two against South Africa, four against Pakistan and five against England – won in recent times. While these run fests saw Dravid’s solidity, Yuvraj’s consistency and Dhoni’s explosive hitting take India up the one day rankings, this will be a series where team totals will behave pretty much like the pitch and will generally stay low.
If there’s anything that the Indians can look back upon, it would be the ICC Champion’s Trophy played in Sri Lanka in 2002, when the three teams in focus found themselves in spin city. Sri Lanka proved yet again – after their 1996 World Cup win - that while Australia might be the masters of the universe, they were still in control in Asian conditions. The Champion's Trophy, slow tracks and Muralitharan continued to be three bete noirs of the Aussies, as they struggled to make 161. Sri Lanka showed them how to, in just 40 overs. Meanwhile India had a brush with the Proteas who played the most inexplicable 15 overs of the tournament when, from a winning position of 187 for 1 off 35 overs, they found it difficult to score 75 off the last 15 overs with 9 wickets in hand. They were left stranded 10 runs short of the target, with four wickets and a list of if’s that would have made Rudyard Kipling proud. If only Gibbs hadn’t retired hurt. If only Kallis had been faster in scoring his runs. If only Klusener had found his magic of lusty hitting.
On the face of it, all three teams seem to be evenly matched, both in their strengths and weaknesses, with home conditions giving Sri Lanka an obvious edge over the other two. In the end, it would probably be India’s batting versus South Africa’s bowling that will decide who will be the other team in the finals. Sri Lanka will be secretly hoping it would be India. A 5-0 win against England doesn’t quite avenge a 1-6 humiliation. It’s payback time.
The ‘don’t even think about it’ list is getting longer by the day in cricket as teams are getting reconciled to the fact that that there are some things that are never destined to be. There will never be another Jim Laker’s 19 for 90 performance. Nor is Bradman’s 99.94 in any danger of being broken. Australia will never be beaten in the finals of a tri-series. And as India has been finding out in recent times, winning a one day tournament in Sri Lanka seems just as impossible. And until someone seeks inspiration from Australia’s ice vests and invents warm shoes as a possible remedy for cold feet, India will find it difficult to break the routine of reaching the finals and running out of steam.
While India has lost count of the number of tournament finals it has played and lost, Sri Lanka has no such problems – such instances have been few and far between, at least at home. The last time Sri Lanka lost a tri-series at home was in 1998 when India rode on the back of a 252-run opening partnership between Sachin and Sourav and took away the Singer Akai Nidahas Cup. In recent years, since the two rain-affected, no-result finals of the ICC Champions Trophy in 2002, India has played Sri Lanka six times - in the Asia Cup and the Indian Oil Cup - out of which five matches went in Sri Lanka's favour. And this time, looking at Sri Lanka's ominous form, it looks like there will be no deviation from the script.
That’s perhaps the reason why the Sri Lankans are unable to hide their grins. They’re playing at home, it’s a tri-series and the icing on the cake is that the Indians are coming. There are rumours that like his fellow southpaws - Hayden and Andy Flower - Jayasuriya has begun going to bed with his pads on, that Attapattu has rushed through the convalescing process, desperate to make it to the team even if it as the 11th player and that Murali walks around with his hands in his pockets to stop twirling that imaginary ball.
Things sure have changed since the times when India whipped the Lankans 6-1 at home. While the majestic lions roared and completed what would perhaps be the first whitewash of England in their backyard by an Asian team (dubbed as England’s worst series in 13 years and Sri Lanka’s best since they began playing at the international level), the Indian tigers whimpered and sniveled as they found themselves snared in a deep hole that progressively got deeper each time they attempted to crawl out of it.
Every time the Indian team departs for Sri Lanka, one can’t help but make odious comparisons to the English team of the 90s that used to be led to the sacrificial altar for that macabre ritual called the Ashes when they would be pounded test after test at home and would then have more of it as they toured Down Under. Like B-grade horror flicks that have mindless sequels churned out, India-Sri Lanka encounters in the emerald isle have become tired rehashes of one another. Each match is annoyingly played to the same script – the audacity of Murali and Jayasuriya bowling the 49th and 50th overs, the horror of the ball taking so long to reach the batsmen that the umpires are tempted to warn it for time-wasting tactics, a posse of spinners and part-timers weaving a treacherous web around the Indian stroke makers who manage to find the fielders with irritating regularity and the explosive hitters suddenly finding themselves out of gunpowder (Dhoni averages 9.66 in Sri Lanka and Sehwag has just one 50 in 12 matches).
Not to be left behind, a slow middle order dawdles even further after a quick top-order collapse. 64.45, 52.72, 51.35 and 47.30 are figures that one would ideally attribute to the averages of the batting stars in a team. During the 2005 Indian Oil Cup, these were the strike rates of Dravid, Laxman, Venugopala Rao and Sourav. Interestingly the tail had a different story to say of the pitch – L Balaji (100), Harbhajan (92.30), Zaheer Khan (166.66), Ashish Nehra (122.22) and Pathan (90.62) had strike rates that showed a tail wagging in a lost cause. Typically success has come in the form of a painful 50 off 100-odd balls – the kind that neither wins a match nor salvages pride for us. The story however picks up pace after intermission as Jayasuriya - with or without his hand strapped in bandages - and his bunch of merry pinch-hitters plunder and pillage and put us out of contention before the first Powerplay is up. It is only to be expected that such predictable fare runs to packed stadiums in Colombo!
While India and Sri Lanka focus on the big names in their batting line-up, South Africa seems to have its own gameplan. Inexperienced batsmen, an array of fast bowlers and an army of bits and pieces players – the team looks more set to play a series in New Zealand than in Sri Lanka. Though the test series has made the lot wiser, one wonders if the thought of spinners crawling from every crack in the pitch and slithering all over them match after match is any more comforting than it was a month ago. Besides, the men for the moment – Smith and Kallis – are missing in action and since it looks unlikely that any of the pitches will let Gibbs repeat his incredible Wanderers’ act of 175, it is left to seniors Boucher and Pollock to steer their team home.
But back home, it will take us a while to look at the other two teams – there’s too much happening here for us to be thinking of others. Sachin is back and surprise, so is Dinesh Mongia. And so are the regular questions that do the rounds – if Mongia is in, what about Venugopala Rao? If county experience counts for getting into the team, what about Zaheer Khan? If a 29-year old can be selected despite this manic focus on youth, what about Kumble? And then there are the secret getaways, the innovative training stints, the army experience… whether these will help the Indian team do what has never been done in recent times – win a tri-series in Sri Lanka – remains to be seen, but credit has to be given to the fact that there’s been no stone left unturned in priming this team up for better times ahead.
Of course, rain would be another crucial factor that India will have to taken into account as their aversion for Twenty20 clearly shows how their chances slide downhill as the game gets shorter. To find out what rain can do to a team, one doesn’t have to go past the 1998 Singer Akai Nidahas Cup tri-series when the Kiwis found the skies in perfect colour coordination with their uniforms and moods, as they spent more time in their dressing rooms than in the middle. Eleven little Johnnies desperately wished for the rains to go away so that they could get out there and play. The series ended with all three matches between India and New Zealand being abandoned. In all, four of their six preliminary matches were washed out, of which two matches were cancelled without a ball being bowled.
But it’s important that India exorcises the ghosts of the past – pretty much the way England took on Australia during the 2005 Ashes series. The first thing they need to keep in mind is the fact that it will be a bowler’s game, a fact that’s in sharp contrast to all those dream games – six against Sri Lanka, two against South Africa, four against Pakistan and five against England – won in recent times. While these run fests saw Dravid’s solidity, Yuvraj’s consistency and Dhoni’s explosive hitting take India up the one day rankings, this will be a series where team totals will behave pretty much like the pitch and will generally stay low.
If there’s anything that the Indians can look back upon, it would be the ICC Champion’s Trophy played in Sri Lanka in 2002, when the three teams in focus found themselves in spin city. Sri Lanka proved yet again – after their 1996 World Cup win - that while Australia might be the masters of the universe, they were still in control in Asian conditions. The Champion's Trophy, slow tracks and Muralitharan continued to be three bete noirs of the Aussies, as they struggled to make 161. Sri Lanka showed them how to, in just 40 overs. Meanwhile India had a brush with the Proteas who played the most inexplicable 15 overs of the tournament when, from a winning position of 187 for 1 off 35 overs, they found it difficult to score 75 off the last 15 overs with 9 wickets in hand. They were left stranded 10 runs short of the target, with four wickets and a list of if’s that would have made Rudyard Kipling proud. If only Gibbs hadn’t retired hurt. If only Kallis had been faster in scoring his runs. If only Klusener had found his magic of lusty hitting.
On the face of it, all three teams seem to be evenly matched, both in their strengths and weaknesses, with home conditions giving Sri Lanka an obvious edge over the other two. In the end, it would probably be India’s batting versus South Africa’s bowling that will decide who will be the other team in the finals. Sri Lanka will be secretly hoping it would be India. A 5-0 win against England doesn’t quite avenge a 1-6 humiliation. It’s payback time.
(Appeared in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 13 August, 2006)
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