The English Sunset

(Image courtesy: New Indian Express)

It may be their last English summer. But it sure won’t be their best. L Suresh reports on India’s most celebrated trio.

“We're on a runaway train
Rolling down the track
And where it's taking us to
Who knows where it's at
But if we hold together
We can make it back
For an English sunset
We want an English sunset.”

- from the song English Sunset, by The Moody Blues

You don’t need to do much to have an English summer go all wrong. There’s the batty English weather with the cloudy mornings, the rainy afternoons and the sunny evenings. There’s the strange but celebrated Lord’s slope. There’s the seriously straitjacketed Lord’s crowd that comes from a different planet when compared to the football hooligans. Once you have mastered the crowds, the climate and the conditions, you get to face the giants - the strapping six-foot something quicks who emerge from different counties, wreck havoc and go back nursing an injury.

In the middle of all this, three men will be hoping for sunshine and champagne in what will most likely be their last English summer. The first Test was all about the exploits of one man who showed the other 21 batsmen how to bat on this wicket. And of course, some rookie bowlers who ran through the opposition with alarming regularity. So Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid will now have to figure out what needs to be done to salvage individual pride and team honour, in what remains of this series.

Introspection would be a good way to begin. If the cumulative experience of 339 Tests, 74 tons and 25,851 runs couldn’t help post a decent total and if the team still had to summon its tail to play off 55 overs of the Test match to avoid defeat, there’s a lot to think about. But it didn’t begin this way. It was a brighter English August, seventeen summers ago.

1990. India in England. Graham Gooch’s 333 and Kapil Dev’s four consecutive sixes had set the stands on fire in the first Test. But the second Test was when a young Sachin would make his first hundred. There would be 36 more in the next 17 years, but more importantly, the next time he toured England, he would be joined by the Gemini twins – a left hander and a right hander who would share his liking for English bowlers in typical English conditions. That was the 1996 tour, where Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid lorded over the English team with the celebrated ‘wristy’ shots that all good Indian batsmen were known for and elegant drives. Of course, it had to be at the holy grounds of the game - the Lord’s, with its archaic sight screen and without its gargantuan space age media box.

From thereon, the threesome gave England something to think about, besides a nation’s fading dreams of the Ashes urn. Thus began a series of historic Robin Hood road shows, when they plundered runs across different grounds in England. The third test of the tour at Trent Bridge, Nottingham saw the trio pillage runs (Ganguly 136, Tendulkar 177, Dravid 84) with such fervour that the ECB would have been tempted to send an SOS to the Sheriff of Nottingham.

And that was only the beginning. In the next series in 2002, the awesome threesome came back to Nottingham and notched up 300 amongst them (Dravid 115, Tendulkar 92, Ganguly 99). Then came that historic Test in Leeds where the trio cracked hundreds. At 628 for 8 declared and a 4-66 by Kumble in the second innings, England tasted the power of the mighty three - and an innings defeat. The fourth test witnessed a double hundred by Dravid and fifties by Tendulkar and Ganguly. The series was drawn, but it was a moral victory for the Indians.

But such tales of valour and exhilaration seem to date back to a distant past. Today, the Indian team resembles a runaway train, hurtling into a 3-test tunnel, not knowing if there would be light at the end of it. Somewhere in the darkness stands an embarrassing tome of individual exploits. And in a quiet corner, shameful reminders of an overseas series win, decades ago.

To add to the bleak weather and the dreary moods is the drab form of the mighty trio, struggling to take on a rookie English attack. With the renowned quartet of Flintoff, Harmison, Simon Jones and Hoggard missing in action, the series was touted as a battle of the willow - Sachin, Sourav and Dravid on one side and Pieterson, Vaughan and Strauss on the other. While Pieterson has already established why he is one of the world's best batsmen, India’s illustrious middle order has some way to go before it can convince us that it is worth all those records, endorsements and adulation it is currently receiving.

What the current bunch of English quicks lacks in experience, it seems to make up in height. Suddenly, the ‘ups and downs’ of the English fast bowlers seem to have taken on a whole new meaning to the Indian batsmen. Look 'up' as the ball is delivered from around 12 feet above ground. And look 'down' as the ball pitches short of good length and rears up towards helmet grill. Check this list: Christ Tremlett (6’7”), Stuart Broad (6'5"), Ryan Sidebottom (6'4"), Liam Plunkett (6'3") and James Anderson (6'2"). As for sick bay celebrities, Steve Harmison (6'4"), Andrew Flintoff (6’4"), Simon Jones (6’3") and Matthew Hoggard (6'2") aren’t exactly vertically challenged. Even the lone spinner who was seen bowling bouncers to the Windies comes at a height of 6'1".

Someday, Indian batsmen will realise the importance of keeping a scoreboard ticking and not getting into a shell. There are 90 overs a day and six balls per over - even the mighty Sachin, Sourav and Rahul cannot kid themselves that they can occupy the crease for this duration, blocking ball after ball. The world has chewed its fingernails in frustration and watched the disastrous results of such efforts time and again - the Bangalore Test against Pakistan and in the Mumbai Test against England in 2005, and in the Cape Town Test against South Africa in 2007 being a few notorious examples.

Set a target of 383 to win in the Bangalore Test, Sachin’s 16 off 98 balls was an innings that looked like he was playing out time. While he crawled to his score, Pakistan raced ahead to a victory, thus squaring the series. Somewhere in the score books are also mentions of Sourav and Rahul having managed 18 between them, off 78 balls.

A few months later, the Wankhede Stadium - the ground that had seen that landmine of a pitch and a controversial two and a half day Test match against Australia - would witness yet another meek Indian capitulation as the home team, led by Dravid's 9 off 60 balls, would collapse to the wiles of a little-known English spinner, Shaun Udal. He would pick 4 for 14 off 9.2 overs, while India would collectively go on to score a 100. The result - England won the match and squared the series.

Travel a couple of years into the future, to 2007. The occasion, the third test against South Africa in Cape Town. After failing to chase a target of 354 runs and having succumbed meekly to Ntini and Nel in the second test, India went into the third test in a bid to salvage lost pride. 414 in the first innings, a lead of 41 over South Africa and one hoped India would win the test and the series. It was not to be. After ghastly sights of Sachin fumbling around for a paltry 14 off 62 balls against the likes of Paul Harris, India puffed and panted to 169 off 64 overs, leaving South Africa to walk away with the honours.

India’s biggest loss in these matches was not just the fact that the team was defeated in its backyard. The insult that followed the injury was hard to swallow. Dravid was always known as a grafter and Sourav was regularly being targeted even by club teams for his deficiency against anything directed towards ribs or above, but for the first time in his career, Sachin had aspersions cast at his failing batting skills, his weakness against left-arm spin and his sudden ‘fear’ of the short pitched delivery. Little-known bowlers like Udal, Harris and the emerging Monty Panesar were having their tails up when bowling to one of the world’s best batsmen – and were coming up tops in every encounter.

Not for nothing has it been said that being Sachin Tendulkar isn’t easy. That old cliché about putting a price on one’s wicket matters more in his case than with any other batsman in the world. Because, any delivery that gets him out is touted as the ball of the match. Any bowler who bags his wicket is considered an emerging talent. Such appellations should be used sparingly and after much thought – and only Sachin can ensure this, by not getting out the way he did in the first Test to Panesar, for starters.

So, contrary to popular belief, India's problem in crunch situations is not its inexperienced pace attack, but its legendary batting line up. While batsmen the world over play themselves in, Indian batsmen end up digging deep - at first you think it is a trench from where they are going to fight and then you realise with horror that it's actually a deep, dark hole from which they are never going to emerge.

The exploits of Damien Martyn and Gillespie in the Chennai Test in 2004 and of Kamran Akmal and Abdul Razzaq in the Chandigarh Test in 2005 are two sparkling instances of resilience, of staying forever at the crease and of keeping the scorers busy. Each of these was a partnership that saved the day for their team and took them to a position of strength. There was a time when Sehwag brought in a whiff of fresh air with his one-day approach to Test cricket. On the final day of the rain-affected Chennai Test against Australia, probably the only reason why we were in the game when 229 was needed for a win was his presence at the crease.

But he’s not around. Neither is the aura of the famed trio. So there we have it. Tendulkar vs Panesar. Ganguly vs Anderson. Dravid vs Sidebottom. The most uneven of contests one can ever see. And we may still lose the fight.

England has been special to all three batsmen – all the more reason to agonise about the travails of the threesome when its time to bid adieu. But there’s one important thing they need to realise before it’s too late - if they are looking forward to a memorable farewell, they need to organize it themselves.

(Appeared in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 29 July, 2007)