A tale of two skippers!

Every game has its set of clichés and cricket is no exception to the ‘hackney’ rule. They say a captain is only as good as the team he gets and over the years this fact has been formidably established if not by any other unit at least by the successful Australian cricket team which flanked either sides of the birth of the new millennium with untiring – for others boring – laps of honour. At the opposite end of the spectrum, great players, world beaters in their own right, have made abysmal captains and to be honest the teams they skippered were far from scratch: I wonder if one needs to go beyond Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara to make a case in point.

And yet, hereabouts there has been a Samsonesque Imran Khan who could transmute a group of raw boys into world beaters in the 1992 World Cup or a Chanakya-like Arjuna Ranatunga who could manoeuvre Sri Lanka homeward to the world cup in 1996. The brood of Imran is as rare as it gets; Navjot Sidhu might just invent a new one-liner and say blue moons do not occur as frequently as stars on the sky. Yet the recent success enjoyed by the English cricket team in white and coloured formats is besides being a team enterprise a tale of two captains, neither of whom can inspire poets, terrorise opponents, seduce fans to sit up and watch their game all night or even give the faintest ‘impression’ they can win impossible games. Yet both Andrew Strauss and Paul Collingwood share one thing in common – a sense of unstated resilience.

These are fickle times when one wonders – aside the most pragmatic of advice to the contrary and sensible optimism that accords Test cricket the credit still due to it – if pantaloons, cheer squads and T20 will take over the official banner of cricket. These are also times when punk-like upstarts and pigmy boys join in a battle for manhood within the terrains of this great game. Under the circumstances, it is a blessing that in Collingwood and Strauss, England has found two unspectacular sometimes extraordinarily embattled batsmen who have always given their best to the team and who in their leadership roles have done and will only do  wonders. To look at Collingwood’s and Strauss’ growth however will be to look at the demanding cultures they come from. That partly explains why the Middlesex left-hander and Durham right-hander have always come across as blokes who knew that their only way for survival, let alone getting to the top, was by doing the long yards and making most use of their ability.

Andrew Strauss comes from a South African backyard which had been blanketed and scarred by the cloud of Apartheid for several years. Strauss may not belong to an embittered generation which faced the cricketing ban or the ignominy and wrath that followed it, and yet in him you find an individual who is willing to work through difficult times even if he appears inelegant and ungainly rather than give his wicket away with an air of arrogance, a rash stroke or both. Even his strife against Shane Warne earlier in his career was just a question of a slightly loose technique being found out by the world's finest leg spinner and not of want of sincerity. Strauss brings a rather stern sense of doggedness to his batting and it probably influences his captaincy as well. It is indubitable that Strauss may never make a creative captain; or he may, time will tell. But he will always be a reliable man to go to especially when the chips are down as he showed with his wonderful batting in the Ashes last year. That is what you need from a man who opens the batting for you. Michael Atherton would agree. That is what you need from your test skipper. The likes of Graham Gooch would not demur.

Paul Collingwood’s background is not anything flashy either. He comes from a working class family in Durham, as Peter Roebuck writes, and there is the unmistakable touch of the frustrated but persistent workaholic about his stay in the middle. In fact, his ascendancy through the rank and file of the English batting line-up has mirrored a man coming to terms with his strengths and limitations and optimalising them in contributing the best to his team. Exemplified, his sixes do not have the flamboyant flourish of a Kevin Pietersen lofted stroke; his square-drive may not invite the purists to applaud; nor is his defence something a Dale Steyn or Muralidharan would lose sleep over and yet he braved the South Africans on the last day a couple of times earlier this year playing instrumental roles in the nail-biting draws they salvaged. At times, one gets the feeling that he has only half a bat as he nudges those singles busily into the gaps. But rest assured, beyond the superficially itinerant style is a thinking cricketer, a street-smart individual and a a man committed to the cause of his team. In his temperament more than anything else, there is a little of Dravid and a little of Steve Waugh about him. That he was at the helm for England when they won their first major limited overs tournament a few days ago may not be a selectors’ master stroke; but if it is coincidence let it be and he certainly deserves it. Importantly, he had a team which played to deserve it.

In a by and large conservative cricket country, England has two captains who are conservative by looks and in lacking the extravagance some of their compatriots have in the team. Yet neither can be bullied down into submission and Strauss and Collingwood are arguably among the top fighters in the team. In a rather non-obvious sense, they are a chip off the old block. One may wonder if I say this because of the splotches of success England has experienced under the two men. It may be true to an extent about Strauss, and yet why not? Nothing succeeds like success and Strauss’ Ashes campaign last year is among the most stellar skies seen by an England captain in a very long time. As for Collingwood, he has been a personal favourite for a while and it is heartening to see him being an essential cog in the English wheel. Together, Strauss and Collingwood have few more years of guidance and victories within their respective grasps. And if the England team does not fall inexplicable prey to spates of injury or disorientation like they have often done in the past then both can call time with their names in the Honours’ Board of England’s better captains. It would be nothing less than they deserve.

   

An unlikely English hero!

    Sachin Tendulkar remains an exception in our time and despite his unassuming claims to the contrary we assume that he is larger than the game. Elsewhere there are greats but not immortal stars and in those places cricket remains, and fortunately, a team game. One team that has impressed me over the last several months with their test cricket is the England cricket team in whites currently skippered by Allistair Cook in Bangladesh and otherwise led by an able and rather coldly efficient – perhaps even ugly – if not inspirational Andrew Strauss. In recent memory, they have gone onto take back the Ashes and levelled a series in South Africa (within a space of a half year); saved three test matches with the last wicket standing; and played as a unit and shown more than just belying promise we are used to from England teams of the nineties and the oughties. What’s more this has been a time when their best batsman Kevin Pietersen has suffered from an oddly extended form slump. But in someone else, England has found an unlikely hero and his contributions run through won and saved causes.

Cricinfo gives a rather funny nickname to the man who is a character: “chin” – and he is not a quickie who sends thunderbolts to batsmen at day and terrorises them in their dreams at night. In fact, he belongs to the group of them bowlers who Geoffrey Boycott may call ‘dibbly dobbly’ or ‘lollypop’ depending on his mood which chooses his slang. The last of its kind in England was an eternally old-looking man from Glamorgan who tried his best but never lived to be a match-winner, Robert Croft. Off-spinner he was, and if you want to look at a match-winning one England have had, you should go back to the Illingworths. Not that England has had a great deal of recent success from spinners anyway and god knows they have had a humungous pipeline of left-arm finger spinners; Phil Tufnell promised and briefly delivered before he walked into the sunset; Ashley Giles was reduced to bowling outside the leg stump to Tendulkar and the cheers Monty Panesar used to receive have gradually faded and so perhaps – temporarily one hopes – as his craft. And that’s when Graeme Swann chose to have fun. And how well he has had it!

   At 79 wickets in seventeen tests, the now Nottinghamshire (former Northamptonshire) thirty-one year old has probably the second best wickets per match tally behind talented quicks Mitchell Johnson and Dale Steyn both of whom have well over 100 wickets. His fifth and sixth five wicket hauls in the recently concluded test against Bangladesh have taken him to second in the ICC ranking of test bowlers. And in case you were wondering Swann is some Fairytale illusion England has found, here’s more: he is also third in the list of all-rounders and with close to six hundred runs at thirty-three per innings Swann who bats number 8 or 9 for England deserves every bit the ratings he has received.

   Yet for Swann – fondly called by a journalist as a bit of a joker in the pack – the numbers do not tell the entire story and it therefore becomes significant to study his performances in the context of the two difficult series through which he has plied his trade as an off-spinner and lower order bat. Swann’s consistent wicket hauls, crucial runs and most importantly big heart in the Ashes and during the series in South Africa speak much about their significance. If you isolate Swann’s performances against the two finest teams of his time in recent times, you will see that he has picked up almost four wickets per match, which is good by a spinner’s standards especially in non-helpful conditions, and his batting average is still in the low thirties close to his career average indicating, if anything, that he has not been intimidated by the opposition. Further if Swann’s first innings 85 – his highest test score to-date and the highest in the England batting order for that innings – in Centurion perhaps helped England save the test later with Ashes heroes Panesar and Anderson at it again, Swann was himself ‘on the bridge’ unbeaten when Onions and he pulled another last over draw out of the hat a match and victory later at Newlands, Capetown. If his bat which had no extended business denied victories which were rightfully in the opposition’s to grasp, his simple mastery with the ball ensured England arguably two of their most famous victories in the last five years – the Ashes one at Lord's, England’s first against Australia at the HQ of cricket in over seventy years and an innings-and-ninety-something thrashing of South Africa at the bouncy Protean backyard Durban as Swann returned with nine sticks in the match.

   Having been sorted out aptly by Surrey’s Ally Brown who hit young Swann’s loopy off-spinners for sixer after sixer during the latter’s debut for Northamptonshire in 1998, Swann has come a long way. Thankfully, he has not tinkered with his craft too much and not tried to imitate the more sophisticated and reputed off-spinners of his time. Instead with traditional flight, slower pace and a bit of guile – which probably has also to do with his tinsel town boy image as well as opposed to that of a sportsman – he has allowed the ball to spin and fooled batsmen memorably into playing the wrong shot or leaving ample daylight between bat and pad for the ball to spin through. How can we forget the ball with which he got rid off Ponting at the Oval?

Any off-spinner would be proud to have dismissals of that kind in his bagful of batsman’s scalps!

   After an initial hiding in international cricket, Swann’s second coming has been nothing short of extraordinary for him and England. Let alone the fact that Swann now shares with legendary Jim Laker the record for the most number of times a bowler has taken a wicket in the first over of a new spell, Swann has probably done enough to be England’s frontline spinner in the years to come and to be considered a rare “match-spinning” bowler they have had in years. With the England team possessed with a more assured batting line-up and variety in the pace department, Swann may just be the sort of foil England will continue to appreciate as they try to win more matches against the better teams. And at 31, Swann is perhaps taking one day at a time. And why not? Perhaps the light-hearted blonde man from Nottingham may facetiously tell his grandkids: Sachin and I both had our second comings at the same time and our teams benefitted immensely. Joke or not, most people would not be able to find fault with that. And the way Swann is going, England will hope he would collect more on-field lore for posterity before he hangs up his boots.