An Apology for Compelling Draws

Outside the ambit of painting and, perhaps, the art/science of seduction, the word 'draw' gives the impression of something dragged out, much like an overlong film about the flora found in deserts. A typical draw in a game of Test cricket also creates the impression of elaborate pointlessness, especially among the game’s newest fans, introduced to it through the T20 format; its fiercest detractors; and those who view the current health of cricket, rightly, with Argus-eyed skepticism. Sometimes, though, one is made to wonder if draws alone are responsible for all the ills afflicting Test cricket and that a farewell to them will ensure instant revivification and a broader acceptance among fans of the game’s 125-year-old format. Two different frames of reference suggest that the latter is a simplistic view. First: the cause for the waning popularity of the game may be located as much in the zeitgeist of the day – with its unapologetic emphasis on instant gratification – as in the results a five-day contest produces (more on this another day). Second: even if results are a cause of concern, not all draws can be condemned with the charge that they are curtailing the future of Test cricket.

The draw that the South Africans attempted earlier this month in Delhi, for example, deservedly drew a lot of praise from various quarters—the captain and Manager of the opposing team included. On the other hand, it did also attract the sardonic barbs of at least one writer. According to the former, South Africa’s ultra-defensive batting (which has spawned the lexical monstrosity 'block-a-thon') symbolised, among other things, the commitment of peripatetic cricketers to their national whites and to Test cricket in an era of domestic T20 leagues, garish clothes and slog-fests. The latter, however, holds that South Africa’s approach represented a futile exercise because the series was already lost. My own opinion of South Africa’s second dig in Delhi dovetails with the views of the former, and I think it made for compelling Test cricket while it lasted.

South Africa’s obdurate batting was fascinating to watch because it reduced and exalted cricket to its very essence—a contest between bat and ball (ceteris nearly paribus). Obviously, the speed of the scoreboard was such that it might have even driven a Yogi to lose patience, but that was incidental to the drama; whose main players were two vulpine and skillful spinners, a ring of close-in fielders and three fine batsmen, their stage a pitch that gave no freebies and rewarded mindful persistence. With each ball delivered and each delivery safely met, one could witness a substantial and substantive dialogue between two equal adversaries, the lines (and lengths) occasionally veering into sub-text to keep the more discerning aficionados honest. The theatre lasted for close to nine hours and while the final act showed an Indian win, who is to say that a draw would have reduced the value of the gripping contest that preceded it? To do so would be to succumb to the convenient trap of hindsight.

Admittedly, not every draw or attempted draw keeps bums on seats. The worrying trend is that for every draw that enthralls and thrills lovers of Test cricket, there are four which make them wonder whether the Sun will set upon this Time-honoured five-day sporting spectacle of substance, style and subtlety, just as it has on the Empire that birthed and propagated it around the Commonwealth. Indeed, the writing has been on the wall for a while and the stakeholders of the game – players, umpires and match referees, cricket boards, journalists and fans – must quickly come up with strategies to reduce the number of drab draws that currently frustrates Test cricket. Draws should not be altogether eliminated, however, because their elimination would kill a congenital aspect of Test cricket: playing for Time.

Now, ‘playing for time’ is not an anachronism 'favourited' by grey-haired ladies and gentleman who take up the cudgels for what they believe is cricket’s purest format. Even three summers ago, Francois Du Plessis, in the company of his boyhood friend Abraham De Villiers, future-skipper Hashim Amla and others, batted for fourteen minutes short of eight hours and retired undefeated on 110 to the dressing room at the Adelaide Oval after facing a small matter of sixty-two overs and four balls. On debut. Just for the record, neither South Africa nor Australia won that Test match. A year and few weeks later ABD and FDP were at it again, and almost surmounted a fourth-innings Mt. Everest against India at the Wanderers—the ‘almost’ a riveting 'no result'. While thinking of thrilling 'no results', England’s three last-over heists (in December 2009, January 2010 and March 2013) should not be forgotten, as they deserve pride of place in the Hall of Fame of Draws. Nor are English ninth-drops lone specialists in hanging for dear life till the last mandatory over is bowled, as their Sri Lankan counterparts showed, against England, at the HQ in June 2014.

Each of the aforementioned Test matches is a classic and deserves to be called as such. Bidding adieu to draws would mean the assignment of such matches to the musty files of history—a treasure trove of nostalgia, and a graveyard of hope, at least as far as sports is concerned. Obviously, there is no assurance that Test cricket will continue to conjure up exciting draws if the result lives to fight another day, but that is beside the point. The point is rather that a draw is just one of four possible conclusions to a contest! Conversations should, therefore, focus on the quality of the contest and cutting the list of possible results by one would do little to improve it. The point is also that the dogged pursuit of a draw, when the circumstances so dictate, does not make other results impossible. Examples abound of teams planning to bat time and winning or losing. My own favourite draw in recent memory is the one that India ‘achieved’ against the West Indies in 2012 (yes, in that match where Ravi Rampaul and Darren Sammy were booed at Mumbai for postponing Tendulkar's 100th Test hundred to another day): the match scores of the two teams were tied after the last mandatory ball had been bowled, and first-innings centurion Ashwin refused a second run even though he could have half-Ranatunga-ed it. There is a tragicomedy (or comic tragedy) for the ages. Beat that.  

Beyond the Victory Lap!

Every generation has its "cockahoop" or "high-five" moment (or variants thereof). And as far as sport and cricket in India is concerned, Kapil's Devils' unexpected storming of the World Cup in 1983, which had hitherto been the undisputed and unclaimed fortress of the men from the Caribean, is what my mother's generation, and to a lesser extent my father's, will remember as the event that changed cricket and the perception of it in the India. Sachin Tendulkar was a ten-year old boy then; I was twenty-one months from being born; my home was only one of four houses in all of what is today called Madipakkam; my grandfather's house had an Uptron black-and-white television; Marina beach was still clean; my father was in Calcutta; and one-day cricket was, besides the once-in-four-years Prudential-hosted tournament, considered by many as a passing fad.

Fast forward a better part of twenty-eight years and our own generation's cricket moment has come with an entourage of moments that will remain indelible forever: if skipper Dhoni's bottom hand "deposition" over mid-wicket reminded us of the maverick who had specialised in finishing games with sixes before becoming captain, Tendulkar's being paraded on Yusuf Pathan's shoulders is something no Indian fan, let alone a Mumbaikar, will ever forget. Gautam Gambhir's dive during his over-my-dead-body innings of 97, which is as uncharacteristic as a Sehwag forward-defensive, that signified the importance and desperation fuelling India's most important one-day chase in years, Man of the Series Yuvraj Singh's deserving presence in the middle when the winning runs were "thrashed", the scenes at the Wankhede stadium and Ravi Shastri's ear-shattering screams, without which no Indian victory, however small, seems complete these days, will remain with us till sunset. Some may say that for a country with one billion people and A Sachin Tendulkar and one which is as mad about cricket as Europe is about soccer, if not more, twenty-eight years is a long wait. But now that the wait is over, it is time to sit and revel in a fine team effort.

A lot has been written about the role of Captain Cool and Coach Low-Profile in newspapers and websites in India's winning the World Cup. Almost every player, present or former, who has spoken about the victory has hailed Kirsten's role behind the scenes and Dhoni's role on it. The captain-coach duo deserves every bit of the laudation they have received. However, I have always been of the belief that a captain and coach is only as good as the team; to put it differently, a team may be skippered by a genius and coached by an astute person but it is the results on the field that will be feted or stigmatised and in that sense the Indian team as a whole stepped upto the plate.

Nowhere was the Indian resurgence more evident than in the form and intent of Yuvraj Singh who some said looked like he was pregnant during last year's IPL and who, to make matters worse, lost his place in the one-day clothes six months before the World Cup. To hit one of your lowest nadirs before a tournament of great importance and to emerge as the Man of the Series in the tournament, with four Man of the Match awards to boot, is the stuff of legend. Not for nothing therefore did coach Kirsten call Yuvraj's turnaround as one of the most amazing comebacks he's witnessed in the world of sport. And as one part of the world continued to bother and the rest wonder about when he would retire, Tendulkar reserved his two centuries for two of the better teams in the tournament in England and South Africa, besides setting up a sterling run chase versus Australia in the Quarter Finals and running up a fortune-assisted eighty-odd in the semi-final clash against Pakistan that took India into their second world cup finals in the last three attempts. Sehwag had earlier set the tone for the tourney in initimitable style with the blitzkireg 175 versus Bangladesh in what was labelled a revenge encounter for the 2007 sting and though he did not do much afterwards apart from presenting the world some astonishing cameos, Suresh Raina more than made up down the order when he got the chance towards the end of the tournament. Kohli too began the tournament with a hundred against Bangladesh and although he did not quite reach those heights again he reminded us throughout the tournament that he's a young man who will decorate the Indian middle order for some years to come. The signs for Indian cricket, at least in the shorter formats, remains bright. 

In the bowling department, it was interesting to hear bowling coach Eric Simmon's refer to Munaf Patel as an "unsung hero". Often has the medim pacer's temperament been questioned in the past, including by this author, but Patel came up with a steady performance that should not be glossed over in the final analysis. Ashish Nehra, though plagued by injuries, delivered his bit to the team whenever he played while Ravichandran Ashwin showed why he is Dhoni's talisman by bowling both economically and successfully whenever his captain asked him to open the bowling. All said, Harbhajan Singh was a disappointment for me although he looked to be coming into his own during the knock-out stages of the tournament. People have said a lot about Sreesanth - some unfortunately going to the extent of getting personal in ways that do not go well as far as I am concerned - and the Kerala pacer would know that he did not do much in the couple of games he got. I personally believe that Sreesanth is more of a test-type bowler, especially suited for conditions where the ball swings a touch. The game-breaker, though, for me  (except during the finals where Jayawardena's enviable artistry and Perera's calculated rush undid his unbelievable first spell which comprised five overs which seemed McGrathian and three maidens for a farthing!) was Zaheer Khan. If the ball that bowled Michael Hussey in the Quarter Finals was one of the balls of the tournament, the Yorker to dismiss Strauss on 158 arguably tops the list. Although a lot more expensive than the tournament's other leading wicket-taker, Shahid Afridi, Khan struck almost always when Dhoni brought him back before the ball change.

I did not see enough of the matches to assess the ground fielding but everyone seems to be of the consensus, especially now that the Indians have won the cup, that after sleepwalking through the league games, the boys really turned the screws in the knockout stage. Far too often in the past, the Indians have peaked too early going into tournaments and run out off steam at the half-way stage. But during this World Cup, it seemed like everything including their worst suit, the ground fielding, was 'destined' to peak at the right time. It was heartening to see Yuvraj Singh remind the younger turks Raina and Kohli as to how good he can be on the field and why he had made backward point his own position for many years. The inspiring yards, however, came from the older legs like Tendulkar and Zaheer Khan who also threw themselves with childlike joy and commitment to stop whatever runs they could, something that might have been invaluable during the final three games of the tournament.

Just before the start of 2010 the Indians received the number 1 test ranking and it seemed like they had hoodwinked the Proteas with the unsought help of nonsensical ranking technicalia in getting there. But there can be no such grudges with regard to the Indians winning the World Cup. As a skipper, Dhoni, as Venk aptly said, seems to have the Midas' touch: aside from having the T20 World Cup trophy and World Cup trophy in his cabinet, he has led the number 1 ranked team in the world well for over a year. No wonder, he now says he would love to repeat what he has accomplished. I generally refuse to get drawn into the debate of "best versus others" but I acknowledge the fact that Dhoni is amongst the best skippers we have had. His record vouches for that and as with most things in life Dhoni's ways are grounded in two simple traits (though to have them in the heat of battle makes him commendable): calm decision-making and backing his instincts even if he knows that the world (which the Indian media and spectators sometime appear like) will go hell for leather if he fails.

However - and I admit this also has to do with my being a nostalgia freak - some past greats cannot be forgotten during this glorious hour even though they were not part of this outfit. A decade ago when the match-fixing allegations rocked the cricket world and the Indian team needed an inspirational leader, it was Sourav Ganguly's mercurial personality and captaincy that gave the Indians a new attitude. While standing at Indian cricket's greatest summit, though some may dislike the superlative, we cannot forget Dada's contribution. Another great who never came close to winning a World Cup, and in my opinion the greatest cricketer India has produced, but whose commitment to the team cause, prodigious ability to bear pain and sincerity amid trials is second to none deserves a mention too: this World Cup is as much a gift to Anil Radhakrishna Kumble as it is to Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. They shelved Rahul Dravid from the one-day plans long ago and despite emotional biases I must say he may not have contributed much to this team: but as a man who kept wickets under Ganguly's captaincy for close to four years, all for the sake of team balance, exemplifying the ultimate spirit of being a team man and who for all the slings he has received averages close to forty in one-day cricket, I missed Rahul. Laxman's case is worse; in a fast man's game, Laxman's swiftness, or lack thereof, has meant that the Hyderabadi's incredible on-drives and silken cover-drives have not been seen in the one-day game for a long time. This World Cup is an ode, though, for the Bangalore-Hyderabad duo too as well as others who have given their best for Indian cricket in whichever form.

And why not?! When I, an Indian fan who has not held a bat for six years now, get a beer at 3 a.m. and celebrate the Indian victory with my German roommate whose only route to understanding cricket is through its likeness to baseball, feeling as if I have won something, every Indian who has done the hard yards on the field only to never end up where Dhoni and his men deservedly can deserve to feel proud about what they did wearing the Indian blues at some point in time in their lives.

And now that the cup is won, my favourite part of the cricket calendar awaits: no, NOT the IPL, but beyond: tours to the West Indies, England and Australia! I don't think India has toured any two of those countries during the same year in the twenty-six years I have been alive. It will be fun, and the Indians will be touted to win the tests and one-day series in these countries. Unless they play very poorly, they will probably meet those expectations. After all, they are now the WORLD CHAMPS!                  

    

Thirty-four!

If you have quietly excursed around the twitter timelines, Facebook walls and blogs of Indian friends who are cricket fans over the last sixteen hours or so, you would have probably thought that the Indians have won the World Cup. And you would be excused for thinking so. And so would the updates and updaters for elevating a quarter final victory over Australia to stratospheric heights. The ecstatic reaction to the gritty and successful Indian chase at Ahmedabad, which resulted in Australia being knocked out before the semi-finals of a World Cup for the first time in nineteen years, shows how much a Quarter Final victory at the World Cup means to Indian fans, especially given that it came against India’s fiercest rivals during the previous decade.

But there is another interpretation to the reaction too which should not be slid under the carpet: it gives the world yet another chance to appreciate and take stock of what the Australian teams of the previous decade has achieved. That Ricky Ponting, who we Indians love to hate not in the least because he seemed for a while to be the only batsman who could match (if not better) Tendulkar’s batting records, was at the forefront of his team’s (losing) battle, would have come as no surprise save for Ponting’s most unabashed detractors and/or those with a very short sporting memory. This post is specifically intended for the latter faction.

When Australia last lost a World Cup game, also against Pakistan (before the one they lost last week), I had just completed feel-struggling my way through my second teen-year. What remained of my teenage saw no Australian defeat at a World Cup match; and during the first half of my third decade in the world, the pattern would remain as obdurate as my Mathematics scores (which never once crossed six percent). The worst or best thing about the Australian dominance, depending in your vantage point, was the Australians never looked like dropping a game after THE tie in the semi-finals and Gibbs’ dropped catch of Steve Waugh took the men in yellow to the finals of the 1999 World Cup. The final was a one-sided affair with Shane Warne flummoxing the Pakistani batting order which had stalwarts like Ijaz Ahmed, Saeed Anwar and Inzamam Ul Haq into submission. The two other major Asian teams would suffer similar fates in the summit clashes of the 2003 and 2007 World Cups: if the 1999 World Cup final was about giving one of Australia’s toughest cricketers and fairest captains, Steve Waugh, a fitting farewell, the 2003 final at the Bullring was about Ponting hitting the crescendo on the perfect occasion against India and the 2007 final about Adam Gilchrist “feigning” form to only stun the Sri Lankans in the final at Barbados with a hundred out of nowhere.

The one-sidedness of the last three World Cup finals shows a lot about the Australian attitude to the game which we know has, until lately, been manifested in the way they play, also yielding phenomenal results. Not for the Australians the jerks of added pressure in knockout games because when someone failed there was always someone else to step up to the plate; but not for them either the letting up during ‘less’ important games, for no game was more or less important to the Australians: we want to win every game was the mantra and it worked like a cure. Yes, the Australians sledged merrily (leading the world in gamesmanship as well); yes, McGrath often roughed up the opposition’s best batsman even before a contest began; yes Gilchrist walked and others didn’t; yes it is unfair that Shane Warne took up leg spin than become a sorcerer; and yes many teams never realised – and if they did, there was little evidence of it – that the best way to ‘down’ Australia was by playing the ball and not the reputation of the players they had. But to simply attribute Australia’s remarkable, nay perfect, success rate in the World Cups to any/all of the aforementioned reasons or to an extended love affair with Fortune is to miss the point.

The truth is between 2000 and 2008, the Australian cricket team fielded some of the fiercest competitors that have turned out in the game even by Australia’s own high standards. That in turn is thanks to a tough domestic cricket setup which meant that cricketers were battle-hardened even before they wore the yellows, something Allan Border and company envisaged late in the 1980s when Australian cricket was at one of its lowest ebbs. The truth is the Australians made no bones about their love for winning, shared it as a collective vision, were led by a man who breathed meanness in order to remain fixated about his team’s goals and went ahead and played hard cricket. Result: 34 WORLD CUP games without a loss, with one no-result in between. We dance in the Isles if India beat New Zealand 5-0 in a One-day series!

I am not even sure how one can put an unbeaten streak of 34 matches in a game’s biggest tournament into perspective. But let me try. A tennis player who wins four grand slams within the space of two or three seasons may come to achieving something which in its magnitude is similar to what the Australian team achieved. Maybe, it is akin to a senior golf pro winning three or four of the biggest circuits on the trot. As far as team sport goes, however, what the Australians have done is beyond compare. For starters, the last three World Cups have been played in vastly different conditions. Besides, as the previous decade wore on, the seniors in the core group – the Haydens, Gilchrists and McGraths – were becoming only older. Add quirks such as Shane Warne missing the 2003 World Cup after testing positive for a banned drug on the eve of the tournament and we will understand that the Australian dominance, despite the number of match winners the Kangaroos have had in their ranks, has never been about one man (like it is in India with Sachin Tendulkar!) or a few men. Whether or not a 34-match unbeaten run is replicated time will tell; but being bloody-minded as a team and enjoying teammates’ successes as one’s own is something every team and every individual playing in a team sport can learn from the Australians.

Now that the tiring succession of Australian triumphs is over, we can look to more ‘open’ cricket matches and more unpredictability in the game. But while we do that, we need to understand that the various Australian teams post-1999 have left cricket with a proud piece of cricketing history that is not likely to be expunged in team sport, least of all cricket, in the foreseeable future. If it is obliterated and I am alive when that happens, I will surely write about it from (and in) some corner of the world.

For now, though, I hope the Indians can fend off the Pakistan challenge in the semi-finals at Mohali. One can never tout Pakistanis to win or lose any game. However, it would be fair to say that they have been the best team on view in the tournament besides South Africa. If the contest is anywhere near as exciting as the league game in the 2003 World Cup, where Tendulkar went berserk and decided the issue before his innings was cut short by the combine of cramps and Shoaib Akhtar, the fans will have been treated to some cracking cricket. And just for the record (with the uninitiated, of whom there may not be many, in mind) India has yet to lose a World Cup game against Pakistan. MSD & company would hope that India’s own little unbeaten run (against their neighbours) continues at least for one more game.

Why a Tie is Perfect?

Perfectness like most things in life keeps running away everytime someone pursues it hard. And yet every now and then, the randomness of things and the folly and fervour of beings, assisted in conspiracy by a probable Unknown, provide us a glimpse, if not a probe, into perfectness, of the glories that might have been and of lifetimes spent in search of them. Yet as irony would have it sport, that hallowed turf that breeds unremitting competition and demands open-ended improvement, seems to appreciate the imperfect result with one side winning and another losing far more than a result where there is nothing to choose between the two sides. If the reactions to the tied Group A one-day cricket match between England and India in Bangalore, which I have been privy to, are anything to go by, it seems to me that we have missed the point about sport as being a celebration of life by taking it too seriously.

I reckon a number of decibels, reams of paper and bytes of virtual space would have been spent in the last twenty-four hours in arguing why it was a tie. An equal amount of passion would also have been spent, mostly by Indian fans and the cricketing media - which sometimes blur, for right and wrong reasons -, in trying to work out the shape of Dhoni's skull that decided in giving the 49th over to Piyusha Chawla. Amidst all the hullabaloo, the men who made it such an enthralling contest would have been unfortunately relegated to the background by fraying opinions. We in some parts of Asia revere the game so much - and as a consequence take it so seriously - that we fail to celebrate its nuances, the Practical Joke it plays on its exponents and thereby on their followers, the unseen grace with which it evens things and how it stands tallest when two sides vying tooth and claw are not able to sneak a yard past each other even after seven hours of boisterous pandemonium. In my opinion, a spectator who has an overwhelming preference for his team's victory - and I was once that kind of spectator too - over a humdinger of a game is rather like a student who studies for ranks with knowledge having little more use for him.

The England-India game at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore, afore arguably the most educated albeit ebullient crowd in the country behind Chennai, demonstrated two things: the cofluence of sparkles of individual brilliance into something close to collective perfection in a team game and how a tie in a cricket match is something even cricket scoffers, and those who think it fashionable to bemoan the game, would have to concede as unique if unwittingly.

In favour of the first point, there is ample evidence from yesterday's game. Tendulkar's 120 and the manner in which he blunted Swann in particular gave yet another account, if one was amusingly needed, of why Tendulkar makes his country's cricket fans go bananas after more than two decades in the game. If Sachin's ton was an incredible revelation of how he continues to respond magically to a world of expectations from the heartbeats of one country's fans, then skipper Strauss' 158 was a lesson in the art of setting up a chase and would go down arguably amongst the most purposeful and aggressive innings played by an Englishman in the one-day game. Tim Bresnan's five-for, which proved crucial in the final analyses, prompted just why death bowling is beautiful and critical even if the opposition has gone hammer and tongs thus far with a scorecard already reading in excess of 300. And finally Zaheer's spell during England's batting power play when everything seemed lost for the men in blue and the Bangalore crowd was a wonderfully written action piece on the subject how to make the ball talk! Give me one strong - foolproof - argument for why one of those deserved to be at the smiling end of the game, I will provide two such arguments for the others. I rest my case.

Shifting focus to those who pooh-pooh cricket, cricketers and cricket watchers, especially those with such craftily contrived undertones that debunk cricket every time they delight in praising the sport they owe allegiance to, what would they have thought of yesterday's tie? Well, if one of them said not much I would not be very surprised. But sample this: how precious can "same scores" be in a game of football played for 90 minutes and a few more of extra time if scores are level at the end of the 90? Even the most fervent football fan may have to mutter a "not much" because scoring goals is a devilishly hard task compared to getting wickets, let alone runs, for which reason a tie may actually be the more default result in that sport. Tennis? There is a tie-breaker that eventually resolves a tie, so tennis does not even allow itself to know what a tie feels like to its players and fans.

Enter cricket: even if we stick just to One-day internationals, we are still speaking of about seven hours of play. A wide here, a leg-bye there, an ungainly slog somewhere, a poor umpiring decision or a run out in a crunch situation are all so commonplace in the game that they can spoil one team's party by the narrowest margins. Yet when the artifacts and the very nature of the game, which seem so besotted to discriminate rather than unite, do conspire to even things after hours of battle, the result is not even remotely like any other that cricket or other sports can dare to script. As Strauss rightly opined one must celebrate games like yesterday's: a "historic high", submerging the twin disappointments of not winning,  is what I imagine a tied cricket match gives to those who partake of its cusp of earth-bound perfectness. No wonder we have had only four ties in eleven World Cups! If a passionate hater of the game chooses to remain unconvinced still, I can readily understand. But if a highly educated detractor shakes his head wilfully, all I can offer is a quiet smile.

There is so much more I wanted to convey through this post but I surmise those thoughts can wait for another day. I shall end on a humorous note based on TheVenk's tweet which jocularly suggested that India and England should give their tie to some corporate person. I would fully agree with my friend for once, but with a small tweak to his suggestion: they should probably gift it to a Body Corporate which goes by the name International Cricket Council  as it would help immensely in ICC's bid to save the one-day game from dying a quick death.         

  

The Power of Three!

Two test series in the Southern Hemisphere ended within a space of half a day at the behest of time zones. And here I was in the Northern Hemisphere trying desperately to look for similarities between the two. I got only as far as the word “historical”, as India drew their first ever series in South Africa and England won their first Ashes (series) away from home in twenty-four years, and gave up:

One was as tightly contested a test series as they come and the score line 1-1 was, I am sure even by the standards of most neutrals, fair. The only grudge was that here was another three-test series between the titans which appeared like an extended trailer in lieu of the blockbusting movie it should be. The other series was anything but a tight contest and at the end of it both the teams would have wondered if Perth was an aberration, the final throwback to a recent era of Australian dominance, or just comic relief. Despite the dissimilarities, the two series together gave us an idea of the teams to watch out for over the next two winters at least, and, perhaps, at most. While Australia plummeted from one low to another nadir with  the same sort of drastic and dramatic regularity they displayed while scaling those incredible highs, we realised not only that a once great team was now barely competent but also that the days when a single team dominated world cricket are all but over.

Although the Sri Lankan cricketers may demur and justifiably, what with the team never getting the share of test cricket it deserves, I firmly believe that England, South Africa and India are the top teams going around now and will be for a while. I am obviously restricting my view to test cricket for every other form of the game, including the upcoming ODI world cup which is likely to be a pointless ritual of batting practice with scorecards that might rival Manhattan intended to test who gets to snooze first on the ground, seems to be a mundane overdose.

If you ask me which among the three teams is the best, I would say the following: India (and it does not take great shakes to say so because they are ranked number one and have not lost a test series for a while and because I am an Indian); South Africa (purely based on the unbelievable bowling strength they have and a solid, if slightly nervous, batting line up) and England (for being arguably the most consistent team in the circuit).

Hair-splitting apart, I think England has an edge (don’t look at me like that for saying it, but the days when “edge” would have definitively referred to an English middle-order man’s bat are behind us!) simply because there is variety in the bowling department, doggedness and flourish with the bat, a gritty wicket-keeper batsman in Matt Prior and a coach who knows a thing or two more than others about wading through difficult water. Their bench strength is fabulous as well and all the mentioned pluses came together at different points in the Ashes where England played as single-mindedly and clinically as I have seen any team play in recent memory. Admittedly, the English dominance appeared exaggerated because of Australia’s at times painful – for the fan – otherwise wan struggle in choosing between explosion and implosion on the pitch, and some inexplicable selection bloopers off it which made one wonder at times whether the board in charge was the ACB or PCB. Owing to Australia’s mediocrity, I believe that the edge England has over India and South Africa is slight. Thankfully for them England understand that winning the Ashes in Australia is just the sort of prelude, albeit historical, to better things and not an end-all.

Among South Africa and India, South Africa is likely to have less worries; any team with an evidently ever-in-form – sometimes pretending-to-be-out-of-practice – Jacques Kallis and Dale Steyn is not bound to have too many headaches. But even apart from these too big names, who once again drilled their presence over the Indian team in the recently concluded series, the South Africans will be in good cheer. Although Kallis and Tendulkar had a stupendous 2010, made even more memorable by their age and longevity, Hashim Amla was for me the batsman of 2010. He scored runs everywhere, against all attacks and at first-drop, a tricky and challenging position to bat and one owned by greats such as Bradman, Ponting, Sangakkara and others: his three hundreds in the two test series against India in India last year with the twin hundreds Eden Gardens may be mistaken for the stuff of a marathon man than a simple shy Moslem from Natal. Smith and Petersen have formed a decent partnership upstairs; AB De Viliers scored South Africa’s best test score recently and is by no means old; and Mark Boucher’s return to form with the bat ticks most boxes for the Proteas.

The Indians on the other hand have more forebodings than their stoical skipper would care to admit: for me, the greatest of them is the over-reliance on Zaheer Khan which was abundantly on evidence during his absence in the first test at Centurion where the Indians bowled without heart, inspiration, swing or bowling commonsense. While Khan’s record of injuries is itself a source of concern and frustration for him and those around him, the team clearly needs a second spearhead. Harbhajan’s 7-120 at Newlands is a relief but I hope it spurs him on to be the leader of the attack in home conditions and a potent ally to quick men abroad. But the concern is, as it has always been in India, in the fast bowling department: for all that was said about him, Sreesanth was brilliant in South Africa but all with due respect I do not see his head being made for leading an attack. Ishant Sharma was disappointing to say the least and although the young man has time I hope, for his sake and the country’s, that he does not become another case of an Indian quick in the “what-might-have-been” category than the “what-is”.

From the batting perspective, some major surgeries are required: old age is India’s biggest problem and because it is an all-or-nothing issue piecemeal solutions will not thankfully last. At 37 Tendulkar had his best year in the decade, and while it is cause for celebrating the Master all over again it is also cause for concern. Dhoni said that “comebacks” are the stuff of this team but great teams do not put themselves in a backs-to-the-wall scenario three times in four tests. Each of those times, and once with an injury, it was Laxman who had to bail India out. Having a single bogeyman for all occasions does not augur well in a team sport. Despite his 192 and his palpable attempts to fight it out in South Africa, Dravid would know he had an ordinary year and that his records in South Africa and Sri Lanka, like Ponting’s and Warne’s averages an India and Sampras’ record at the French Open, would remain a blot: if it is not time to go yet, at least it is time for him to drop down the order. It is too early to judge Pujara or Raina but their ascent is going to be difficult. The only settled thing about this team is the opening pair, with Murali Vijay waiting in the wings with strong intermittent performances as well. Despite that little consolation, India may be headed half-way to the sort of place the Australian batting place was in during the Ashes – and rest assured, it will not be a good place to be.

Apparently, India play tests in four more continents this year, including Europe, America and Australia. For this team, or at least its three elderly statesmen, this represents the best chance to win matches in a row in varied conditions and show that there is more to the No. 1 ranking than ICC’s method, which with reference to most things (apart from perhaps the UDRS), borders on madness. I do not know about South Africa and England’s schedules but one can be sure that they will be at India’s heels, chipping away.

Barring the four intolerable months that will be spent in the sub-continent in determining the best team in the world in 50 over cricket and then the best Indian-by-name-but-international-by-names team in IPL, under conditions that might make dry bread look more appetising than it ever was, the year promises fascinating cricket for the purists. And something tells me that India, South Africa and England will not remain as close this time next year. If they do, they will have played some unbelievable test cricket which will of course be brilliant for test cricket and for fans of test cricket like me who want it do far more than just survive as a residue of the game's glorious evolution.

The Week of the Old-fashioned!

There is something logic-defying about a Virendra Sehwag blitzkrieg, imagination-spurring about a Brian Lara coup, religiously quintessential about a Sachin Tendulkar ton, incredible about Ricky Ponting’s sense of occasion and endearing about V.V.S Laxman’s rearguards. But what might recommend Michael Hussey and Dravid one would think amid their more illustrious peers? That both men look dashing into their thirties and may still be MTV icons and heart-throbs of girls is not the kind of recommendation I am talking of. And yet in the week that has gone by (or is going by with today) both Michael Hussey and Rahul Dravid have shown with their sterling 190s how invaluable they are to their teams. As Sunil Gavaskar once famously said you bat foremost for your team and it is your team-mates’ applause that drives you at the end of the day. In case we had forgotten, this week clarified yet again why Dravid and Hussey are rated highly in the dressing room even if not by fickle fans and pressure-ridden selectors.

Apart from the fact that Michael Hussey is a left-hander and Dravid is not and that Dravid is over two summers older than the senior Hussey, there is not much that separates the two men. Their nicknames too say as much. One is both famously and infamously called The Wall for his over-my-dead-body style of playing the game. The other is referred to as Mr. Cricket for the meticulous manner in which he prepares before each match. Both rely on a tight defence to guard their fortress. And yet once they feel that their team is in the zone of safety, they unfurl a repertory of strokes which are a treat to watch and which sometimes make you wonder whether if they are two different batsmen at different stages in their innings. The point that is missed by many, conveniently or engulfed in the brightness of the other stars, is that Dravid’s solidity and Hussey’s workmanlike style lend great balance to batting line-ups punctuated with strokemakers par excellence. Skippers, fellow batsmen and journalists have said as much and not without reason.

Before their 190s this week, both men had a Damocles’ Sword hanging atop their head. To surmise that they themselves were unaware of it from the way they played – Dravid with calm discipline and Hussey with rich freedom – shows some superficial thinking on the part of the spectator. The clouds of pressure have not quite been burned away by the forceful sunshine of their backs-to-the-wall efforts. If anything, they have gone somewhere for the time being and may yet return soon enough. Dravid had, and still has and will till he retires, the likes of Cheteshwar Pujara at his heels. I am not too sure about the Australian bench but I am sure someone like Usman Khwaja picked in the long Ashes squad would make Hussey sweat over his position.

Dravid’s match-winning 191 at the Vidharba Cricket Academy which admittedly came against a decent and disciplined but not extraordinary New Zealand bowling attack and Hussey’s 195 against a potent England bowling battery that has put Australia in a commanding position at the Gabba may or may not have ensured security for Dravid’s and Hussey’s berths in their respective elevens. But coming as they did on the back of heavy criticism from the media, an extended run of poor form and probably a personal lack of confidence as well, the two gentlemen’s marathon efforts will be remembered for showing us yet again that even sport cannot besmirch human endurance and that form is temporary whilst class is permanent.

One other classical batsman, who ran dry just about the time Dravid did after the tour to England in 2007, has also been amongst the runs. Jacques Kallis has in fact unlike Hussey and Dravid been prolific lately, peeling off hundreds with the same kind of consistency, predictability and calm majesty with which Tendulkar has done – again – over the past fifteen months, narrowing the gap between himself and Ponting in terms of number of centuries. With an average in excess of 55 after close to 140 tests, a vastly improved strike rate and a few more years left in him, Kallis still has the time for a few more marathons and magnum opuses. Hussey too has a couple of years in him. As for Dravid I feel questions will be asked after every tour especially if he does not get big hundreds.

Be that as it may, Hussey and Dravid have both served their countries with remarkable consistency. However, when they call time both Hussey and Dravid will be remembered for their squeaky-clean image, the transparency and competitiveness, a rare combine in modern cricket or for that matter sport, with which they played the game. Their numbers may be less glossy compared to some of their most illustrious peers, but that is often because they played for the team and played in a manner that might make their peers’ swashbuckling business a lot easier and a lot more glamorous. Obviously devotion to the team and sincerity cannot be captured by statistics. At least, not yet.