Stumps, Mr. Watson!

Shane Watson would not have made a great friend to Sherlock Holmes. Unlike the master-sleuth’s partner in crime, John, Shane comes across as a brash man lacking, inter alia, in discretion – a certain asset in the art of deduction. Yet it is the man’s candour that keeps one from questioning whether, as Watson said about his retirement from Test cricket last week, he has truly given his best to the long form of the game. Watson’s numbers in Tests are there for all to see, and they speak of an underachieving all-rounder, undone often by a fragile body and at times by a clouded mind. In Watson’s case the numbers may even tell the best part of his story, but that part, shorn of emotion, undersells the man significantly; for, Watson, despite what he promised and what he delivered (or did not), was all about emotions – the ones he exuded, and the ones he provoked.

 

My first memory of Watson is from the curtain-raising edition of the IPL 2008, in which Watson batted and bowled his way into the Australian team, besides playing a significant role in Rajasthan Royals’ – a team of unfancied rookies, though captained by a certain Shane Keith Warne – tile triumph. Since then, I have watched Watson smash attacks to smithereens in the shorter formats, for Australia and for Rajasthan Royals, and have been awestruck, like others, by the power and the straight lines which characterize Watson’s hitting, especially straight down the ground.  If only Watson had figured out a way to wed his power with some discretion – that word, again – his would have been a story of ‘what he did not achieve’ rather than ‘what he did.’

 

Even as it stands, Watson’s story in the game’s most prized format is not to be trifled with. Many a sub-continental country would blindly select an all-rounder who averages 35 with the bat and under 35 with the ball whenever he is fit (and so did Australia). Nor have those averages been accumulated by attritional play, as suggested by his last two Test centuries. Back in 2012, with the urn already in England’s kitty, Watson batted over a day to produce a masterful 176 – his best returns in a Test innings. When England returned to Australia to defend the urn a year later, Watson showed off his repertory of aggressive strokes in the second innings of the third Test at WACA, as he galloped to 103 off 109 deliveries, after Warner’s hundred and a first innings lead of 120 runs had given Australia a decisive advantage. Watson’s 176 may be wished away as a personal average-boosting affair on a traditionally fine batting turf, but his Perth counterattack cannot be as easily discounted. To Watson’s detractors, his London and Perth tons may betray a mind that buckles perform under pressure. That theory is as convenient as it is shallow, though, given Watson’s relative excellence in T20s and ODI cricket for nearly a decade. Alternatively, those two centuries may be taken to showcase a man who performs at his best when there is no time to think.

 

If Watson underperformed with the bat, he frustrated with the ball. Seventy-five sticks in fifty-nine matches do scant justice to a talent that took 6-33 against South Africa in the blink of an eye. Injuries did play a significant role in restricting Watson’s bowling, but Watson would probably be the first to admit that, like any other all-rounder in the game, he was only half a batsman whenever he did not contribute with the ball (which, unfortunately for him and Australia, was far too many times in the past four summers). Neither injuries nor his temperament, however, came in the way of his being a fine slip fielder: Watson’s 45 catches in 59 Tests may not say much about his catching prowess, but his ‘safe as houses’ seldom shelled a catch.

 

When they did, that expression was back on Watson’s face –  the expression that he wore time after time when DRS indicated that he had been given out correctly after all; the expression that suggested that he was fighting a lone battle against the opposition, the world and, in all likelihood, himself.  That expression becomes very relevant in assessing Watson’s career because it spoke of a ‘Watto’ who had tried and failed… AGAIN. It introduced to the crowds, for a few passing moments, a man who had sought (and been denied) personal satisfaction, amid the fickle rumpus of adulation and opprobrium. It framed a gifted athlete with an incorrigible body and a mind that was not swift in telling his hands to play around the front pad in swinging conditions. It spoke of Watson at the close of play – a handsome face wrinkled by the vagaries of a great game.

Chris Martin walks

If Martin Crowe is the best international batsman New Zealand has ever produced, Chris Martin is the worst. The latter has now called time on his New Zealand career.

Never mind Martin was a number eleven! He will be remembered for his thirty-six blobs, in an era of boring multi-purpose tailenders where - heck - even Glenn McGrath scored a Test fifty! And McGrath, even the proud Australians will agree, was marginally better than Courtney Walsh with bat in hand.

Never mind that Martin finishes with 233 Test sticks, third only to the great Sir Richard Hadley and the  versatile Daniel Vettori among bowlers from the land of the long white cloud! He will bring to mind the nicknames 'walking wicket', the amusing 'phantom' or the downright ghastly 'the walking wicket'. Producers of Japanese horror films can take a walk.

Heck, I do not even remember  Chris Martin's bowling action. I do, however, recall that he once scythed through an Indian top-five including Tendulkar, Sehwag and Dravid for below fifty aggregate runs in the second innings of a Test match in India some years ago. New Zealand could still not win the Test as Harbhajan Singh of all people flayed a Test hundred. More serious men must have thought the world cruel, not Martin, I don't think.

Shane Bond, as the co-author of this blog might say, was badass and brilliant at the same time. Less Dale Steyn than Steyn due to a Zaheer-esque physique, statistics and for being a leader without a compelling support cast. Bond was, ahem, New Zealand's cricket's bowling Vinod Kambli; a fantastic could-have-been that fans world over like to imagine. Chris Martin on the other hand has been Kiwi cricket's has-been, a swing bowler of the kind English county cricket regularly produces. And despite looking like a willfully amusing version of Ralph Fienne's Lord Voldemort, Martin has spearheaded New Zealand's Test bowling attack when the country's international stocks have dipped to new lows. Good bloke Chris!

Personally, I have always loved seeing characters on the field. If Shane Warne is cast as the ultimate sorcerer and Chris Gayle as the cool guy next door with bat in hand, Chris Martin has been an entertainer who seems to not take himself too seriously, and who has thereby brought the meaning of sport right back into the game. For that alone, he deserves some Christmas cards every year. Philip Hughes may be sending one too because the next time he faces upto New Zealand he need not worry about "c. Guptill b. C. Martin' next to his name.

Goodbye, Mr. Martin. The glimpses have been fun, but I wish I had seen more of you.

PS: Here are two wonderful tributes to Martin, a poignant one by Iain O'Brien who had seen an elder brother in the retiree, and a more cheerful variant by Paul Ford.  

Ponting's Last Bow!

It is likely that two Pontings have  burned themselves for all time into the minds of Indian cricket fans the world over. And what contrasting Pontings they are: the batsman who wrested a World Cup finals from the opposition by half-time with an innings for the gods (no pun intended!); the man who was part - and some say at the very heart - of the controversies following the Sydney Test. My favourite Ponting, however, batted in another game where India was again the opposition. Australia arrived at the World Cup 2011 Quarter Finals in Ahmedabad having just lost their first Cup game since 1999, not nearly the force they were in the previous decade; nor was Ricky Ponting the free-spirited audacious willow wielder of his formative years. Yet, playing within himself, he scored a century characterised by such grit and self-restraint that I couldn't but help applaud the innings.

It was like seeing an undemonstrative skipper stand firm on a sinking ship, his commitment writ large in his eyes and his purposefulness at the crease. He would inevitably leave, too, but not until he had seen others go, and not after he had given his best. It is difficult to like Ponting, or, for that matter, even admire him. By some reckonings, including that of the late Peter Roebuck, he played the game too hard. However, now that he is set to leave international cricket , I recall with fondness how his strength complemented, and did not emerge in spite of, vulnerability during that match at Ahmedabad.  It was a Ponting we were not used to, self-aware, controlled and deep; it was, dare I say, if only for a few moments, an endearing Ponting.

Ponting's no-nonsense approach to cricket - not for nothing is he called the most uncompromising player of his generation - and his adamant desire to win matches for Australia have been criticised by fans and experts alike. His own personality - his nickname, his mischievous laughter which become it, and his brashness - might have contributed to the scathing judgments. It is also not outlandish to surmise that Ponting was as an Australian captain compared, especially by non-Australians, to his predecessor Steve Waugh, the most unyielding man to have walked the cricket field, but a gentleman revered by many. Unsurprisingly, he lost out more as a man than as a captain in popular opinion.

Ponting was never a master strategist either, a fact that Ian Chappell repeatedly accentuated at many points during his captaincy tenure, though he did not need to be with the teams he commanded. Still,  he led from the front with the bat, like Michael Clarke and Alastair Cook today,  both setting up and winning games for Australia, always talking and playing an aggressive game. The fact that he is the only cricketer to have been part of 100 Test victories is a telling statistic, arguably the most relevant number in a team game. It will probably stay perched alongside 99.94, a hundred international hundreds and 800 International Wickets at least till the end of my lifetime.

The biggest blot in Ricky Ponting's fine CV will undoubtedly be the 'A' word. Such is the importance of the Anglo-Australian rivalry in cricket, even during these times when the sub-continent (read 'India') virtually runs the sport, that he will likely be remembered as the captain who lost three Ashes including, criky, one at home. I wonder if generations hence Australia's 5-0 bossing  of England in 2007 -  the series which was to be Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Justin Langer and Damien Martyn's last- would be mentioned in the same breath as the three defeats that Ponting presided over as an Ashes captain.

Many of us were thrilled at the end of the 2010-2011 Ashes: the magisterial Aussies had been brought to earth in their own den. For the Australian cricket team, a Test-series loss to England at home was, perhaps, a fitting final scene in a climactic decline that had taken years coming. Ponting himself had turned in only one half-century in the series whilst Trott and Cook topped the run charts. For once, the Australian cricket team and the pugnacious Australian skipper had both been subdued by an England team at the height of its powers and a perfectly conceived - and executed - campaign, once they ensured that the loss at Perth was no less than a note of caution against complacency; no more than an aberration.

The tidings of 2011 - the Ashes loss, the handover of captaincy to Michael Clarke, the continued struggled for form in South Africa and the drop from no. 3 to no. 4 -  must surely have hurt Ponting. However, just when it seemed like he might see sense in the calls for retirement, he warmed (to) the 2011-12 home summer against India with a couple of 60's against some ill-conceived short-pitched bowling that fed his famous pull. There was a poignant moment as he, then, brought up a statuesque hundred at the Sydney Cricket Ground: Rahul Dravid, who who had been encouraged by Ponting to keep at it during lean times, applauded the reemergence of a fellow great to form. Ponting then returned to Adelaide Oval, and turning the clocks backwards,  produced a fluent double-hundred, his second there against India as Australia made a clean sweep of the series. Emboldened by the reversal in his and the team's fortunes, he was arguably justified in having an eye on next year's back-to-back Ashes. What better than a last stand with a bat against the arch-rival, the competitive voice inside would have said. Unfortunately that is not to be as the voice has not been able to arrest his waning form against a high-class South African pace attack.

Ponting may yet have a fairytale ending where it all began with a 96 on debut versus Sri Lanka. A hundred at the WACA would be a perfect end to a career that has seen three World Cup triumphs (one more World Cup final) , and has helped the Australian team stay at the top of the ODI and Test rankings for many years. On the other hand, Ponting may be content with a couple of his casual blinders in the slips if that takes Australia to victory and returns it as the top Test team in the world again. One can, however, rest assured that South Africa will come hard at him. I wish, for once, that Ricky hits back harder and walks back to a standing ovation, his bat held aloft, not just in acknowledgement but also to celebrate a final accomplishment.

Well-timed, Mr. Ponting, and very well played!

Au Revoir, Laxman!

The Australians are a miserly lot when it comes to giving credit and Australian cricketers are particularly grumpy. So, when they expanded V. V. S to Very Very Special, one couldn't but help but take notice. And when no less a judge than Ian Chappell heaps generous praise on someone you know you are watching something seriously special. 

Hereabouts is a man who opened the batting before the turn of the millennium, and scored 167 out of 260-odd at Sydney when the proverbial Indian touring ship was sinking and burning. Two years later, he stepped out to Shane Warne bowling round the wicket, and drove him between mid-off and extra cover en route to 281 in (unarguably) the greatest innings played by an Indian in Test cricket. (Even the gentlemen at Wisden found it worthy enough to be ranked as the sixth best innings played in the long format). Back at Sydney in 2004, he 'composed' 178 of the most beautiful runs I have ever been witnessed. It is no wonder that even the former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a great cricket fan, loved to see him bat. And now he leaves, like his partner in many a memorable 'heist' did in March, "disbanding", as Sharda Ugra rightly points out, the finest Indian middle order of all time, leaving the stage for the Pujaras, the Rohit Sharmas and the Virat Kohli's. It will be nothing short of a cliche when I say Laxman will be missed. We will know exactly how much he is missed the next time India tries to chase a total down on a tricky last-day pitch under pressure from a good bowling attack.

A single overwhelming mood predominates when I think of Laxman's innings many of which I have watched over the years - unrestrained joy. One often hears commentators quipping about certain batsmen: "He makes batting look so easy" or "He seems to be batting on a good wicket while others are batting on a minefield." These quips true every other time in Laxman's case. He belongs to and in the ilk of batsmen, which includes among others  Mark Waugh  and Mahela Jayawardene, whose stroke play is supremely rich in expression, reminding us of art for art's sake, of a bygone era when this was a game free from its professional trappings, and of the possibilities of life. It is little surprise then that Laxman often looked imperious and carefree one-day, and impulsive and careless the next. I still remember that there was a time when he used to stroke the prettiest thirties before feathering an edge through to the keeper of a fairly innocuous delivery. The fact that Laxman outwitted his own nonchalance, without sacrificing the spontaneity or the blitheness of his craft, to become one of the mainstays of the Indian batting line-up speaks greatly of his temperament.

The breeze that Laxman's bat exudes has given me many wonderful memories, some more likely to endure than others. His last bow in Australia might not have contributed even a single half century, but when I think of cricket in Australia my mind will probably go back to Laxman's drives, short-arm pulls, leg glances, Azhar-esque flicks and deft dabs which send the ball singing to the boundary, dispersing en route the seagulls enjoying a day out on the lush green outfield. I will also recall with fondness and respect the way he batted in 2009 and 2010, pulling of a physically demanding run chase with a classy hundred at Colombo, ruining Australia's party with an adrenaline-defying undefeated 73 in a humdinger at Mohali, and setting up a famous victory with a statuesque 96 in Durban - the Waterloo of India's 100 and 66 all-out in 1996 - against Dale Steyn & Co. If Laxman's legacy is to be defined, the three aforementioned innings and the 281 at Kolkata  provide a common thread: he didn't battle pressure, he batted it. (And pressure or not, he made runs whenever he went out to bat at the Eden Gardens like Azharuddin did before him! And it was a sight to see Laxman appear bamboozled every time he got out, bowled).

As a slip fielder, Laxman appeared almost somnolent making it is easy to take his contribution for granted (may be they should also have nicknamed him Very Very Simple). But good close-in fieldsmen are like good wicket keepers in that their best work is done with quiet sufficiency; when they grass a couple you never hear the end of it. Laxman was so clinical in his catching like the Marks, Waugh and Taylor, that he made taking tricky catches appear like another day at the office. In fact, I cannot remember the last time Laxman dropped a catch even as Dravid, another brilliant catcher, plucked rippers and dropped sitters regularly during the last two years of his career. The next time I watch an India playing Test cricket  one thing will, perhaps, more take time to sink in than the batting line- up which will be 21000 Test runs poorer - a strange slip cordon.

 Winding up, I admit that the timing of Laxman's retirement surprises me just the way the timing behind his strokes did. Having been picked for the upcoming series versus New Zealand and having a final chance to play at his home ground at Uppal, one would have thought that he would play out the series. But as Harsha Bhogle has tweeted, "[It] requires a very special man to turn his back on a grandstand end and accept the end has come." Many have said this before, and I will for my part say it again: it has been a privilege to have grown up in an era that has seen the likes of Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman, Kumble and Ganguly. Mukul Kesavan said on CNN-IBN after Dravid's retirement that this may be the beginning of the end of Test cricket itself in India. Sports fans are suckers for nostalgia and doomsday theories but Kesavan's warning does seem ominous given the goings-on in Indian cricket. With Laxman now gone, Tendulkar alone remains from an era of Indian cricket which he himself heralded, and which is now in its twenty-third year. Soon, the curtains will come down on it for good.        

A Tasmanian Titan: Ricky Ponting!

Inspiration is often derived from leaders. But to construe inspiring as an objective of leading is to miss the point. And it is precisely in this context that followers of Australian cricket probably put Steve Waugh in the list of its greatest and finest captains even as Ricky Ponting is given his due grudgingly especially by followers of the Australian team outside of Australia. Those who compare Waugh’s tough but honest ways and Ponting’s victory-at-all-costs approach put the New South Welshman in the “fair” category and Ponting in the “unfair” category.

Ask any Indian, and he will swear by the senior Waugh twin’s name just as he will swear against Ponting. Sydneygate is just one of those nasty sporting episodes that went too far and any skipper would have been made to look like a goose: that Ponting refused to back down made him appear more so. Ponting (and in his company others) might have been wrong as South – and they have never claimed to be saints – but to fail to give the little Tasmanian his due wholeheartedly using the fairness argument seems to be a subversion of fairness. Indeed, this author believes firmly in fair play himself and can possibly never love Ponting. One should not however forget that sport owes its remarkable richness to the variegations of its characters.

And discounting the rise of Ponting from being Tasmania’s blessed but notorious prodigal son to the leader of the finest one-day and test teams in Australian cricket history is to miss an important chapter in all cricketing history. Every great has had a failing: Tendulkar’s has been, till recently, his inability to complete matches; Lara’s reportedly was selfishness; Bradman missed the immortal 100 as average by 0.6 but he missed it all right; Ponting’s crime evidently is that he has been ruthlessly single-minded in charge of world beaters who shared the vision with fixity. And it is a better crime than having a soft underbelly like some Indian teams of the past.

When Ponting broke through with 96 about fifteen years ago at the WACA against Pakistan, he was already touted to be one of Australia’s future greats. But not every young genius deals with early accolades with the shoulders of a giant like Tendulkar did. One of the reasons why the Indian Little Master is revered the world over has to do with the poise with which he has kept the extra-cricket elements he has received through cricket away from his game, thereby being wedded to it and it shows in his staggering consistency. Lara’s career which concurred with a period of petty politicking in Windies cricket that ultimately affected the players, however, swung between the sublime and the subterranean, often within the same series. Ponting’s issues were off the field. Alcohol is no alien to a Punter nicknamed so on purpose and did its job; the Australian skipper, I still remember, even got a black eye once. But rather than dilly-dallying like Jesse Ryder, the New Zealand left-hander who has himself dealt with issues relating to alcohol lately, Ponting came out, confessed his vulnerability, worked his way out of it, married a lawyer and took charge of his life. And as the new millennium arrived, Ponting’s fitness in the field and hunger for runs were already eliciting comparisons respectively with Jonty Rhodes and contemporary Herschelle Gibbs and Lara and Tendulkar. Some would die to be compared with the likes of those for just a day; Ponting has managed to keep the comparisons going, often rising about them, for a better part of his tremendous career.

His fiasco against the Turbunator in the epoch-making 2001 series in India, a place where he has not set the scores ringing, was an aberration and he made up taking toll of bowling attacks round the world making big runs when Australia needed it the most. Arch-foes England met a new Ashes champion, one who would by the play of irony be the first captain to concede the Ashes (possibly thrice) in several years, and had no responses but nor did the Indians. To sum up the World Cup 2003 finals was a no-brainer: Ponting (who was already skipper of the one-day team) launched a blitz that left India clueless. Harbhajan Singh was particularly mauled and revenge was sweet. And though India drew the historical Steve Waugh farewell series later in the year, Ponting was thick with runs becoming the first Australian since Bradman to score consecutive double hundreds.

Through the rest of the decade, leading upto 2008 Ponting played many other stellar innings besides pouching catches – at gully, the slips, point, and just about anywhere – he was not supposed to take and hitting the stumps with staggering consistency. The need to review Ponting’s runs assumes significance because it is said that a leader is only as good as his team. Half a Ponting would still have led Australia to the 2007 Ashes whitewash, the 2003 and 2007 World Cup wins or a number of other triumphs which I forget because of the consistency with which victories came for the Australian juggernaut. Messieurs Warne, Hayden, Langer, Martyn, McGrath and Gilchrist are not names that need to be led. But Ponting still towered in a team of greats by being the team’s best batsmen. That he scored his runs at number 3, played only in fourth gear and was still prolific meant that Ponting was the opposition’s most prized wicket, the noughties’ highest run scorer and world’s most prolific number 3 in terms of runs and second only to Bradman in averages.

And now the great run machine is on the wane; or perhaps as the soothsayers, naysayers and associates say, he has waned. It is hard to blame the factions from which those whispers come: after all, they have high-credentialled names like Ian Chappell. Grapevine and the media, and it is difficult to fathom whether they are different these days, say that Ponting may call time if they strip him of the captaincy. Ponting has an ego the size of the international batting colossus he has built but the problem is that the ego was fed by the very runs that fortified it.

The colossus sadly does not seem like Work in Progress anymore. Its construction struck everyone with awe and may soon stand “completed” for everyone to stand and judge. Ponting as the world and its uncle knows has never been a master strategist as a captain and his lack of runs have therefore been doubly accentuated. Unlike India where Dravid, another fabulous number three who seems to be going nowhere with his mind or runs, has managed to hold onto the wreckage, Australia will not give a magnanimous rope and Ponting who has emerged from and lived with the hardnosed system will know it better than most.

That his runs have reduced to drips when the rest of the batting line-up, barring to some extent Hussey senior, Haddin and Shane Watson, too is in introspection mode has made Ponting’s insipid run-scoring phase seem balder for not long ago did Ponting score those fine fighting half-centuries in India or the brisk 50-odd in the second innings of the first Ashes test at Brisbane. With Ponting staring at the third Ashes defeat as a captain and the first at home – and Ashes Echoes has it that neither is simply another dubious distinction to be forgotten with time like King Pairs or having a Chris Martin batting average –, the drought seems even more cruel especially as Ponting’s young opposite number keeps Trotting along, almost making it seem like the Aussie bowling is a feast for him. But such is the irony and ire that sport is ordained. To not await the destiny and deal closure speaks of prudence; to stay on, linger and change it is fortune that a few – like Tendulkar or Muralidharan – are blessed with; for the rest, the ending is grey and dragged out, a nostalgic reproduction of glimpses of a golden age rather than the spontaneous sunshine of fluency.

Only the most absurd optimist or skewed mystics who can make rains can prevent England retaining the urn at the end of the Boxing Day test. Even if that happens, there is no assurance Australia will win at Sydney; Perth last week already seems like a hyperbolic fluke and a rude joke played on the Australians. To cut it short, Ponting’s undeniably superb legacy as a captain is all but lost: he will be remembered not as the guy who supervised a 5-0 Ashes whitewash of England but as the man who lost the campaign thrice not least because the human memory is fickle and remembers only the most recent tidings. But Ponting’s batting legacy should not be lost in a heist of commonsense or bitterness. Whether the Sydney test is Ponting’s finale or the beginning of the end only time and selectors can tell.

Eventually, Ponting’s end will come. Steve Waugh once said that Ponting would overtake Tendulkar’s hundreds. To even spare a thought to that prediction evokes titters or tears now – as the case may be – but Waugh would not have foreseen either Tendulkar’s incredible second wind or Ponting’s simultaneous autumn. And armed with a technique that could charitably be described as grotesque, Ponting would not find his place in the list of the game’s graceful greats either. We have spoken enough of his charred legacy as a skipper and his lack of popularity as a player. All the same, Ricky Ponting’s cricket at its peak was aggressive, forthright and single-minded, qualities which characterise the Australian landscape. He may not be missed in due course even by the Australian team for dispensability is taken too literally in sport. And irrespective of when the sun sets over Ponting’s extraordinary career, the little Tasmanian’s membership in the company of the world’s greatest batsmen is a formality now as it has been for some years. Gainsaying his greatness – with or without a #Pontingface – would amount to the gainsayer’s being diagnosed with cricket’s own strain of partial amnesia.