On batting rearguards

Written on February 17, 2014. 

There is something about batting rearguards that justifies the 'Test' in Test cricket. Never mind that cricket is a lopsidedly batsman-friendly game these days (minus, thanks be to, Mitch Johnson and Dale Steyn), never mind that grounds are becoming smaller as boundaries are brought in closer and never mind the quality of the opposition's bowling attack; for to bat is to face up to the six (or seven) possible dismissals possible every delivery: that is 1080 possible dismissals in a 30-over session  and 3240 in a day. While numbers in general reduce the spirit of sporting feats to the perfectly ground grey sheen of history, the numbers a batsman keeps at bay as he tries to remain undefeated foreground the (routinely) monumental nature of his task.

As much as the numbers a batsman generates with the bat, it is the numbers he does not generate that puts him at the forefront of all Test cricket, in my opinion. No wonder we old-fashioned aficionados of the game love the guy who can carry his bat, the bloke in the lower middle-order who can defend like his life depended on it, or the frail-looking tail-ender who is still game for a bloody good scrap: it is a romance that fetes the almost physical will of bloody-mindedness (over and) against the inexorably boring press of brain-generated odds. As fans of this glorious game of essentially slow rhythms and subtle music that is an acquired taste - (what can football fans who mock us possibly know about lengthening shadows as a tired fast bowler runs into bowl to a batsman on 94*?) - we may embrace the fast food excitement of an IPL night, the high-strung nationalistic passions triggered by a T20 international, the creativity and genius unveiled in a one-day seven-for or double-hundred and a team's collective stamina revealed in a World Cup triumph. However, what we find most delicious is the anxiety and suspense generated by a batsman (or two batsmen), as he walks to square leg or does some gardening on the pitch, before resuming his battle with eleven players, the field placements, the weather, the pitch, the overall context of the game, his own body and mind and, from to time, the very expectant or very hostile ground. To bat, therefore, is to be blind to everything but the next delivery, just as to live is to not think too much.

Watching McCullum (281*) negotiate every next ball over the last five sessions, I am sure that New Zealand fans and keen-eyed neutrals have experienced at least some nervously knotty moments in their tummy. While I have not seen a ball of the Kiwi skipper's knock, which indeed inspired this post, news of it made me reminisce about other back-from-behind batting masterpieces which have become legends in my memory. Topping that very personal list of mine are two innings played under vastly different conditions, contrasting in style and substance (of runs and outcomes), but united by a sense of context. Laxman's 281 at Kolkata 2001, as almost every Indian cricket fan knows, denied Steve Waugh his final frontier and heralded an all-time great Test series and, later, a fascinating rivalry for the rest of the decade. While I cannot pick out one standout stroke from Laxman's innings - a difficulty writers tend to experience while trying to describe any Very Very Special canvas - I remember its (apparently) relentless elegance belying the steel of the wrists (and heart) that worked it, as it took the game out well beyond the follow-on context within which it was wrought, and took it beyond Australia's reach.

Six years before Laxman performed his fluent Houdini act in Dravid's gritty and generously perspiring company in the coming heat of a March day at the Eden Gardens, Michael Atherton, who also preferred grit over grace but displayed both on his day, had defied Donald, Pollock and Brian McMillan at the aptly-nicknamed 'Bull Ring (which would turn out to be the locale of Dravid's own maiden hundred) before returning to the dressing room, 185-starred. While Athers' tour de force did not help England reach the target of 479 that the Proteas had set for them, it saved England the Test.  Atherton himself, having opened the batting, had batted for thirty seven minutes shy of two days and had faced 492 deliveries in producing a modern-day classic of sound defence (and very Kipling-esque stoicism). I did not watch a single ball of the innings - and have not found any video footage of it - and so, with the dramatising powers of imagination, it grows ever more fascinating in my estimation.  

Having mentioned a knock I watched live and another that was played during my time, I must now mention what in my opinion is the greatest rearguard of all: Hanif Mohammad's 337*, the sort of innings that can inspire in a young child, as it did in me, a slightly unhealthy obsession towards Test cricket (and an even more insane aptitude to draw parallels between that and life especially when the chips are down). The innings, as cricinfo informs, came late in the 1950s against a West Indies side that included the likes of Sir Garry Sobers, Alf Valentine and Roy Fredricks, at Kensington Oval in Barbados. Before being asked to follow-on, Pakistan had replied to West Indies' 579 with 106 (all out). Opening the batting in the second dig as in the first, Hanif Mohammad batted for thirty minutes shy of a thousand and saved the Test, easy peasy (as the Iron Man would say). No innings known to me can better describe a recently popular, if paradoxical take, on cricket: "that it is a team game played by individuals."

Neither Hanif Mohammad, nor V.V.S Laxman, nor Michael Atherton came close to matching their (respectively) match-saving, match-winning and match-drawing rearguard efforts during the rest of their careers: no sir!, not in terms of runs, deliveries faced, or hours battled. On triple hundreds, the late Peter Roebuck memorably wrote that "it is the work of a lifetime expressed in a single innings." Perhaps, one could say the same about a rearguard, as evidenced by the fact that there are not many batsman with more than one triple-hundred (Lara, Gayle, Bradman and Sehwag excepted) or one backs-to-the-wall opus (Faf Du Plessis, take a bow) to their credit. Perhaps, a definitive peak betokens a clear descent. Be that as it may, Brendon 'Baz' McCullum has the great chance of turning a rare rearguard into a rarer third innings triple hundred as the final day gets underway at Wellington. Rest assured, I shall cheer for him; and so, I am sure, will Martin Crowe, who missed the feat by a run at New Zealand's capital city against Sri Lanka, and who has waited twenty-three years to see a New Zealand batsman register his name in the illustrious 300 club.

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 Humpty Dumpty Test Match

    October 1- 2010 was the day when “Endhiran” released and people crowded for 2am show to watch it. Meanwhile, the test series between Australia and India started abnormally in a quite manner in Mohali. Australia started off on high with Watson and Ponting putting together 141 run partnership. When it is an Aussie-Indian clash you expect the balance to be topsy-turvy. Its like the Humpty dumpty who sat on the wall. This one didnt disappoint one bit.

  Indians came back well with Zaheer making good use of the art he had mastered, reverse swing. The biggest bore was the rate at which the Aussies were scoring the runs. The usually aggressive Aussies played like they were scared for their life. The RPO of the post tea session on Day1 was 1.43. Now imagine sliding a hacksaw through your neck and thats what it felt like.
  Once again on Day 2, the Aussies took charge and piled up the runs and ended up with a 1st innings total of 428 despite Zaheer’s fiver-for, thanks to Tim Paine and Mitchell Johnson scoring 92 and 47 respectively. India did get off to a good start with yet another Sehwag blitzkrieg with a better than ‘run a ball’ 59. Dravid and Raina gave good support to Sachin scoring 77 and 86 respectively. The match was back again in India’s hands but the fans had a heartbreak when Sachin fell 2 short of yet another 100 with that Australia took the upper hand bowling out India for 405 and Mitch picking a five-for.

  The Aussies got off to a good start with an opening partnership of 87 runs. This time the runs came much quicker. Watson once again was the top-scorer with 56. A tall lanky Ishant Sharma, who was swatted off in the 1st innings came out of the ashes baiting 3 wickets in a spell, all big fish. Zaheer once again cleaned up the tail. The wickets of Hauritz and Hilfenhaus were dream deliveries, even top order batsmen would have nightmare facing such deliveries. The way Zaheer Khan is bowling with the old ball, he would be asking for “Second Old ball due” at the end of 80 overs. 215 was not a tough target for the Indians, considering this was team which chased big totals in the recent past. Advantage once again shifted to Australia when India were 55/4 at the end of Day 4.

Day 5 didnt start off on a good note with India tottering at 124-8. If this match was played between some tom,dick or it would’ve been over, but hey this is IND Vs AUS. Ishant Sharma camped the same crease where the top order batsmen were jumping to short deliveries of the Aussie Fast bowlers, on a wicket which was pretty tough to play short pitch bowling. Laxman despite his back problems, batted with silken touch. Ishant Sharma and Laxman took India to within 11 runs of the target from a hopeless position. There were many tense moments after Ishant was adjudged LBW when he wasn't and Ojha wasn’t when he really was LBW. Ojha and Laxman held the nerve and took India through to their “closest ever test win” with Laxman remaining unbeaten on 73. Yet another time the Aussies were stoven by Laxman. Ishant who started as a villain at day 1 conceding too many runs became a hero in a span of 5 days at the end of the test match. At the start of Day 5 everyone were screaming for Sachin, after all the hype it was a quite and Very Very Special Laxman who drew the “Laxman Rekha” for India.

Australia would be really down after losing such a close test match. They would need a lot to bounce back after this. It is really a shame this is just a 2 match series. The Match also marked Zaheer’s achievement of picking 250 test match wickets. I was jumping in joy not because India won but because i witnessed one of the greatest test matches ever played and that too between two evenly matched teams with a lot of “setting the cat among the pigeons” moments.