Indian ship flounders at Port Elizabeth

While watching the morning session of the second day's play at Port Elizabeth, my fellow columnist Sujata Prakash made a comment that pretty much sums up the story of Indian cricket.

'If a history of Indian cricket is written,' she said, 'the best possible title would be Duh! What if...?

The "glorious uncertainties" of Indian cricket were in full view on a morning when you could have done with a bit less of the uncertainity and a bit more of consistency.

And in the afternoon, things only got worse.

The script called for India to take early wickets in a bid to ram home the advantage. The sun was blazing down, the pitch was drying rapidly, bowling conditions were at their very best in the first hour, and the wicket was expected to ease off thereafter as the remnants of moisture were blazed away by the sun.

Javagal Srinath -- who, on this tour, appears (barring the odd spell of lackadaisical bowling) appears to have shed a good 10 years off his age, and got in return a fresh set of legs and dentures, played to the script when, in the fifth over of the morning, he pitched one right up, with just a hint of away movement, inviting a tentative Shaun Pollock to drive. The South African captain obliged, and movement off the seam found the thick outer edge for Harbhajan Singh to hold at point, the day's first wicket falling for the addition of just seven runs to the overnight score.

The ask at that point was for sustained pressure -- after the new man in, Mark Boucher, the Proteas had only Niky Boje, woefully short of form after his comeback from injury, to follow. Ajit Agarkar had begun the morning with some good bowling, hitting the full length and doing stuff with the seam. But at the vital moment, schizophrenia struck again. If the ball wasn't overpitched on leg stump, it was short and wide of off -- if the bowler had sported a flowing white beard, Boucher would have figured Santa Claus was paying an early visit.

Anil Kumble got the ball after 13 overs of seam had produced 40 runs. An over later, it was Harbhajan Singh's turn -- and an interesting bit of bowling had an unfortunate end. Seeing Boucher intent on the sweep, the offie floated up a top-spinner outside off on a full length. The S'African keeper-batsman went down on his knee and swung, looking to hit with the turn. The top-spinner skidded through straight, caught the top edge, and ballooned behind Dasgupta. Dravid at slip, with time to spare, ran around, positioned himself perfectly -- and dropped a sitter, with South Africa at the time on 285/6 (Boucher 31 off 32)..

For some reason, almost immediately thereafter, India went on the defensive -- and the batsman promptly swung the other way, with Boucher playing swashbuckler. The 50 partnership came off 68 balls -- a marked contrast to the slow pace of scoring seen on day one.

Sachin Tendulkar was given the ball in the 114th -- and what followed was quite a sight. One off break started off the proceedings, a leg break followed soon after -- and then it was all seam and swing. And glory be, the ball actually swung, it seamed, it beat the outer edge of a batsman coasting in his 190s, it was in sum a demonstration of what was possible on this track. Having beaten the well-set Herschelle Gibbs with a couple of outswingers, Tendulkar then produced the one seaming in. Gibbs laid back, aiming to cut the away-swinger -- the ball coming in, though, cramped the shot and flew straight to the gully placed precisely for the error.

It would be difficult to overpraise Gibbs' knock here -- 196 runs (354 deliveries) out of a team score of 324/7 tells an eloquent tale. The right-hander cut out his berserker streak as soon as he saw his opening partner Gary Kirsten depart early, and focussed with unsuspected determination on the job of guiding his team through. Technically, what stood out was his quick reading of the conditions, and the array of flowing drives off the back foot with which he countered the fact that driving on the front foot on this track was a dodgy proposition.

In the very next over, Anil Kumble produced a top spinner on a very full length, the tentative Niky Boje poked at it down the wrong line, took it on the pad, and walked back with just one to his name.

Faced with the prospect of running out of partners, Boucher went on the attack, lashing out at everything coming his way. At the other end, Makhaya Ntini found a Tendulkar incutter on leg and middle taking the leading edge. Ganguly, running back from cover, and Das, running in from a sweeper position, omitted the elementary ploy of calling for the catch, both pulled up short and looked at each other, and the ball fell in between. It would have been funny on a school ground -- in an international match, it was merely pathetic.

Srinath, brought back for one over before lunch, completed another 5-fer against the Proteas when he had Ntini clipping a full-length inswinger off his pads and straight to deep backward square. At lunch, taken at the fall of the ninth wicket, South Africa were 353/9 (119 overs), with Boucher with 60 off 63 spearheading an assault that produced 116 runs for four wickets in 27 overs.

Post-lunch session:

In the second over of the second session, Srinath picked up his 62nd Protean wicket when, a couple of deliveries after clouting Nantie Hayward on the head with a lifter, produced one that hit line of leg and middle on fullish length, then straightened to flash past the tentative push onto middle stump. Boucher was left stranded on 68 off 70, an innings that nailed the Indians to the mast after Gibbs had set it up with his superb marathon.

South Africa had a healthy 362 on the board at closure. The Indian bowling card, meanwhile, was a tale of contrasts especially at the top. Srinath, with 6/76, turned the clock back a few years while Agarkar was, well, Agarkar. That is to say, prone to following up one good delivery with a series of short-pitched or over-pitched deliveries that came gift-wrapped with '4' tattooed on them.

Harbhajan Singh bowled magnificiently on day one to peg the South Africans onto the back foot and keep them there through the day -- and was desperately unlucky not to have got Boucher in his first over of the second day. Kumble was tight for the most part without, however, ever looking the bowler he can be in Indian conditions.

Perhaps the best comment on the state of Indian cricket lies in the fact that after 9 hours of playing time in a Test match, no one had a clue who would walk out with Shiv Sundar Das to open the Indian innings. As it turned out, the man who drew the short straw was Deep Dasgupta.

If at all the Indians had a game plan, it would have been to see off Pollock, the only danger in the Protean bowling lineup. Nantie Hayward is quick -- today, he consistently hit the 145k mark and pushed it to 148+ on occasion -- but dishes out straight up, straight down stuff. Jacques Kallis and Makhaya Ntini are at best support acts, Lance Klusener bowls so many slower ones these days, he has gone from being a quick bowler with a superb slower one, to a slow bowler with an occasional quick ball. And Niky Boje on this track is Father Christmas at his most benevolent.

Ergo -- keep Pollock out had to be the mantra. In the event, when the carrot-haired S'African skipper finished his first spell, his analysis read 7-1-13-3.

The first of those victims was a gift. Das went forward to a very full delivery that took the thick inner edge to richochet onto the pad. The bowler went up, once, twice, thrice, four times -- and the umpire gave the verdict, one presumes in order to stop Pollock from appealing. If there is a certain irony in the fact that both South African openers survived LBW appeals in the first half hour of day one off Srinath deliveries that had them dead to rights, put it down to quote the vagaries of the game close quote.

If 'Pressing the Panic Button' becomes an Olympic sport, India will take the gold medal with ease. One Test, one defeat -- and it needs pointing out that the defeat owed to some rank bad bowling, and a dismal collapse on the fourth morning -- later, the entire lineup had been shuffled.

Rahul Dravid walked in at one drop with the score reading 5/1. And squared up to Shaun Pollock, the bowler who took him out twice in the previous Test. Here, as at Bloemfontein, Pollock produced outswingers that regularly beat the outer edge, and then produced the one cutting in. Dravid, primed for the away going delivery, pushed at this one without the front foot coming forward, the ball went through the resulting gate and sent the middle stump walking.

Sachin Tendulkar brought about his own downfall. The Pollock delivery was on the three quarter length, outside off. Tendulkar rocked back and flashed into the pull. It is a shot he plays to very good effect -- but this one was played before he had settled down, before he had a chance to assess the pitch and the bowler. The mishit went straight to mid on, India was 15/3 -- and Pollock celebrated his 250th Test wicket..

Ironically, it was makeshift opener Dasgupta who, camouflaging his shortcomings under a cloak of grit, stood watching while higher rated colleagues came and went. Makhaya Ntini, however, ended his tenacious resistance with a quick ball on very full length that caught the batsman on the move forward, went through the gate and made a mess of the stumps. Dasgupta, however, had stood his ground for 60 deliveries, and done what he had been asked to do -- if his betters did not make better use of his largesse in shielding them from the new ball, it was hardly his fault.

Saurav Ganguly, who came in at the fall of Tendulkar, survived 10 searing deliveries from Pollock, who has thus far taken out his Indian counterpart five times, one more than Glenn McGrath. Even Ganguly wouldn't be able to tell you how -- with six in the slip-gully cordon, one under the helmet on the on, and just two in front of the bat, Pollock time and again had the tentative Indian skipper playing and missing.

But the value of the 'see Pollock off' ploy showed soon enough. Once the bowler took himself off, Ganguly climbed off the hot tin roof -- and climbed into Jacques Kallis, to the tune of four blazing boundaries in the 17th over. When Kallis bowls, you sometimes wonder whether first slip, not the keeper, should be wearing the keeping gloves -- and that kind of line is what Ganguly has, well buttered, for breakfast.

India went in to tea with 63/4 on the board, off 22 overs, Ganguly scoring 37 of those off just 31 deliveries and VVS Laxman, rapidly descending the batting ladder from number 3 to number 6, not out on 4.

Post tea session:

Shaun Pollock came back after tea, nicely rested and primed to take on his favourite opponent. The slip-gully cordon was thinned down to four, mainly in recognition of the ageing of the ball. But there was a certain inevitability about the outcome -- Ganguly, who seemed happy enough to play shots at the far pacier Nantie Hayward, seemed all at sea when facing the Protean spearhead.

Pollock gets very close to the stumps when he bowls -- and he never, ever, strays in line and length. This meant that Ganguly did not have the luxury of playing shots against him. The pressures of playing and missing finally told, when Pollock produced one on a very full length on middle and off, Ganguly went back where he would have been better off on the front foot, and the ball sneaked through the gate to give Pollock his 251st wicket -- six of them named Ganguly. The Indian skipper had made 42 runs off 46 balls with seven fours -- significantly, however, 20 of those deliveries had been bowled by Pollock and Ganguly had made just 7 off them.

Virendra Sehwag started out with a superb off drive off Shaun Pollock. The miffed bowler marched up to the batsman, mock-applauded, and said, Let's see you do it again. So, a couple of overs later, the batsman did just that, producing two perfectly executed boundaries off the bowler.

When you watch this guy bat, you realise he has everything going for him -- good footwork, equal ease off front foot and back, a temperament that permits him to play the ball he is facing, irrespective of whether half the side is back in the hut. What he doesn't have yet -- and needs to develop in a hurry -- is the ability to keep the adrenalin from getting away with him (Herschelle Gibbs showed him how, for a day and a half, here).

Kallis is not half the bowler Pollock is, and Sehwag, shrugging off a played-and-missed, aimed a casual forcing shot off the back foot to a nothing ball short and outside off. The bounce meant the ball was in the air for an instant longer than the batsman would have liked -- but when the South Africans are in the field, an instant is all it takes for someone like Kirsten to judge to a nicety at gully and hold.

At 111/6 with Agarkar walking out, VVS Laxman must have thought he was back in Calcutta against the Aussies. Then, it was 92/6 after Australia had made 445. And here, as there, Laxman played on a track, and against bowling, completely different from what his mates were struggling against. The batsman with the record of scoring 60.7 per cent of all his Test runs through boundaries was in his elements here, patiently waiting for the line and length he was sure he could hit, and putting it away with the ease that marks his shot-making.

At the other end, Agarkar gave Kallis another wicket to add to his collection, attempting to force a short ball outside off only to feather an edge to the keeper (119/7). Two balls later, Harbhajan Singh off the last ball of the over, pushed straight to cover, yelled One One One, and kept running. Why he would want to take a risky single, why he would want to retain strike rather than let Laxman take it, only he knows -- in the event, he was run out by half the length of the pitch, and that only because Boucher first fumbled the take before collecting and taking off the bails (119/8).

Anil Kumble (who averages 22+ against SA) played with application -- but having said that, you got the feeling as India inched ever closer to the follow-on mark that South Africa seemed intent on helping India past that figure. And that is when the parallel with the Calcutta Test against Australia became stronger. There Steve Waugh, ever an attacking skipper, asked India to bat again -- and Laxman and Dravid laid the platform for a brilliant win. Shaun Pollock is no Steve Waugh -- sure, he wants to win, but on his terms, and without creating windows of opportunity for the opposition. And so, Kallis and Ntini bowled extended spells, at a time when you would have thought Pollock would have brought himself on and cleaned up the innings.

You can't really blame the South African captain -- conditions are good for batting, and will continue to be so tomorrow. Why would anyone in his right mind gift-wrap a batting pitch and hand it to the Indians?

Kallis blotted his copybook when, in the 46th over, Laxman played a couple of shots for braces. Kallis promptly bowled a grubber, aiming at second slip, then let fly a few choice abuses at Laxman. And did it all over again next ball.

Frankly, it is hard to find a reason for that -- unless you go with bad upbringing. It's not as if Kallis was bowling with breathtaking brilliance and got a bit worked up when a streaky shot went for runs (even that doesn't excuse open bad language, actually).

Pollock brought himself on once India had gotten to needing just 3 to avoid the follow on. That target was achieved off the first ball of the 50th over. The 50 run partnership for the 9th wicket came off 78 balls -- and underlined just how good conditions were for batting, and put the earlier collapse in true perspective.

With South Africa's pacers taking their own time, play extended -- under lights, as per recent ICC guidelines -- well past scheduled close. Towards the end, Niky Boje and Lance Klusener were roped in, to try and rush through the last few overs. And play ended for the day on a bizzare note -- with lights blazing, with the ICC insisting that lights be used so the full quota of overs is gone through, the umpires offered the light to the batsmen, with four overs and a bit to go. The batsmen obviously grabbed the chance to walk off.

Do the umpires even know the rules, these days?

Kumble went in with 21 runs to show for his determined 62 ball vigil. And Laxman weighed in with 77 fluid runs off 102 balls. The 9th wicket partnership produced 63 runs at a smart 3.6 per over. And India, at close, were 182/8.

Tonight, the team can sit back and muse over one statistic -- a winning, confident team like South Africa, finding conditions inimical, played the patience game (Keep It Simple, Stupid -- remember?) on day one. A Gibbs, who can score as fast or faster than most Indian batsmen, led from the front in that effort, and SA never touched a rate much higher than 2.6.

The Indians, in ideal batting conditions, raced along at 3.34 -- despite wickets falling like ninepins.

You have to wonder -- do words like patience, application etc figure in the team's cricketing lexicon?

Bottomline: In recent times, reports have hinted at dissension and bad blood within the team, over the question of Shiv Sundar Das's opening partner (and while on that, you have to figure that performances like today's is about all you can expect of a team with so much bad blood bubbling inside of it) .

Rahul Dravid is believed to have told the team management that he didn't quite see himself in the role of sacrificial lamb. VVS Laxman was then offered the honour, and promptly refused.

And much hoo-haa has been made of the two senior players refusing to put their hand up when the team needed them.

Personally, I believe that if Dravid can get over his sulks and figure that the number two slot is an opportunity, not a punishment, he will do wonderfully well. Having said that, I wouldn't blame either Dravid, or Laxman, for refusing their captain's request.

For why? The altar of Indian cricket has been stained deep with the blood of sacrificial openers. Consider -- and this is merely one of the latest examples -- the case of Laxman himself. Long before his entry into the team in the 1996-'97 home series against South Africa, the cognoscenti were speaking of him as the natural heir to Mohammad Azharuddin's Hyderbadi mantle, and magic.

What I remember about that debut Test was that India, after being 21 runs in the red on the first innings, managed 190 in the second innings, setting the Proteas 170 to win. And bowled the opposition out for 105. In that second innings, Laxman played an innings of 51 that took India from 91/5 to 180 before he was eighth man out.

Three Tests later, before he had even found his feet, he was pushed up to the opener's slot -- against the West Indies, away from home. His first outing at number one produced 64. Again, he played the role in Australia -- easily the hardest assignment for any opener, makeshift or otherwise. He then failed in the first Test at home against South Africa, and was dropped.

As they unceremoniously dumped him, I remember the selectors saying that Laxman had been "given enough chances". Come again? Laxman wasn't given any chances -- he did a job the selectors and the team couldn't find anyone else to volunteer for. And the Indian board, oh so concerned for oh so many years with the development of Indian cricket, has not managed to develop one genuine, bona fide opener.

What did Laxman get for putting his hand up? A chance to bat lower down the order and establish himself in his natural position? No -- just the boot. Applied callously, as only our selectors know how.

And what did we hear out of South Africa, the minute Virendra Sehwag weighed in with his debut ton? We were told -- by some of the selectors off record, by sections of the media, and by assorted pundits -- that Rahul Dravid's neck was on the line. That for his own sake, he needed to keep batting at number two, because there was no place for him lower down the order.

If I were Dravid -- a batsman who despite being the team's most consistent performer away from home, has found himself yo-yoing up and down the order from positions 2 all the way down to 7 -- I would tell myself, all well and good to be a team man, but if I fail in another innings batting up top, the selectors will dump me and the management will stand by and watch it happen, as was the case with Laxman earlier. So why take the chance? Why stick my neck out for a team, and an administration, that will not stick its neck out for me?

There is a little truism that those who run Indian cricket, and those who run the team, would do well to learn -- a player who has confidence that his team, his captain, his selectors and his board will back him when deserved, will willingly go the extra mile.

Alternately, a player who does not have that confidence -- and no player today, with the exception perhaps of Sachin Tendulkar, can be sure he won't be dropped -- will respond to an emergency request with a terse "Thanks but no thanks, find another sucker."

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