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Mind games

The gap between the two teams is getting alarming and I fear that all the talk about India playing well at Sydney might just be a bit misplaced. Between now and the second of January, India have too many problems to solve. A forgettable year for Indian cricket is going to give way to one that holds little promise.

Strangely, there were a few people who fancied India’s chances of saving the game on what was still a wonderful batting track. And certainly the period before lunch produced enough evidence of the fact that the pitch was still fairly benign. Not a single ball did anything unusual; the only gremlins were in the mind.

India tried to play a little game there by sending out Ramesh with Dravid in spite of a broken left thumb. In theory it was a good move because it was meant to send out a signal of commitment. But this Australian team is too hardened; they have a very keen sense of cricketing intellect. Damien Fleming’s first ball was a yorker designed to hit the base of the bat. It jarred and it hurt and Ramesh was never going to last after that.

For the next 140 minutes, India raised hope. Very little, if anything, was going past the bat and while Dravid had shut shop Tendulkar was looking very confident in defence. Dravid is going through a very peculiar phase and his battles lie elsewhere. He is carrying a tent with him but he needs to use his bat a little more. Against an attack as tough as this, you don’t get runs unless you search for them. Why, the miserly Waugh even had a third man this morning to ensure that everytime the batsmen looked up, the scoreboard seemed stuck in a traffic jam.

Dravid suffered the fate that the turtle does. Secure under a shell for over two and a half hours, he only had to pop his head out once to be slain. He needs weapons, not mere shields and that transition has to take place in the mind. He is a proud man and deeply studious but he needs to loosen up a bit; maybe he needs to see a slapstick comedy.

Meanwhile, Tendulkar’s blade was like a wall and committed as he was, you couldn’t help thinking that he was wearing someone else’s clothes. Tendulkar is having to sacrifice too much in the apparent interest of the team and his approach is understandable. The Indian innings doesn’t merely end with him, it seems to start with him as well and he is conscious of the fact that his presence at the crease fills the dressing room with hope and the opposition with unease. He is starting to play percentage cricket; he is being forced to play the survivor and in getting him to play that role lies the success of one team and the failure of another.

Make no mistake, he is still batting like a champion but that is only because he is so versatile, because he can do anything that is asked of him. But by working on the openers, by neutralising them, Waugh has ensured that the world’s finest attacking batsman is always on the defensive. That is a very important victory and both sides know it. The queen may be powerful but it cannot do without the pawns on the front line. And so it is that twice in four innings Tendulkar has been dismissed without playing a shot.

I am fairly confident that the match would have been saved if India had gone in to lunch with Tendulkar and Ganguly. Neither batsman was in trouble, Brett Lee wasn’t getting the ball to reverse, McGrath wasn’t the assasin he normally is and it was only Shane Warne, bowling a magnificent probing spell, who was creating problems. Remember too that rain was always round the corner and sure as ever, there was a half hour shower at 6 pm. But Ganguly’s dismissal turned the match; it meant that India could no longer be secure at both ends and it made Tendulkar even more cautious.

Thereafter, well as Kanitkar played, and I do believe it has been an impressive debut, the tide had turned and you could see the surge in the Australian spirit.

But little can change at Sydney unless the openers blunt the initial attack. At the moment, you get the feeling that both teams know that the arrival of the openers is but a passing phase.

I don’t think the Australians can be beaten. But it is significant to know that they are not just winning on the ground but in the manner in which they approach cricket. Till the BCCI wears cobwebs for clothes, this will continue.

Harsha Bhogle