Rajasthan produced a near-perfect performance that crushed Delhi by a 105 runs in the semi-final of the Indian Premier League

Cricinfo staff30-May-2008

Two moments encapsulated the Rajasthan Royals’ overwhelming superiority in this semi-final. Yusuf Pathan had already clubbed Glenn McGrath for a straight four off the first ball of the penultimate over and, when he decided to throttle back for the final delivery, Pathan’s response was telling. Picking the slower ball early, he smeared it flat over midwicket with the sort of violence that used to leave George Foreman’s opponents with autopsied faces.Minutes later, when they came out in defence of 192, early wickets were imperative, especially with Delhi’s top three having piled on the runs all tournament. But when Virender Sehwag top-edged a pull off Shane Watson, now a shoo-in for Player of the Tournament, there would have been a few palpitations in the Rajasthan camp. The man running to his left to try and take the chance was Sohail Tanvir, whose fielding efforts earlier in the tournament hadn’t always been distinguished. But wearing the purple cap of the competition’s leading wicket-taker, he pouched it almost nonchalantly, leaving Delhi with a climb up Everest’s north face.Rajasthan may have topped the table, but it was Delhi that boasted some of the biggest stars in the firmament. On a pitch that has always offered true bounce, the pace triumvirate of McGrath, Mohammad Asif and Farveez Maharoof were expected to be devastating. Instead, all the early damage was done by the smallest man on the field, Swapnil Asnodkar, who swatted his way to 39 without a care in the world. “He’s about as tall as the stumps,” said Shane Warne later about the man he calls the Goa Cannon, and the little man whacked it a long way as Asif struggled to find his rhythm.That he even played was a surprise to some. Niraj Patel had been outstanding in his three outings, but when it came to the big match, Warne opted for his first-choice opening pair of Asnodkar and Graeme Smith. And it was Smith, movement impaired by a hamstring strain, who first gave evidence of the spirit that has propelled this remarkable side all the way to Sunday’s final.Reduced to stand-and-deliver mode, he first clouted McGrath over wide mid-on for two fours. The first ball had been short and the next fairly full, and McGrath then tried to summon a yorker. Smith leaned forward and punched it past mid-off. Suddenly, 15 off three overs had become 43 from five. Rajasthan never looked back.But for a fired-up Maharoof, embarrassed no doubt by the catch he dropped off Asnodkar, Delhi might even have conceded 220. Amit Mishra was the other standout bowler, using his variations cleverly and watching with mounting frustration as miscues flew over the rope or into empty space. Rajasthan smashed 59 from the third set of five overs, with the half-century partnership between Watson and Mohammad Kaif taking just 26 balls. Kaif’s contribution was a scampered 11, and there was the surreal sight of a predominantly local crowd chanting an Australian’s name [“Watson, Watson”] in Indian cricket’s heartland.Watson’s wonderfully clean hitting and Pathan’s final flourish meant that Delhi were always chasing the game but, having opted to chase on winning the toss, Sehwag couldn’t have foreseen the debacle that followed. Time and again in this tournament, Delhi’s middle and lower-order weaknesses have been exposed and with the first three managing just 19 between them, Rajasthan’s mix-and-match bowling attack never relinquished control. Asnodkar might be the wild-card pick of the tournament, but Siddharth Trivedi hasn’t been far behind, with his clever changes of pace and accuracy. Their success, and that of the rehabilitated Munaf Patel, is the reason why many Rajasthan fans might tell you that Warne and his support staff could turn water into wine.With Watson at his wannabe-Flintoff best, the contest was over by the end of the Powerplay. Not amused by his first-ball duck earlier, his namesake Warne ripped legbreaks a mile to take his IPL tally to 19. With the trusty Watson by his side, the Sherlock Holmes of IPL captains now stands poised on the threshold of the biggest prize. As for Delhi, who began the tournament so strongly, they must now reflect on The Case of the Missing Stars.

The delay by the Australian captain to introduce Shane Watson and Simon Katich into the bowling attack on the second day in Delhi is likely to go down as a tactical blunder

Ali Cook30-Oct-2008

Ricky Ponting now carries so many complicated plans in his head that when something unexpected happens it takes a while to adjust. A lot of things have occurred throughout the first two days that Ponting has been unable to do anything about, but the significant problem of India’s 613 for 7 might have been eased if he had taken some different paths.On the first day, Shane Watson and Simon Katich were two of the few bright spots in a list headed by Stuart Clark. Watson, an allrounder, calls himself a role bowler in this team. He has done a useful job, but nobody outside the side is sure why Katich, a casual wrist spinner, was not employed even for a few spells in the first two Tests.It took 35 overs for Watson to be introduced on the second day in Delhi and Katich wasn’t thrown the ball until after Ponting had given himself two overs. The captain’s medium pace has been a partnership breaker at times in his career, but not on Thursday. He has a lot of options, and has made some unlikely choices.He left Watson in the field until well after lunch and then watched him bowl Gautam Gambhir for 206 with his sixth ball. It could have been Clark or Mitchell Johnson or Brett Lee who got the wicket, but it wasn’t. When Watson had Mahendra Singh Dhoni caught behind for 27, during Australia’s most successful period of the innings when they took 3 for 46, the delay became even stranger.Katich came on at the same time as Watson and broke through in his second over, with Sourav Ganguly hitting to Ponting at short cover. Captaincy is a hard business and relies on a lot of thought and luck. Had these two bowling changes occurred on a day when the opposition was less than 300, Ponting would have been a genius. When they arrived with India three down for more than 400 there were questions over why things didn’t happen earlier.Part of this was due to the strong performance of the Indian batsmen, who have only found trouble scoring off Clark. What it also exposed is why the selectors chose to leave Beau Casson, the left-arm wrist-spinner, in Australia. Nobody knows whether the bowler, whose debut came in the West Indies, will develop into an international bowler, but he is a far better exponent of spin than his New South Wales captain Katich, who has been Australia’s most dangerous slow option in this match.

Despite a useful opening Test return, Casson is at home in Sydney and currently ranked No. 5 in Australia’s depleted spin stocks, behind Cameron White, Jason Krejza, Michael Clarke and Bryce McGain. In explaining Casson’s omission for India the selectors said they wanted a right arm finger spinner and a legspinner. The logic becomes more confused by the day – and the runs.Katich has turned the ball into the batsmen and delivered some loose offerings, but he has created moments of danger. If a part-time spinner can do it, a specialist would have been able to achieve more. Australia’s only full-time slow bowler in the squad is Krejza, the offspinner who struggled so badly in one of the two tour games.Choosing White for this match was not a mistake because he may offer more runs than Krejza and the difference between their potential bowling returns is negligible. It’s the decision over the tour party that was made weeks ago that has become the issue, especially with the fast bowlers struggling. It has taken three Tests to be exposed, so perhaps the selectors feel it hasn’t been too bad.Delaying Katich’s bowling involvement in the series may be because Australia have not wanted to admit a mistake in not choosing the similarly-styled Casson. Katich has showed that Casson could have been productive. He’s not in India, so Australia need to use the bowlers who look like having some impact rather than none. In the first innings, Watson, Clark and Katich proved to be the best options. On another day it will be someone else. Ponting must recognise the man and the moment.

Dale Steyn is the world’s No. 1-ranked fast man and Mitchell Johnson is second on the list and on day two in Durban they showed that a fast-bowling community screaming out for new stars is in good hands

Brydon Coverdale in Durban07-Mar-2009
An unstoppable Mitchell Johnson floored South Africa © AFP
Amid all the fuss about the battle between the world’s top two Test teams it was easy to forget that the highest-rated fast bowlers on the planet were also going head-to-head in this series. Dale Steyn is the world’s No. 1-ranked fast man and Mitchell Johnson is second on the list and on day two in Durban they showed that a fast-bowling community screaming out for new stars is in good hands.Where once these teams looked to Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock, or Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee, there are new faces turning smiles into frowns for worried batsmen. In an era when totals have grown ever bigger – see West Indies v England for examples – and pitches are prepared to guarantee Tests last the full five days, there was something refreshing about seeing batsmen squirm against quality bowling in quick and bouncy conditions.It shouldn’t be forgotten that this was the same pitch that Mickey Arthur described less than 24 hours earlier as the best batting surface he had ever seen on day one at Kingsmead. The South African attack bowled poorly on the first day but even so, Arthur declared that: “If those cracks don’t open it’s probably going to get better and better.”The cracks widened slightly but as a clairvoyant he makes a good coach. The proof of what can be achieved with fast bowling of the highest class was there in the numbers at stumps on the second afternoon, a day on which 13 wickets fell, two men retired hurt having suffered nasty blows and another two were whacked on the helmet.It wasn’t Durban’s legendary green mamba conditions – supposedly the sea’s tides help fast bowlers – it was simply two venomous creatures attacking with a combination of skill and brute force. Steyn began by collecting three wickets in a nasty spell that helped clean up Australia’s innings before Johnson picked off three South Africans and sent two of their toughest warriors to hospital in varying stages of disrepair.Steyn came out slightly on top on the tour of Australia but Johnson, the Man of the Match last week in Johannesburg, is winning the battle on this trip. Last year in the Caribbean, Johnson lost his new-ball privileges because he was spraying in all directions like an out-of-control garden hose. In South Africa he has been handed the new-ball duties again and he has clearly earned the role through improving his accuracy.
Dale Steyn had the Australians hopping around like bunnies in the morning © Getty Images
Neil McKenzie disappeared third ball when he edged behind and Hashim Amla was lbw two deliveries later to leave South Africa at 0 for 2 in the first over. The most impressive feature of Johnson’s opening spell was that he showed a new weapon that could turn him from a good bowler into an outstanding one.Left-arm fast men have a natural angle across right-handers but they are at their most dangerous when they can swing the ball back in. Johnson has always had trouble with that variation, which was mastered by Wasim Akram and encourages umpires to look more kindly on lbw shouts. The delivery that trapped Amla was the perfect inswinger: it pitched in line and straightened sharply enough that the only question for Asad Rauf was which finger to raise to send Amla on his way.Johnson proceeded to crush Graeme Smith’s right hand with a nasty rising delivery that will give the South African captain a three-week holiday and matching scars after Johnson hit the same spot on his left hand at the SCG in January. Jacques Kallis wore a vicious bouncer on the chin and left the field bleeding and requiring stitches, and the next man in Paul Harris must have felt like hailing a taxi and going AWOL to catch some of Durban’s famous waves.It was a brutal and unyielding effort from Johnson, who was helped out by the unrelenting fast men around him including Peter Siddle, who tested Harris’ helmet with a well-directed short one. It was a similar examination to that received by Michael Hussey earlier in the day whenhe head-butted a Steyn ball away for two leg-byes.Steyn was the first man to exploit the helpful conditions at Kingsmead after a disappointing opening day on which he lacked zip. Steyn rattled Hussey, who had ground out a fighting 50, and although he didn’t get the reward of his wicket he breathed life into an ailing South Africa attack and thoroughly deserved to finish off the tail by drawing two edges in three balls.There’s nothing like watching fast bowling of the highest order and Johnson and Steyn delivered it in Durban. They appear to be at the peak of their powers but have so much time on their side that the bar could keep raising. Now is a scary prospect for batsmen.

Pakistan’s captain talks about the pressures and the joys and pains the job brings, in the first of a two-part interview

Interview by Osman Samiuddin23-Sep-2009″I have to decide when to fight, with whom, on what”•Associated PressYou’ve been captain for six months now. How has the experience been?

It’s been excellent so far. I was realistic when I took over. I knew many things I would have to tolerate. That’s not such a big thing. I was vice-captain for three years under Inzi [Inzamam-ul-Haq] and saw many external things. It was easier then because I didn’t have to take the flak.What kind of outside things do you mean, and how much of an issue is it?

It’s difficult because many times you have to fight for your own boys against your own people. Selectors, management and all others, they come in with their ideas and thoughts and opinions. Some say bring young guys, some say stick to older players. Everyone has their own opinion and it becomes difficult at times because you have to fight against your own people and you’re defending your own boys. I have to decide when to fight, with whom, on what. Ultimately you have to decide what you feel is right and act on that. There are people who listen and agree and there are others who debate. I try to debate. In that process, some people like me and some don’t. You said recently that captaincy in the subcontinent is particularly difficult.

In this region, wherever you go, everybody gives you their opinion, whether he plays cricket or not. Everyone feels they can play cricket or do everything. Some people tell you, do this, some people tell you, do that. [snack sellers on the street] will tell you “This guy I don’t like, kick him out.” A few steps up, the Coke-seller will tell you about the same guy, “I like him, don’t kick him out.” Your own privacy goes because everyone not only has an opinion but they want to enforce it on you.Does it become difficult then to know that you have made the right decision and to stick by it?

See, I’ve been playing for quite a few years and have taken many decisions in that time. Taking Shahzaib [Hasan] to the World Twenty20. He didn’t play from the start, but when he did, he delivered. Then there was the Fawad Alam decision – he hadn’t opened ever. I wanted to play him, so I took a chance. Everyone said he is a top player and I think this as well. I think that means he can play anywhere in the order. I did this myself. I started at six and had never played at one down before I became one. After Saeed [Anwar] and Aamer [Sohail], the one-down is pretty much an opener anyway. I got a chance to play there and I accepted it because I needed it. I was in and out of the team at the time.So whenever a decision has to be made, I think first of the worst consequences that are possible. When we went to play India in 2005, I placed a fielder for [Virender] Sehwag between midwicket and square leg, just one guy. Rao Iftikhar was playing one of his early matches and he would bowl and Sehwag would hit him straight to that fielder. I kept seeing this. It kept happening – the fielder wasn’t midwicket or square leg – and the guy kept saving the runs. People said afterwards, “Wow, what a position, if you hadn’t kept him there, he would’ve scored many runs.” If he had kept missing it people would’ve criticised me and said, what kind of position is that? I imagine the worst beforehand.You have to try things in life, make such calls. If you don’t then… Like Shahid [Afridi], to play him at No. 3 – I tried it earlier, in the World Twenty20, in the India warm-up match, and it didn’t work because he was out first ball. But I kept it in mind from before and really wanted to do it. I tried it again and the second time it fit into place and worked. If it doesn’t come off, it doesn’t, what can you do? Things in life don’t work out.

“My players are from this environment so obviously they will be products of this environment. They are something today, something else tomorrow and something else the day after. This is our temperament, it is in our blood”

You accepted the captaincy this time round but turned it down in 2007. Why?
The conditions then were different. We were coming off a World Cup and I scored 40 runs in all my matches, so I was guilty then. My thinking was that a captain should come in when he is in good form and at the top of his game and only then can he command the respect and only then can he achieve change. At that time I wasn’t in a strong position, and I would have had to compromise on many things, which I will not do. This time I was strong. The situation this time was that I was in a strong position and conditions were more suitable.Where did you learn about captaincy and leadership?
My elder brother Sharif Khan was captain of a local Karachi club, Steel Town club. He had a lot of respect and captained very well and courageously. I used to play with him and went around with him. So I picked up a lot of the mannerisms, the thinking, from him. When I used to go to club matches, I used to go as the captain’s brother so that instills in you something. You know how people treat you, how you should treat people, how they respond to different behaviour.Then I saw Imran Khan a lot, the way he performed himself and the way he was – a very sober, unexcitable personality. Above all, he was a Khan. Every Pathan from that time used to want to be like Imran Khan, to follow him, and I was no different.I have spent a lot of time with Rashid Latif. I learnt a lot from Rashid, especially one thing which was that if you want to do something, just do it. Don’t dilly-dally and regret not doing it later, just go ahead and do it. You have to take chances.Who is your think-tank on the field?
I always discuss with [Mohammad] Yousuf and Shahid and [Shoaib] Malik also. These three are the main sounding boards on the field. Umar Gul, who has captained Peshawar, I run things by him. Whenever I am thinking of doing something, I always throw the idea out there to be discussed. I speak to [Kamran] Akmal a lot, standing next to him at slip. You don’t have a coach on the ground, so four-five guys I discuss a lot with. I have been with Yousuf and Shahid and Rana [Naved-ul-Hasan] since Under-19, so we know each other well. But I also will go up to any guy, young or old, inexperienced or veteran, and just ask them their thoughts on the game.There has always been in Pakistan cricket talk of factions and splits within the team, from teams in the seventies to now. There is speculation even now of groupings and cliques against you.
Many people in the past have come to me, big names, to maybe try something. Under Malik’s captaincy, the types of things that were happening… As a senior player who was performing, players would come up to me to try and stir things up, try and change things. “Let’s do this, why don’t we make a group?” and so on. But I have never been part of any cliques or groups. I have avoided them and tried to stay neutral throughout. That is why I have survived. If people come to me now to try and instigate, or get into one group, I run away. I don’t want to be part of that.”I didn’t accept the captaincy soon after the 2007 World Cup because I wasn’t scoring runs, and I would have had to compromise on many things, which I will not do”•AFPAs captain you speak and build relationships with players. What I want is that each player knows exactly what I will do for them, how much I will do, as captain. If you speak to anyone about me, whatever they say about me – that I am stupid, or stubborn, or angry, whatever else – they will all tell you that I am the same on the outside as I am on the inside. Whatever I say in a private meeting, I will say the same thing outside. I will not say different things to different people depending on different situations. This everyone knows.Before, when we lost a match, everyone used to say, “The match was fixed, the players sold out.” Now when we lose, everyone says players have had a fight. But what I want to know is, fight over what? Obviously if players don’t perform always, they use these things as crutches, these excuses.I have seen one thing in my country, one amazing thing, especially in the media. Often one thing is said and thrown into the press like an arrow, like “the team is unhappy” or something. The captain then responds to it by saying, “No, no, everything is okay, we are happy.” Then everyone assumes that everything must be wrong if he is saying that. Sometimes I don’t respond to it. If someone has thrown that arrow, let him.This time, during the World Cup, for example. I’ve always played and captained with a smile on my face. After the England loss, I spoke to the media about how it was a “fun” format. How the media grilled me over that! Don’t you think Twenty20 is just that? A fun format? Everyone says it, just in a different way, but today everyone is concerned about promoting Twenty20 too much. What will happen after five years in this format, with so much money at stake? There are dangers there. Nobody wants to play two days anymore, just a few overs. But the response I got to saying this was so negative.After that match, I changed totally. I was silent, not smiling so much and I didn’t even smile when we won. I felt then that I needed to get a bit tight and stop all this smiling. Then when I did that, people started saying, “Look, the captain is not mixing with the players, something must be wrong, he must have fought with them.”Did Imran not do this? People didn’t accept it because I was totally changed. I used to chirp and smile and when I changed people thought I had fought. Even now I don’t chill out too much because I’ve seen that if you get too close and too pally with the boys, then you lose a bit of authority. Now the same people are telling me to become pally with the boys again. I don’t want people to get involved in these issues and invade my privacy.

“If you want to do something, just do it. Don’t dilly-dally about it and regret not doing it later, just go ahead and do it. You have to take chances”

I never got into a group. This is how it works in Pakistan: you find the group in power and align yourselves with them. That happens everywhere, in every field. I have always striven to be neutral. I don’t look to anyone to help me, to the chairman or selectors or managers or ex-players. Whenever I have been dropped, I have never called a selector to ask why. If I have come in, I have done so on my own strength. I have made it difficult for people to ignore me.Has your batting been affected by your captaincy?

In one series, against Australia [in May 2009], I got very involved in it. It was against Australia for a start and I tried to get each and every player, individually, up for the series. I think I made about a hundred runs in the series, and I felt that my batting struggled. I got a triple-hundred against Sri Lanka, but here I was out of focus. Shoaib Akhtar was coming back, Shahid Afridi was also a little down, in a bad way. To push Shoaib, Shahid, Saeed Ajmal – who was a new guy and hit by that ICC call, there were four-five guys who really needed support and push, and in doing that I feel I lost my focus. I’ve thought about it hard and realised how important it is for Younis Khan to score runs, because when I have, then the team has done well mostly.Pakistan has long been an erratic team, fluctuating between the sublime and ridiculous, day by day, session by session. How do you deal with this?

This is not something new. It is something that has been there from a long time. It is very difficult to handle as a captain. I don’t smoke cigarettes that I can go and smoke away some tension. I’ve seen many captains either lose their hair or start smoking – I’m okay on both fronts right now. But I feel that the whole country is like this, this is how it works here. You wake up some mornings to find suddenly the whole political establishment has changed and that the army is in, or the other way round. My players are from this environment so obviously they will be products of this environment. They are something today, something else tomorrow and something else the day after. This is our temperament, it is in our blood. To change us, to take this out, it isn’t just to work on the team. Many things in the country need to change.

As the rain fell on a miserable second day at Chester-le-Street it provided an apt backdrop to a game that has reignited the debate about Test cricket’s future. Even if the sun had shone, it’s unlikely the ground would have been even half full with punter

Andrew McGlashan at Chester-le-Street15-May-2009As the rain fell on a miserable second day at Chester-le-Street it provided an apt backdrop to a game that has reignited the debate about Test cricket’s future. Even if the sun had shone, it’s unlikely the ground would have been even half full with punters turned away by high ticket prices and unattractive opposition.Factors such as the weather are out of anyone’s control, but cold and damp conditions in May are hardly unexpected. David Harker, Durham’s chief executive, has been left counting the cost of an ill-thought-out fixture, and has called for a rethink as to how Test cricket is marketed outside of the major contests.”There has been a lot of comment about the lack of attendance at this game, but if you don’t give them the right sort of product you can’t build the audience,” Harker told Cricinfo. “It doesn’t just happen, you have to work at it.”There has been talk of a Test championship, and I think that sort of development is necessary to add a context and make the games relevant to people who are going to be asked to part with hard-earned cash to come and watch them. A game that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone, not least the players at times, isn’t a great advert for a sport.”Durham, who bid £500,000 for the right to host this match, initially wanted an Ashes Test this summer, an understandable aim having held Test status since 2003. But that bid was trumped by Cardiff’s massive offer of £3million to host a match backed by the Welsh Assembly. It has left the club trying to market a game that even the die-hards are struggling to get excited about.”There’s no ill-will towards Cardiff, I think it’s important they play Test cricket there, but an Ashes Test here would have benefited the development of the ground,” he said. “If it had come here we would have been able to do a lot more work this winter and we’d be looking at completing it next winter, rather than in two or three years’ time.”Had Durham missed out on a Test altogether, those development plans, which include a hotel and an increased capacity of 20,000, would have been severely hit. They will still be able to plough the profits from this match back into the project, but that surplus has been severely cut by the poor attendance, which in turn is being blamed on ticket prices that peak at £65. But Harker said it was the bidding system that forced them to set such steep prices. “We had to ensure we would make back the bid cost.””We put a compelling bid together,” he said. “It was quite an aggressive bid by the standards of the time, but we were blown out of the water by Cardiff’s ability to get the support of the Welsh Assembly. When a small region like this goes head-to-head with effectively a nation there’s only going to be one winner.”England have won 65% of the Tests that have started in May, and have never yet lost in nine years – which at least means they use their home advantage – but that also has a lot to do with the quality of opposition served up as the summer starter. For all West Indies’ fight and spirit in the Caribbean, they just haven’t looked that bothered in this short series, while Chris Gayle has made it blatantly clear he’d rather be elsewhere.Unlike most of the tours scheduled for this part of the season the current contest isn’t part of the Future Tours Programme, but instead has been arranged to satisfy the ECB’s multimillion-pound contract with Sky, after Zimbabwe’s downgrading from Test status and Sri Lanka’s withdrawal due to IPL commitments. Harker believes that the pursuit of big money will damage the game if it means international cricket is centred at those venues able to fork out huge sums of money for the most attractive fixtures.”Why do people get so excited about the Ashes Tests? It can’t just be about history and tradition, otherwise they would be supporting other Test cricket,” Harker said. “It’s about rivalry, the intensity of competition, it’s about a spectacle. If two sides aren’t going hard at each other you aren’t going to have a spectacle.””We don’t want to be carping on, the fact is I believe Cardiff should have Test cricket. That bid has generated money for the whole of cricket so it isn’t all bad news. But we have to be careful because if it just becomes about who bids the most are those types of bids sustainable? And also you’ll end with most of your international cricket, certainly the choice games, being allocated to the more affluent South East.”

How will he react to having to lead Sri Lanka’s most inexperienced Test attack in a long time?

Sidharth Monga in Galle03-Jul-2009Two teams best suited to make a mockery out of structures and ‘processes’ promise an unpredictable Test, which no longer favours Sri Lanka because of Muttiah Muralitharan’s absence. Anyone out of a 17-year-old prodigy, a former pariah refusing to fade away, a 31-year-old left-arm spinner, a six-Test old mystery spinner, a 30-year-old fast bowler waiting for his Test debut, an uncapped 22-year-old who took three wickets in the first over of the World Twenty20 semi-final but is known for his prolific run-scoring in domestic cricket, and an offspinner who has bowled big legbreaks only in limited-overs internationals could decide this match.The most important strand of this story, though, is Ajantha Mendis. Like it should be with any self-respecting mystery spinner, Mendis’ last year was eventful. This time last year, he was embarrassing the Indian Fab Four in Tests, only to suggest his mystery was wearing off in the subsequent ODIs against India and Pakistan and the IPL, before coming back to mesmerise the world again in the World Twenty20.Now there is no Murali, at least for the next five days, to build pressure from the other end, or to do the damage when Mendis is struggling. How will he react to having to lead Sri Lanka’s most inexperienced Test attack in a long time? If his captain is to be believed, expect a new facet of Mendis to surface. “He is going to enjoy it,” said Kumar Sangakkara. “He is a very, very tough character, he has got a good head on his shoulders, he is going to enjoy going out there, being the No. 1 bowler, and taking the pressure on.”What about Pakistan being reputed to playing him well? Like Younis Khan said it is not about doing anything differently, but just being able to read him well. “Mendis has changed from his last Pakistan tour,” said Sangakkara. “Sides will have different ways of playing him, some will be more successful than others. Pakistan of course have been playing him quite well, but that doesn’t mean Mendis is not going to be effective against them. We just need to fine-tune our thinking and field settings, and let him be as creative as he wants to be.”Not all of the other characters might get to play but have a look at the number of debutants regardless. For Sri Lanka, one out of Angelo Mathews and Kaushal Silva will surely debut. Suraj Kaluhalamulla, who announced today that he had changed his name from Suraj Mohamed, is more likely to replace Murali because Rangana Herath, the other candidate, was flown in today from England, where he was playing minor counties.Pakistan’s Mohammad Aamer and Abdur Rauf are almost certainties unless Younis changes his mind and doesn’t play three fast bowlers, which he said was an aggressive move. If Saeed Ajmal is preferred to Danish Kaneria, even he will be getting his first cap. It will be a debut of sorts for Mohammad Yousuf as well with international cricket having changed drastically since he last played.The pitch and conditions only add to the unknown. The rains made sure the whole ground had to be covered for two days before it could be unveiled it today. Then the grass was cut to make it look like a cricket field. At 10am today, after the Sri Lankan team had arrived for practice, a sea of humanity got to work to get the ground ready. It’s a minor miracle in the Land of Small Miracles that the Galle International Stadium is ready to host a Test despite the rains.While the captains sounded not dissatisfied with the outfield, the pitch remains a big unknown. It has rough patches already, and no live grass. While it all points to a big turner, there is a possibility that too much moisture might have seeped underneath, which could result in a slow turner. Both the captains refused to predict how the surface would behave. Any result from a three-day finish to a high-scoring draw is possible.Then again this could turn out to be a regular Galle pitch, on which the old hands like Mahela Jayawardene, Younis, Umar Gul, Sangakkara could prove to be the most crucial players. And wouldn’t it be fulfilling to watch some old-world cricketers outshine such exciting new talent?

The two Gs are once again the names most prominent among the shortlist of who should be at the helm, ahead of the tour to Australia

Tony Cozier26-Oct-2009It is a fitting irony that Daren Ganga should have, in the space of a couple of weeks, suddenly returned as a credible candidate as West Indies captain through his leadership in the shortest form of the game. Even more so, since the principal claimant to reclaiming the post is Chris Gayle. The two are closely linked in the ever changing story of the captaincy.Ganga, based on his influence in bringing Trinidad & Tobago from near-bottom to the top in regional cricket within a few years, was placed to lead the West Indies A teams on tour along with the two Tests in England in 2007 when deputy to the injured Ramnaresh Sarwan, before Gayle came into the picture.Gayle was first elevated for the three ODIs on the same England tour only because of Sarwan’s absence and Ganga’s perceived inability as a limited-overs batsman. Even then, Gayle’s nomination by the selectors was initially rejected by a West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) executive committee dubious of his suitability. In the end, under pressure, it had to make an embarrassing U-turn.Now, on the eve of a tour to Australia for three Tests, the two Gs, so different in every way, are again the names most prominent among the public’s shortlist of who should be at the helm.Gayle was the incumbent before he and all those players originally chosen for the series against Bangladesh walked out two days before the first Test to press the West Indies Players’ Association (WIPA) case in its long-running disputes over contracts with the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB). Through a tenuous agreement that had to be brokered by CARICOM politicians, the issues are now supposedly settled and the aggrieved players are all once more available for selection.Gayle has asserted that he is ready to resume his role, stating that “it is always an honour to captain West Indies”.Ganga has sensibly made no mention of such ambitions. He has simply once more come to the fore following his universally-praised leadership during T&T’s advance to Friday’s final of the Champions League Twenty20 final in India, paradoxically the kind of cricket that cost him the West Indies captaincy in the first place. He is now being promoted, inside and outside of T&T, as the one needed to instill the same discipline, unity and pride shown by his team in India.

Even with a board that has been embarrassed by his words and deeds, Gayle’s numbers and the regard with which he is held by his players are likely to regain him the captaincy

There can be no doubt that he has special qualities of leadership. As astute a judge as Ian Chappell alluded to it in the television commentary. Given the responsibility at whatever level, he will hardly shirk from it.Yet, from his experiences with fractious ‘A’ teams, Ganga himself will know that leading West Indies is an entirely different challenge. He has captained T&T for eight years. He knows his men intimately, and vice-versa. They play together at club level and, as was evident in their remarkable performance in India and in the two regional Stanford 20/20 tournaments, have a passion for each other and for the flag.In his two years in charge of West Indies, Gayle has gained the publicly-stated support from several of those under him, Dwayne Bravo of T&T the latest, but his messages have been confusing.He resigned as captain after the home series against Australia just over a year ago in circumstances never fully explained, before WICB president Julian Hunte persuaded him to change his mind.In an interview with a British newspaper during the tour of England last May he said he was tiring of Test cricket and that he would “soon” give up the captaincy.His arrival from South Africa two days before the first Test at Lord’s last season seemed to place his commitment to his contract with the IPL franchise, Kolkata Knight Riders, above that to his West Indies team. As forthright with his words as he is with his hard-hitting batting, he had several public run-ins with the WICB prior to the July strike, especially after he was controversially installed as captain, over Ganga, in 2007 in England.In his two years in charge of West Indies, Gayle has gained the publicly-stated support from several players under him, Dwayne Bravo of T&T the latest•DigicelCricket.com/Brooks LaTouche Photography He refused to apologise for his open criticism, as called on to do so by then WICB president Ken Gordon, noting that “there is no love lost between myself and the Board”.It was hardly the ideal relationship between the organisation charged with administering the game and the leader of the team. But Gayle’s settled position as commanding opening batsman and useful offspinner and his evident popularity within the team, if not his tactical acumen, were enough to retain the captaincy.As far as Ganga’s claims are concerned, there remains the perennial question of whether his batting merits selection. He averages 25.71 in 48 Tests in the ten years since his debut as a promising 19-year-old in South Africa. By comparison, Gayle’s record is 39.58 in 82 Tests along with 41 wickets.Even with a board that has been embarrassed by his words and deeds, Gayle’s numbers and the regard with which he is held by his players are likely to regain him the captaincy.Whoever is chosen faces an intimidating task.Australia have been the game’s most consistently powerful team for more than a decade, time in which West Indies have plummeted from their once similar position as champions to the bottom of the international ratings. They last won a Test there in 1997 and have been beaten in all of their last seven.Coming, as it does, only weeks after the end of yet another divisive players’ strike, Brian Lara is not the only one who fears that West Indies “could be in for a bit of a hiding”, as he told the media in Melbourne last week.Leadership, and not from the captain alone, will be a critical element in ensuring that it is something less than a hiding. The captain, the management, the senior, most influential players and, above all, the WICB and the WIPA, must do everything to ensure unity.

What do you do when rain interrupts play for most of the day? Read the newspaper like never before, take photos, and enjoy the MCC hospitality

Peter Meade30-May-2010The game
I was at the game because I watch as much cricket at Lord’s as I can, and love watching England. I had thought day three would be the last day and that Bangladesh would probably lose by an innings.Team supported
I was supporting England and in particular the three Middlesex players: Andrew Strauss, Eoin Morgan and Steve Finn.Accessories
For me, it’s got to be a camera with a long lens. I love photographing sport. I also like to see what’s going on around me and like to photograph it.One thing I’d have changed
Well, two really. The rain and the farcical on-off play at the end of the day, when they went off for bad light two or three times. At one point a period of play lasted only two deliveries.I judged the light by the settings I used on my camera and thought that when they went off for the first time, the light was better than when England went out to bat on Thursday. What was more irritating was that Lord’s has lights, so the only reason they should have come off was rain. Unfortunately the organisers had decided that they weren’t going to use the lights. Perhaps this is because the Australians said they could be used in 2009 and then complained that there were shadows .Bit of interplay I enjoyed
After a couple of quick wickets, Finn was bowling at Mushfiqur Rahim and was taken for a couple of boundaries. I decided that this was a fight back and not poor bowling getting punished. It showed the kind of spirit that we wanted to see. Other than Tamim Iqbal, the Bangladeshis seem a bit meek. You feel it in the way they walk around; their heads are down, as if they don’t want to be seen.Filling the gaps
I had about four hours to fill when I got there. I had brought my iPod as back-up but didn’t need it. I met some friends and we chatted over coffee for a while and then I went for a walk around the ground to see what was going on, whether there was anything to photograph and whether there was anybody I knew. I didn’t bother going in the Lord’s shop because I don’t want any more replica clothing or a “rain stopped play” umbrella.After walking the ground, I found an armchair in the pavilion and read a newspaper. When chairs and newspapers are in short supply and time is not, it’s amazing what you will read. I read a long article on a retired fashion designer, another on a woman who was pregnant at 43, and another that was capable of turning me into a sensitive new man. Fortunately for my mental equilibrium, before I could read any more, they started serving lunch.After lunch I headed outside to take a few photos. One of the media photographers spotted me photographing some people huddled under an umbrella and photographed me. I was disappointed not to see the shot on Cricinfo.Another walk around the ground, more coffee, and then I found myself sitting next to Ken Medlock who was in charge of from 1960 to 1971. He kept a couple of us entertained for ages telling us about players from Bradman to Lara.Wow moment
The rebound catch taken by Strauss off Finn. The ball bounced out of Matt Prior’s gloves and Strauss just managed to grab it. There was a cheer when the catch was taken and a bigger one when the replay was shown.Shot of the day
Mushfiqur’s drive off Finn. The ball was pitched up and Mushfiqur punched an on-drive for four. Later in the over, there was another boundary through third man. I think that was a thick outside edge, but I’m pretending the little wicketkeeper wanted to take on the giant bowler.Crowd meter
The ground was fairly packed although the pavilion had cleared. Most of the day, people were sheltering under cover. It was pretty clear that by the time play started a lot of time had been spent in the bars. Someone in the Grand Stand debenture seats tried to start the Barmy Army chant but got nowhere, and later there were attempts to start a Mexican wave under the Mound Stand boxes but that came to nothing as well. The most cheers erupted when the umpires went out for inspections and the most boos when Billy Bowden brought out the light meter and halted play.Tests v limited-overs
Test cricket is the measure of a team. It’s the form of the game that counts and the form that will last after all the limited-over formats have been reorganised and turned into meaningless advertising opportunities. I like 50-over games and my son will watch Twenty20 but it’s Tests that count.Fancy-dress index
Fancy dress doesn’t get seen at Lord’s unless there’s a Twenty20. In fact, being allowed to wear fancy dress is one of the features advertised for those games. The real fancy dress at Lord’s is to be found in the pavilion, particularly in the form of an MCC blazer. When one of my friends tried to go into the pavilion at the MCG (I think) wearing his MCC blazer, he was told “no joke blazers”. Members also tend to wear ties that show they are a bit more special than the average MCC member. So if they can wear something that’s not the ordinary bacon and egg, they will. I Zingari ties are popular, so are the Free Foresters, the playing members’ ties, and anything you would otherwise think people were wearing for a dare. I was wearing the MCC/Middlesex tie which is a vile combination of broad red, yellow, blue and silver stripes. My wife said she would leave me if I bought the MCC blazer.A sight to behold
I saw Finn standing close to Mushfiqur as they went out through the Long Room. There must be about 18 inches’ difference between those two.Entertainment
Entertainment at lunch usually takes the form of quick cricket or a band. Because of the wet outfield, the band that came along played its set somewhere at the Nursery End. I could hear the music but couldn’t see the musicians. There is also a small jazz band made up of MCC members, which plays behind the pavilion. They always get a crowd, and were in fine form. I could hear them from my seat too.Overall
The quality of the cricket was good. It was more a first-division team playing the one at the bottom of the second division. The England outcricket was an improvement on day two and putting Finn on to bowl at his preferred end also worked. The atmosphere in the pavilion, though, was pretty flat. I sat in the concourse, which was nearly empty.Marks out of 10
2. All that rain and the messing about with bad light.

Twelve years ago, Abdul Qadir, still good enough to turn out for Pakistan, spent a summer playing club cricket in Melbourne. The few who saw him remember it like it was yesterday

Christian Ryan08-Feb-2010On a sticky Peshawar afternoon in 1998, Mark Taylor clipped a Test triple-hundred while Pakistan’s spinners tossed and chased and collected one wicket for 327 runs. Next morning Abdul Qadir, who was not any more a Pakistani Test spinner, and hadn’t been for eight years, found himself in a car bound for Princes Park in one of Melbourne’s lovelier suburbs.Carlton was playing Footscray that day.Carlton was Abdul Qadir’s new club.Driving the car was Carlton’s vice-president, Craig Cook, who was relating the contents of an email his legspinning son Calum had sent – something about a Footscray batting wiz named “Larko”.”Tell Abba,” the email went, “that Larko only picks wrong’uns from off the track, not out of the hand.”Qadir stared out the windscreen. The car pulled up at the oval.”Hey Abdul,” roared Ian Wrigglesworth, Carlton’s captain. “Listen. Larko can’t pick a wrong’un. You set it up, do whatever you want.”Qadir nodded and said nothing. Not until many minutes later, as they were walking out to field, did he ask politely: “When does this Larko come in?”Larko was Rohan Larkin, an ex-state batsman, and he stepped out that day at No. 4.Qadir watched him approach, stuck a fielder at close gully. And bowled. Wrong’un. Larkin, failing to pick it, went to square cut. The ball smacked the bat’s edge and whistled through first slip’s hands for two.”Great,” Larkin thought, “I’m off the mark and I’ve seen his wrong’un. I’ll be right from here.”Qadir’s second ball was faster; wicketkeeper Micky Butera rocked back instinctively on his heels. It was also wider. “Very close to the edge of the pitch,” says Larkin. It was too wide to make mayhem, so wide that the umpire cleared his throat and gave a preliminary twitch of his arms. Larkin flung his own arms high, his bat even higher – “to allow the ball to travel through harmlessly”.Instead the ball dipped – swooped, more like – as if by remote control. It landed, veered headlong in the wrong direction, then hit middle stump, like Shane Warne dumbfounding Mike Gatting all over again. In reverse.”Abdul spun this wrong’un one and a half feet,” gasps Butera. “Sounds ridiculous when you say it.””I would play that ball the same way a hundred times out of a hundred,” believes Larkin.”There was an element of luck in the Warne ball,” Cook points out. “Whereas Abdul’s was absolutely contrived.”The only person not surprised was the contriver himself. Deep down, Qadir knew that by rights he should have been in Peshawar that Saturday, playing for his country not a suburb. His Carlton team-mates knew that he knew it. He did not need to say so; though sometimes he said it anyway. There was and remained only one wonder of Pakistani spin.But Qadir was 43. His face was unwrinkled. Brown eyes still danced with mischief. But selectors of Test teams have no love for 43-year-olds.That was why he wasn’t in Peshawar. It does not explain how he came to be playing park cricket in Melbourne.

****

IT HAPPENED, like many of the best ideas, after a long and jolly lunch. The Carlton Cricket and Football Social Club was the setting. Big Jack Elliott, football club president and one-time prime ministerial aspirant, glared at the cricket club vice-president and barked: “Why can’t you bastards win like us?””Well,” said Craig Cook, “we’ve lost a little bit of flair. We really need a big-name player.”Big Jack barked again. “You get the player and we’ll pay for it.”

On his last weekend in Melbourne he was handed the new ball, not for the first time that summer. And for the umpteenth time, from mid-day till sundown, he bowled and bowled and bowled

Cook, a legspin fanatic, thought of Qadir. He phoned an old pal, Javed Zaman Khan, cousin of Imran. An evening net tryout was arranged and Cook’s ticket to Lahore booked. “We took Abdul down to the Lahore Gymkhana Club nets, where he bowled for an hour. And he looked beautiful. We signed him up on the spot.”Forty thousand dollars Carlton paid him. They put him up in a flat in Brunswick, not far from the practice nets. Larkin was one of eight men from Footscray he fooled that Saturday. At spectator-less playing fields all over Melbourne, the ranks of the befuddled grew: at Windy Hill, at Arden Street, at Ringwood’s Jubilee Park.Arms bucked and swayed and his tongue kept licking his fingers when Qadir skipped in and bowled. The passing of decades had taken a few spikes out of his flipper, which now slid more than it spat. But the miracles of his legbreak remained two-fold: the sheer stupendous size of the spin, and the way he could vary it at will. Wrong’uns, meanwhile, arrived in threes.”Three types,” Butera confirms. There was a lightning wrong’un, a mid-paced wrong’un lobbed up from wide of the stumps, and a slow wrong’un. “It looked like a lollipop,” Butera says of this last invention, “and the batsman would think, here’s an opportunity to come down and score. But it would drop incredibly late, and as soon as the batsman got there he’d realise he didn’t have as much time as he thought he had.” The lollipop wrong’un left more batsmen licked than any of Qadir’s other variations, helping Butera rewrite the Victorian Cricket Association record books for most catches and stumpings in a season.”Best time of my life. Abdul put me on the map,” he says. That is not just rosy-glassed affection talking. Nine days after the Larkin ball Butera, previously unheralded, made his state 2nd XI debut.Mid-January came; an encounter with the competition’s in-form batsman beckoned. Geelong’s Jason Bakker, tall and lumbering and toe-tied against even the gentlest spin bowling, had heard all about Qadir’s variations. His coach Ken Davis tried to replicate them, hurling balls down, floating them up, while Bakker watched Ken’s hand in the hope of reading what might happen. After a week of this it was time to face the real thing in a match. And it felt, to Bakker, as if he were still in the practice nets.With eyes wide open he’d stare at Qadir’s wrist. He left balls he was supposed to leave. He defended others comfortably. If he could get to the pitch of the ball, he’d drive. When it was wider, he’d cut, but softly, never forcing anything. Bakker had heard batsmen more debonair than him talk about being in “the zone”, and for the first time he really understood it. “This sounds incredibly vain but I felt like I didn’t play a false stroke.”They paused for drinks. Captain Wrigglesworth despaired. He trotted up to his star bowler. “Listen. This bloke’s picking your wrong’un.”And just like that Qadir stopped bowling it. No flipper or flotilla of multi-speeded googlies. The magic act was over. Every ball was a legbreak, landing on or slightly outside off stump. Every ball twisted harmlessly away. This went on for an hour. It was a scorching afternoon, a flat deck. Bakker cruised past 50. “I’d broken him.” And something else had happened too – “I was getting more confident, more relaxed, less vigilant.”So when another one wafted down, as ho-hum as all the others, Bakker took one stride forward and shouldered arms, intent on letting the thing whirr past, and then just as it was about to bounce, inches from his nose, he noticed that this particular delivery was actually a touch wider, and the seam looked different, and by then it was too late to do anything other than think, “Shit I hope it misses”, which it didn’t. It knocked back middle stump.Against England in Karachi in 1984•Getty ImagesEleven years on, Bakker’s head is still shaking. “An hour – he was prepared to wait an hour. There was I falsely thinking I had broken him, when all that time he was working up a trap for me. I mean, my God, the mentality of the man, the mindset.”Later Qadir would boast, “I saw it in his eyes” – saw that microscopic let-up in the batsman’s vigilance, which was what he had been waiting for all along.

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HE LIVED for Saturdays, his new team-mates sensed. In his inner-city flat he was on his own. The club vice-president drove him to matches, to training. Most nights he ate at the vice-president’s house. “Abdul had never cooked a meal in his life,” Cook explains. “Never made a cup of tea in his life. So if he wasn’t eating at our place I’d organise the Pakistani community to bring food in. And he got a bit lonely, so I’d have to go around and see him.”He would clap opposition batsmen’s fine strokes. He would tell people what a pleasure it was to meet them. “No, no,” he politely informed his captain one gusty Saturday, “I will bowl downwind.” Another Saturday, batting against a fast bowler and a spinner, he insisted that his team-mates jump the fence to alternately ferry out and fetch his helmet at the end of every over.He did not swear. When Qadir was around, Butera used to soften his own language. “But I don’t think the rest of the boys did.”He did not lairise, throw high-fives or drink beer. “I wouldn’t have thought he made a friend while he was here,” says Wrigglesworth. “I don’t know what he did from Monday to Friday and I wouldn’t have thought many people do. As soon as the game finished on a Saturday he was pretty much off. I don’t think he sang the team song once.”The song, in fairness, was seldom aired, for Carlton kept losing despite Qadir’s wickets. By the eve of the season’s final match at Northcote Park he had 66 – only seven shy of the post-war record set by Richmond quick Graeme Paterson in 1965-66. Qadir thought about that record often. “He never,” Cook reflects, “reckoned he should have been left out of the Test side. So when he came over here it wasn’t a holiday. He was wanting to show what he could do.”On his last weekend in Melbourne he was handed the new ball, not for the first time that summer. And for the umpteenth time, from mid-day till sundown, he bowled and bowled and bowled. His preoccupation with the record and those seven elusive wickets had become something close to an obsession. Nobody except Wrigglesworth and the Carlton committee men realised this – until, that is, the fall of Northcote’s ninth wicket, Qadir’s sixth, at which point he bounced into the team huddle and shrieked: “One more!””If he had just shut his gob,” says Wrigglesworth, “no one else would have known. Instead the boys were all going: ‘Hey, hang on a minute!'”One more, alas, did not come easily. Northcote’s last-wicket pair looked untroubled. Runs flowed. Wrigglesworth thought about taking Qadir off. Wrigglesworth couldn’t take him off. “By this stage,” he says, “I was a puppet of the president and the committee. And they wanted to see Abdul get this record.”

A few short years later Douggie was picked for Australia’s team of intellectually disabled cricketers. He has since represented his country in South Africa and England, this stranger who had never bowled a wrong’un until the day he met Abdul Qadir and asked how it was done

Qadir kept going. He ran through all his variations. The partnership kept swelling – to 95 by the tea break. Forty-six overs Qadir had bowled unchanged.”Should I take him off now?”Permission was granted. Five balls later the wicket fell.The Ryder Medal he won as the competition’s best player still hangs on his wall in Lahore. His 492 overs in a season might never be surpassed. Seventy-two wickets at 15.87 in the era of covered pitches at the age of 43 is a feat carved in club cricket legend. It could have been 73, the record should have been his, he told the ‘s gossip columnist the day before he flew home; if only the captain had listened, if only the captain had bowled him a bit more.”Oh, Abdul,” sighed Wrigglesworth when he saw the paper next morning. “Where’s this come from?”

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WHEN Jason Bakker remembers the day that he did not play a false stroke and was deceived by the most mysterious ball he ever faced, he thinks of the heat. At tea-time he galloped upstairs to the Kardinia Park dining room and began gulping down water. “I was tucking into rockmelon and watermelon and whatever else I could find.” That’s when he glanced out the window and saw that Qadir, who had bowled through the entire afternoon session without a rest, was still on the oval.Qadir was out there with Craig Whitehand, known to all at Geelong Cricket Club as “Douggie”, the guy who fronted up every Saturday in his whites and his spikes to drag off the pitch covers and carry out drinks and take care of the equipment. As Qadir was walking off, Douggie had stopped him at the players’ gate and asked, how do you bowl a wrong’un. Now the two of them were standing on the grass, metres apart. A couple of balls lay between them. Qadir would wave his arms and talk a bit. Then he’d bowl a few. Then Douggie would bowl a few. After a while Qadir would wander across and say something. Then Douggie would bowl a few more.Bakker went back to his watermelon and forgot what he’d seen. Twenty minutes went by before he thought about strapping the pads back on. “As I was coming down the stairs,” Bakker recalls, “I looked out on the ground. And the two of them were still there. Abdul had given his whole break on a hot day to this guy from Geelong who he knew nothing about.”At Geelong training the next week Douggie was gleefully flighting wrong’uns. A few short years later he was picked for Australia’s team of intellectually disabled cricketers. He has since represented his country in South Africa and England, this stranger who had never bowled a wrong’un until the day he met Abdul Qadir and asked how it was done.

The ongoing Test series between West Indies and South Africa has been overshadowed by the football World Cup and blighted by uncompetitive cricket

Tony Cozier27-Jun-2010When the first ball of a decisive Test between West Indies and the game’s second-ranked team was bowled at Kensington Oval yesterday, there were nearly as many menacing looking task force policemen, in their dark overalls, assault rifles on their shoulders and revolvers on their hips, as spectators in the stands. Perhaps they heard a rumour that ‘Dudus’ Coke was somehow in the vicinity but their presence, and even that of the contingent from the ordinary constabulary, seemed absurdly redundant.Basic cricket knowledge would have advised them that, if they had to be at any sporting venue, it would have been Bubba’s, Lucky Horse Shoe or any of the other spots beaming live coverage of football World Cup matches from South Africa. The obvious reality is that this series was always competing with the football for the public’s attention. Especially since it involved South Africa, whose players were denied the experience of being present at the rainbow nation’s greatest sporting occasion. Cancellation would have been the best option, except that it was already cast in stone on the ICC’s future tours programme.The choice for fans yesterday was between the two matches in the round of 16 from South Africa, carried free on TV at precisely the same time as the Test, and forking out around 50 bucks a day to watch the cricket – that is, after being thoroughly frisked on entry and scared witless by the sight of a group of formidable, heavily armed men. If anything, the attendance was even smaller for the earlier Tests in Port of Spain and St. Kitts than it eventually was at Kensington.Perhaps the defining spell of the series was during the first Test at the Queen’s Park Oval. The Trini Posse had installed a large television set in their stand for those of their clients keen to follow both the cricket and the football. Since it was at the rear, it meant those watching England’s opening match against the US had to turn their back on the cricket -and they were in the overwhelming majority. There were, of course, a few ways to have countered the pervasive hype of the football.The first was for West Indies to present the South Africans with a competitive challenge. The second was for the cricket to be of genuine, compelling Test-match quality. The third was for the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) to launch an imaginative, intensive promotional campaign, along the lines of the ‘Bring It’ exercise that proved so effective for the World Twenty20 tournament. Lowering the prices, as for the Twenty20, was another obvious alternative. All came to nothing.West Indies had, once more, disappointed their supporters by losing the two Twenty20 Internationals and the five ODIs. Yet they came close to victory three times and there were signs that they would give their superior opponents something to think about in the Test. That hope disappeared within the first two sessions of the third day of the first match.After keeping South Africa to 352 in their first innings, West Indies folded for 102 all out in 47.1 overs. It was a hapless performance. Only a last-wicket partnership of 27 saved them from double-figure humiliation. Defeat by 163 runs, with a day to spare, was the inevitable outcome.Long before then, the trials and tribulations of the French and Italians and England’s great escape in South Africa had provided potential cricket supporters with a welcome distraction. Their mood was reflected in their pointed absence from the second Test at Warner Park in St Kitts.Those diehards who turned out did see a spirited West Indies response to their first Test demise. On a pitch apparently transported the few miles across the Caribbean from the Antigua Recreation Ground, that scene of batting records, they even had the satisfaction of hundreds by Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Brendan Nash and a first-innings lead. But it was meaningless to the outcome of the match.Indeed, nothing demeans Test cricket quite as much as run-heavy draws on placid pitches. When this was compounded by the abhorrent cynicism of both teams over the first two sessions of the fourth day, the game’s traditional format was further debased. The West Indies were 424 for 4 at the start, responding to South Africa’s 543 for 6 declared. It was an equation that shouted draw.What followed was the noise of nails being hammered into a coffin that is awaiting the limp body of Test cricket, now increasingly weakened by the shallow, all-action excitement of the Twenty20. South Africa adopted the tactic of left-arm spinner Paul Harris bowling a foot and more outside leg-stump from over the wicket from one end and fast bowlers firing it the same distance wide off stump from the other.Chanderpaul and Dwayne Bravo reacted to such go-slow methods with their own. Chanderpaul blocked, Bravo kept kicking the ball away. The first session yielded 39 runs off 29 overs in two hours. The second brought the same slim pickings. It was not Test cricket. It was not cricket, period. It was an approach by highly-paid cricketers guaranteed to undermine a sport that is their profession.Each team cast the blame elsewhere, mainly the pitch and each other. Neither seemed to accept the responsibility was theirs. Graeme Smith, the South African captain, said during the week that a Test championship is “a matter of urgency to stimulate the five-day game”.”Such a championship would give context and value to every Test match and would stimulate interest in the five-day game worldwide,” he reasoned. That may or may not be so but the players must surely recognise their part in ensuring that Tests remain the pinnacle of the game, a position they all profess to accept.They shirked their duty in St Kitts. They cannot be surprised when so few now turn out to watch them, even at Kensington Oval where the names of great players adorn stands that were once crammed to capacity to watch contests such as yesterday’s.