India go down without a whimper in second Test

Prem Panicker

When you see a young child begging on the roads...

When you see half eaten food dumped on the streets...

When you walk past an employment agency and see long, winding queues of the educated and the unemployed...

When you see waste in any form, what you feel is a lump - hard and unswallowable - in your throat. A lump comprised in equal parts of anger. Frustration. Sheer sadness, at the terrible futility of it all.

It's such a lump one feels as, shortly before lunch on the fifth day at the Eden Gardens in Calcutta, one watches the crowds - 65,000 of them, come not because they hoped for a dramatic turnaround to this match, but to redeem the reputation they lost when they rioted, earlier this year, during the semifinal of the Wills World Cup - trickle out of one of the most magnificient of cricket stadia in the world.

High above the ground, the electronic scoreboard continues to blink its dismal message - India all out 137 in the second innings, giving South Africa a whopping 330-run win.

It is not the defeat - not even the magnitude of it - that brings anger, frustration and, finally, sadness. What provokes those emotions is one simple little statistic - the entire Indian side failed, on a featherbed on which batting, on the last day, was if anything easier than on the first, to make as many runs, collectively, as Darryl Cullinan did individually.

And for this, there can be no excuse. No explanation or extenuation.

I mean, look at some more figures. In the first three innings of this game, 1,124 runs were scored at an average rate of 3.9 runs per over, inclusive of 150 - no, that's not a typo - 150 fours.

So what possible explanation can one give for the fact that in the fourth innings - and mind you, not only did the pitch not change character between third and and fourth innings, but South Africa were without the services of their premier strike bowler Allan Donald - 10 wickets fell for 137 runs in 53.3 overs? Hey, that's pathetic even by one-day international standards, right?

Much has been made of the huge, daunting size of the target. 467 runs to win - a feat unprecedented in the history of the game. In my match report of the fourth day's play, I had spoken about this at sufficient length to obviate the need for reiteration here - but since that report, a few e-mail letters from readers have asked me if I were out of my mind when I suggested the task was not as impossible, or even improbable, as it looked.

One little statistic, by way of answer: Remember all those runs that were scored on this wicket on the first four days. Remember that SA were without Allan Donald. Remember that Fanie De Villiers is not playing. Remember that the attack was to be spearheaded by debutant Lance Klusener - the man who, in the first innings, disappeared for 75 off just 14 overs.

Remember that 36 overs were bowled in the Indian second innings, during the last session of play on the fourth day. Remember too that 90 overs had necesssarily to be bowled, by just four bowlers with part-timer Cronje in support, on the fifth day. Now look again at the equation - 467 runs off 126 overs. Improbable? Impossible?

The point is, did anyone even try?

One cannot really blame the likes of young Rahul Dravid, or VVS Laxman, or Nayan Mongia, for not playing their strokes on a wicket that was a batsman's blueprint of paradise. A Test batsman is expected to follow instructions, bat as the team management (in this case, coach, captain and vice captain) want him to bat.

One cannot fault the vice captain - for as he showed by his attitude at the crease even on the fifth day, he was obviously in no mood to go through the charade of playing forward defensive to bowling that was, on the day, just a level or two above club class.

The blame, then, rests squarely with the coach and captain, for deciding to give the game up for lost, to abdicate even the opportunity of going down with all flags flying. Heck, even granting that the team management figured it didn't have the skills to get to that target even on such a friendly wicket, wasn't there another option - the draw? To attain which, none of the Indian batsmen needed to do more, really, than treat the second innings as extended net practise?

I won't go into the details of the fall of the last six wickets, in the morning session of play on the fifth day, because it is a pretty pointless exercise anyway. Azhar and Dravid looked to play a few strokes. Brian McMillan looked to bowl more towards second slip than towards the stumps. And perhaps the sheer ennui of watching ball after ball going way beyond his reach induced a bit of mental relaxation in Dravid - the stroke he played, down the wrong line to a straight ball from McMillan, was lazy. As if he were thinking of something else. Off went the stump.

And up came another example of the Indian camp's collective refusal to use its head. Anil Kumble had batted with authority, with enviable confidence, in the first innings and got 88 before he ran out of partners and ran himself out. Why then was Sunil Joshi sent in ahead of the Indian vice captain?

It's a little thing, you might shrug, what does it matter when so many higher rated batsmen failed? But it is precisely because it is a little thing that I mention it here - to underline the point that this team does not think of little things. A game is not won in one brilliant over, or one superb batting display - a little fielding change here, a little shift in bowling direction there, a little adjustment to batting technique elsewhere, a little thought and mental alertness back in the dressing room, these are the things that, unseen and unsung, contribute to the big victories.

An example. When the two last met, Mohammad Azharuddin destroyed Lance Klusener not merely because he slammed short pithced balls down the leg side, but because he cover- and off-drove anything he found on or outside off stump. Today, he repeated the stroke once and found the boundary with a blazing off drive. Next ball, mid off was moved finer to cut off the hit through the line, and cover was brought closer, and a shade squarer, to check the cover drive on the up. What could Azhar do from there on to the ball outside off, but try to play past point? That is what he did, and the inevitable edge resulted. A little change in field placing, the result of quick thinking - and a batsman who, without really getting into top gear, was going at a run a ball had been prised out.

South Africa, when it mattered, thought of the little things. India did not. Guess who won?

For me, the most disappointing moment came after the last wicket had been taken, and the curtain had come down on this game. Sachin Tendulkar, as captain of the losing side, was called to the podium during the presentation ceremony and asked, when you review this match, at what point do you think the game got away from you?

The Indian captain's answer was startling: "On the first day, we dropped a few catches early on and that took the game away from us."

Frankly, that amazes me. Granted, three clear catches went down in the very first hour of play. But am I to understand that from that point, till just before lunch on the fifth day, the Indian side had no opportunities to get back into the game? Did the Indian batsmen, with the honourable exceptions of Azhar and Anil Kumble, make a mess of their first innings because of those dropped catches in the first hour of this Test match? Did a hugely talented batting line up crumble for 137 runs on a perfect batting track on the fifth day because of those fielding lapses in the first hour of the first day?

The first step towards correcting a mistake is to be aware of it. The mistake here was that India batted itself out of the game, in both innings. And Sachin Tendulkar by his wrods appears either unaware of it, or unwilling to face it. So what hope does that hold out for corrective measures being applied in a hurry?

The Indian captain is young. He likes to win. He will be feeling dejected that India went down to defeat at the Eden Gardens for only the second time in 19 Tests played here in the nineties, having won the other 17. He will be feeling, too, the angst of losing a Test after leading his side to wins in the first two Tests India played under his captaincy.

But if he wants to pull it back, if he wants to translate his admitted talent, both as batsman and as captain, into results, he will need to learn to face up to errors - only then will they be corrected.

For after all, you cannot correct what you do not see.

Two final thoughts, before we end this despatch. And the first relates to young Lance Klusener.

The youngster, making his debut for the national side, came under enormous pressure. Mauled by Mohammad Azharuddin and Anil Kumble in the first innings, facing bowling figures of 75 runs in 14 overs, knowing that in Allan Donald's absence his side would need a heroic bowling effort from him, Klusener showed his strength of nerve by hanging grimly in there, not giving up.

He got 8/64. This will probably be his best ever Test performance.

Not because he bowled with new-found brilliance, but because he realised his limitations and worked within them. Having found in the first innings that the adrenalin-inspired idea of trying to blast the Indians out with short-pitched stuff was disastrous, Klusener in the second innings concentrated on bowling a fuller length. He does not have enough movement either in the air or off the wicket to trouble batsmen on a flat track like the Gardens wicket - but he kept bowling on the stumps, forcing the batsmen to play. It was up to the batsmen - if they played well, they got runs (ask Azhar, who was again severe on the young lad today). And if they made mistakes, he got them (ask Azhar again, who drove at one just outside off without moving his feet, got the edge and saw McMillan take one of three very good slip catches on the day).

Allan Donald has opted, we are told by the behind-scenes people, to fly back home on Monday to get treatment for a badly bruised heel. In his absence, in the third Test beginning in Kanpur on December 8, it will be up to Klusener, along with Fanie De Villiers, to provide the cutting edge to a side that relies heavily on its pace attack to get the opposition out. And today's display of guts, as he hung in there and kept bowling straight and on the stumps even under Azhar's fire, will go a long way to giving him the confidence he needs to do that job for his side.

The last word goes to South Africa. They many not have spinners of the calibre of Kumble and Joshi; batsmen of the brilliance of Tendulkar and Azharuddin or even the class of Dravid - but they have the advantage of being a team that can think collectively, back each other up brilliantly, and do precisely what needs doing in any situation. Perhaps nothing epitomises that trait more than Cullinan's assault on the Indian bowling yesterday - he got two decisions going in his favour when the umpires turned down appeals for catches, he mixed his classy strokeplay with the most unsightly of heaves, but all along he knew that the quality of run-getting did not matter, only quick runs did, for his side - so he just went out there and did whatever he had to, to get those runs.

In this game, as at Ahmedabad, I have been a shade less than impressed by a palpable decline in South Africa's famed sporting spirit. One reason was that rather silly diatribe, by both Cronje and Woolmer, against the Ahmedabad Test wicket - after all, characterising a wicket as the worst he had ever played on sounds strange given that a tailender like Fanie De Villiers, or a bowling all rounder like Pat Symcox, got runs without effort on it as soon as they displayed a willingness to stay out there. Another reason was Cronje's display of petulance when the umpires gave the light to the batsmen when India was batting in its first innings - noticeably, there were no protests when the light was given to the South African batsmen in their own second innings at the tail end of day three. And there are, increasingly, obvious incidents of sledging, or needless aggro, to be seen in their on-field manners.

But Cronje and his men redeemed themselves at the end of this Test when, en masse, they walked the enbtire periphery of the Eden Gardens, their hands raised in applause for a crowd that had been on its best behaviour despite a disastrous Indian performance (if this crowd rioted when Jayasuriya prised out the Indians on a pitch turning square in the World Cup semis, imagine how much more reason they had to riot when they paid good money to see the Indians gift away a game they had no business losing?). The Calcutta crowd, in this Test, was totally unbiased, applauding the brilliant square drives of Gary Kirsten (whose two centuries got him the man of the match award ahead of Mohammad Azharuddin, Lance Klusener and Venkatesh Prasad, to name three other contenders) as heartily as they applauded the incandescent brilliance of Azhar. They gave a standing ovation to the South African skipper when he went up to receive the winner's cheque.

And South Africa, on the very ground where, five years ago, they had made a come back to international cricket after two decades in exile, paid the Eden Gardens crowd back handsomely by their superb gesture...

That walkabout along the boundary at the end of the game was a lovely gesture, and the South Africans will have made more friends in this country because of it.