India holds its nerve to pip South Africa, lift Titan Cup

Prem Panicker

Sport is a two-faced coin. Heads, it's heady triumph; tails, total tragedy.

And both faces were on view on Wednesday night at the Wankhede.

India came into this tournament smarting from successive losses in Sri Lanka and in Toronto. And throughout its six league fixtures, the side stumbled around, chopping and changing lineups, struggling to find replacements for injured players, striving to put the right mix of batsmen, bowlers and all rounders in the field and counting itself fortunate that thanks to a last ditch win in Bangalore and a more professional one in Mohali, both against the luckless Australians, it had managed to enter the final.

For South Africa, on the other hand, the league phase was a pleasure cruise as the team batted, bowled and fielded like champions right through. At no stage in any of the six games SA played in the league did it even remotely look in danger of losing, and that is an awesome record to take into a final. More, SA had the psychological edge of having beaten India in each of the three encounters between the two sides during the league phase.

But, as South Africa had earlier discovered during the World Cup when it was in awesome form in the league only to lose to the West Indies in the quarterfinal, it is the do or die games that really matter. And this was where India had the edge going into the final - the home side had faced one do-or-die tie when it took on Australia in the Mohali game, and held its nerve. South Africa, meanwhile, had never had its nerve tested thus far on the India tour - and this was where the key to the encounter could lie.

Whether the 'better' team won is debatable. What is sure, however, is this - that when it mattered, one side kept its head, showed nerves of unalloyed steel and fought with everything it had. While the other side lost its head, found its collective nerve too weak to stand the strain, and gave up the game almost at the half way stage.

No prizes for guessing which of the two teams won, and why. Here's how it happened...

The pitch, teams, and other factors

The groundsmen claimed it was a batting track. Both captains said it was a spinning track. In the event, the pitch at Wankhede proved to be a bit of everything. Hard enough to afford runs to batsmen with the technique to get them. Bouncy enough to bring smiles to the faces of fast bowlers. And, right from the first innings, turning like a teenager's head at a beauty pageant.

On such wickets, batting first is a sine qua non, as this sort of track only becomes harder to bat on as the day progresses. And Tendulkar struck the first blow by winning the toss, and electing to take first strike.

South Africa made a solitary change from the side that handily defeated Australia at Guwahati in the last league encounter. Brian McMillan, complaining of a pain in his chest, sat this one out and Fanie De Villiers, who had been rested for the Guwahati game, came back into the side.

India, too, made just one change. Navjot Singh Sidhu, after two failures in two tries in the opener's berth, went out of the side with 'injury' the official reason (though one suspects that Sidhu's pride is the only thing that was really injured here) and Sanjay Manjrekar came into the side in his place.

Robin Singh retained his place in the side - a surprise decision, given that a turning track may have indicated Aashish Kapoor as the more logical option. But that, again, is one of those theoretical points that will be endlessly debated over time...

For South Africa, there was one weak link going in to bowl - and that was Lance Klusener. The young South African all-rounder was brilliant with the bat against Australia at Guwahati - but in that game, and against India at Rajkot earlier, Klusener had proved too expensive in the initial overs, thanks to his inability to hold a restrictive line.

And Tendulkar, who has in this tournament played himself back into prime form, took optimum advantage - a string of drives, cuts and pulls, interespersed with delicate flicks to leg, ensuring that Klusener went for 26 off his first four overs.

Bowling Klusener was a calculated risk - but one wonders whether Cronje may not have taken that one risk too many. He, after all, had Allan Donald in the side. And though Donald of late has developed a preference for bowling with the older ball, surely he is still good enough to open the bowling in an emergency? Donald and De Villiers in tandem may have put more pressure on the Indian openers, Sachin in particular, than Klusener managed to do. And by the time Donald did come on, Tendulkar had got sufficient good scoring shots under his belt to face the SA quick with confidence.

Meanwhile, Sanjay Manjrekar was a revelation - of the fact that no batsman can keep getting dropped and taken back without it affecting his batting. Manjrekar's forte has been the fact that he plays perfectly in the V on either side of the bowler. And yet, on the day, he faced 31 deliveries, failed to get bat on ball most of the time, and the seven runs he did get were all through nudges to third man. And it was with another nudge that he perished, the bat face not quite open enough to a ball from De Villiers that stood up from outside off stump, and edge going to a diving Richardson behind the stumps, and India 34/1 and, yet again, failing to get off to a good start.

In came Srinath, and out again he went in fortuitous circumstances. The ball from Donald was on middle, swinging down to the leg side. Srinath correctly played the glance off his hips, placing it square as De Villiers, at fine leg inside the circle, was standing much finer. What Srinath didn't bargain for was that De Villiers would anticipate the stroke, move quickly to his left and then fling himself further left-wards to bring off a spectacular catch. India 43/2.

In came Azharuddin, and got off the mark with two fours off successive deliveries. With Tendulkar meanwhile looking increasingly authoritative, Azhar played a free-stroking game, finding the singles with ease and though he didn't get any more boundaries after the first two, he seemed to be on course for another innings on the lines of the one he played at Mohali. And then came the real tragedy, as Azhar moved back to Nicky Boje, trying to glide it with the spin to third man and ending up tickling a catch to Richardson to reduce India to 91/3. It was a rather needless stroke, and India from 81/2 in 20 overs, a good position to put up a sizeable total, were reduced to 99/3 by over number 25.

That brought Dravid to the wicket - and followed another good patch, as the two batsmen took very quick singles interspersed with the harder-hit shot to move things along at a nice, even, four-per-over tempo. Dravid and Tendulkar together around the 35 over mark would have meant that the rest - Robin Singh, Jadeja, Mongia and Joshi - could have come out and struck a few lusty blows. But then Tendulkar perished, driving off the back foot at a ball from Boje that turned more than he expected, getting the bottom of the bat to the stroke and finding Cronje, at point, diving to his left to bring off a beauty. India 137/4, and not looking too good when, almost immediately after, Dravid went back to the cleverly disguised slower ball from De Villiers, pulled at it, missed and was bowled.

Dravid, it must be mentioned, had been forced into indiscretion because at the fall of Tendulkar's wicket, Robin Singh came out and proved himself totally unable to get De Villiers and Donald away for runs. With the dot balls accumulating and the overs running out, Dravid decided to do something about it - and paid the price one normally pays for impetuosity.

Robin's own tortured existence at the wicket came to an end soon after, when he played to the left of point and saw, first hand, what makes Jonty Rhodes special. The fielder dived, picked up, slid onto his knees and with just one stump to aim at, threw down before Robin could recover his ground.

From a comfortable 144/4 in 35, India had slid to 159 for six in 40 overs. And at that stage, a score of 200 looked highly unlikely.

Which was the cue for Jadeja to show, yet again, why he is worth his place in the side. Absolutely calm and composed, Jadeja took things as they came. When the singles were there, he took them. When the ball was good, he played them out. And when Boje, who had bowled superbly right through the innings, came on for his final over, Jadeja proved the value of the dictum that if you stay there long enough, you will get the runs. Down he came to the spinner, taking him on the half volley and hitting straight as a string over the bowler's head for a six. And when Cronje placed mid off fine, Jadeja came down the track to the next ball and swung it again over the top, this time aiming for the untenanted wide mid off area. Intelligent batting, and with Mongia chancing his arm and getting runs, and Joshi at the very end coming up with eight runs off eight balls, India managed to put 220 on the board in its allotted 50 overs.

For South Africa, every single bowler barring Klusener did his bit, bowling with controlled economy and getting wickets regularly to ensure that no mammoth partnerships, like the one between Azhar and Dravid against the Australians at Guwahati, were put up. Cronje meanwhile rotated his bowlers, not allowing the batsmen to settle, and cleverly kept coming in himself for brief, two over spells when a new batsman was at the wicket, thus managing to keep Klusener off the bowling crease altogether.

The key to South Africa's incredible run in the league phase lies in one simple piece of statistic - in six games, the openers have had six 50-plus partnerships, the lowest for the first wicket being 63.

With that kind of start - almost inevitably at a rate of 5 or more runs per over - the South African middle order has been able to come in and dictate terms at will.

The key to the run chase here, thus, lay in how well Kirsten and Hudson played at the top of the order. Another flier from those two, and India might as well have given up the game as lost. But if India could manage a quick wicket or two in the first fifteen overs, then the game would be wide open, as the South African batting would for the first time come under real pressure.

And this is why the story of the S'African batting is really the story of India's bowling and fielding. Sachin Tendulkar came out determined to attack - and thus, for the first time in this tournament, we had a fast bowler bowling with not just two slips, but a gully as well. Meanwhile, the fastest of the Indian fielders - Azhar, Jadeja and Robin Singh - were so placed as to deny the quick singles. And with this kind of backing, Srinath and Prasad produced as beautiful a spell of controlled medium pace bowling as we have seen in the tournament to date. If Srinath was all pace and fire, steaming in and beating the batsmen with speed and movement, Prasad was the thinking bowler, slanting the ball in and mixing up the conventional off and leg cutters with slower yorkers, off spinners, the works.

With the result that neither Kirsten nor Hudson could get their strokeplay going. Time after time they played and missed - and when they did hit, the Indians brought off brilliant saves to keep the pressure on. And the SA openers got visibly frustrated - and with frustration, came error. Prasad - who possesses arguably the best slow ball in the business today - fired two balls at his full pace to Hudson, beating him outside off, and then slipped in the slower one on the middle stump. Hudson saw the line on middle and gleefully drove at it, was foxed, and ended up pushing a tame catch to Azhar at midwicket. SA 19/1.

In came Lance Klusener. And just ten runs later, out he went again, hitting out at Prasad, again failing to pick the slower one and top edging to Rahul Dravid at square leg. 29/2 SA.

Kirsten, meanwhile, looked a fish out of water as time after time, the bowlers foxed him with movement and superb changes of pace, not letting him get bat onto ball the way he normally likes to. With every slash he missed, with every drive that found the edge, you could see the impatience, the frustration, mounting. Perhaps a less in-form batsman might have opted to play safe and pick the singles - but till Tendulkar overtook him at Mohali, Kirsten was after all the world record holder for the most number of ODI runs in a calender year. Such restraint as the Indians imposed, thus, was irksome. And Kirsten finally perished by the same sword he had lived by, sweeping at a Kumble top spinner, the ball bouncing more than he expected to take the top edge and give Dravid another catch, this time at cover. SA 49/3, and for the first time, finding themselves three down before the 15 overs were up.

Rhodes and Cullinan got together and busied themselves running the singles. But this time, there was a difference - the Indian fielders were attacking the ball and throwing in like lightning, and even Rhodes and Cullinan, arguably among the best runners in the game, had one hairsbreadth escape after another.

Rhodes was the more impetuous of the two, and predictably it was he who perished, again to the mistimed sweep off Kumble. The Indian leggie uses the flipper, the top spinner and the leg break to mix things up, and repeated sweeps are always a danger as Kumble disguises the flipper very well indeed. He did so again, slipping one in when he saw Rhodes stretching forward in pre-determined fashion for the sweep - and the rest was mathematical, Joshi completing the formalities at cover off the inevitable top edge. SA 60/4.

One expected Cronje, as captain, to keep his head in this crisis. Surprisingly, though, Cronje was more impetuous than the ones who had gone before. Time after time, he kept moving away from the stumps to slash through the off, when the small size of the target and the loss of four wickets indicated a more cautious approach. Tendulkar, meanwhile, kept the pressure right on, putting all his off side fielders within the circle without a sweeper at the back, denying singles and challenging the batsmen to go over the top if they wanted runs. This was clever captaincy, and Sachin was rewarded when Cronje accepted the challenge, drew away, slashed at Robin Singh's slower ball and Joshi judged the spiralling catch to perfection at cover - a wicket that owed to great captaincy as much to the bowler and fielder. SA 84/5.

And, very shortly thereafter, 92/6 as Cullinan, till then circumspect, decided to hit his way out of trouble. Why, we will never know, because even at this stage, SA only needed to make 128 runs and with Boje, Richardson and Symcox for company, Cullinan should have been able to guide his side past the total. But again, the frustration of not finding gaps in the field told on the S'African player, he pulled at a short ball from Robin Singh, failed to spot that the ball was the slower delivery, and ended up putting the ball into Azhar's hands at midwicket. SA 92/6. And four runs later, 96/7, as Nicky Boje, having already seen two batsmen perish to the sweep, figured he could still beat the odds. Joshi's ball was just that shade more full in length, the sweep only found the top edge of the bat, and Azhar - who had been cleverly placed at a wide leg gully for just that shot, moved quickly back to make a hard chance look childishly simple.

And then came a partnership that almost took the game away from India as Symcox and Richardson batted with a discretion their team-mates hadn't shown. Sure, Symcox in particular kept heaving and missing - but interspersed with the ugliness of the failed slogs were the genuine hits, and the constant search for singles. The score moved steadily along, and coming into the home stretch, with SA needing to score at around 7 per over off the last five overs, it looked as though these two just might pull it off.

Crucial to this equation, however, was the fact that Kumble and Prasad, India's two best bowlers on the day, would be bowling overs 46 through 50. And as soon as Prasad came back on, he produced the crucial wicket - again the slower ball, again the mistimed drive, and Robin Singh capped a good day in the field with a fine catch running backward and holding the spiralling ball over his head, then tumbling backwards to complete the job. The partnership had taken SA to 184/8, and there was still the outside chance that the burly Symcox might do the impossible with a few lusty strikes.

But Richardson's dismissal had exposed the tail - and Kumble, like Donald for South Africa, is a bowler who rarely permits tailenders to prosper. After bowling flat right through the innings, Kumble tossed one up for Symcox who, glad to have something to hit out at, danced down the wicket only to find the flight deceptive, and Mongia behind the wicket finished things off with a clinical stumping.

And even before the excitement had died down, Donald came, took guard, poked forward, and the Kumble top spinner off the very next ball sneaked between bat and pad and it was all over, SA were all out for 185 and India, thanks to intelligent bowling, superb ground fielding, clean catching and above all, relentlessly aggressive captaincy, had defied the odds and taken the Titan Cup.

There was one overwhelming bit of irony in the whole game. In its six league games, South Africa had won mainly because of its fielders, because of the relentless pressure on opposing teams as Rhodes and company dived, attacked the ball, threw in fast and made run scoring a Herculean task.

For the first time, South Africa found an opposing side using the same tactic against them - and succumbed.

Anil Kumble, for his superb spell of 8.2-0-26-4, was a cinch for the man of the match.

And Allan Donald, with 17 wickets in the tournament underlining his reputation as one of the most dangerous strike bowlers in contemporary cricket, won universal plaudits when he was picked the Man of the Series.

One last thought. For the final, India fielded its two best umpires, S Venkatraghavan and V K Ramaswamy. And throughout the game, there was not one decision that could even remotely be considered doubtful.

There's a lesson in there, somewhere...

Scoreboard:

India innings                                         R   B   4  6
SV Manjrekar     c Richardson       b de Villiers     7  31   0  0
SR Tendulkar     c Cronje           b Boje           67  88   6  0
J Srinath        c de Villiers      b Donald          5   7   1  0
MA Azharuddin    c Richardson       b Boje           26  40   2  0
R Dravid                            b de Villiers    31  41   2  0
R Singh          run out (Rhodes)                     5  24   0  0
A Jadeja         not out                             43  42   2  2
NR Mongia        c Boje             b de Villiers    15  22   0  0
SB Joshi         not out                              8   8   1  0
Extras           (lb 5, w 5, nb 3)                   13
Total            (7 wickets, 50 overs)              220


Fall of Wicket: 1-34 (Manjrekar), 2-43 (Srinath), 3-91 (Azharuddin),
     4-137 (Tendulkar), 5-147 (Dravid), 6-153 (Singh),
     7-204 (Mongia).

Bowling                      O      M      R      W
de Villiers                 10      3     32      3 
Klusener                     4      0     26      0 
Donald                      10      1     36      1 
Cronje                       6      0     27      0
Symcox                      10      0     42      0 
Boje                        10      0     51      2

South Africa innings                                  R   B   4  6
AC Hudson        c Azharuddin       b Prasad          7  14   1  0
G Kirsten        c Dravid           b Kumble         23  42   2  0
L Klusener       c Dravid           b Prasad          7   8   1  0
DJ Cullinan      c Azharuddin       b Singh          31  50   1  0
JN Rhodes        c Joshi            b Kumble          6   9   0  0
WJ Cronje        c Joshi            b Singh           6  28   0  0
N Boje           c Azharuddin       b Joshi           3   7   0  0
DJ Richardson    c Singh            b Prasad         43  66   3  0
PL Symcox        st Mongia          b Kumble         46  61   4  1
PS de Villiers   not out                              0   0   0  0
AA Donald                           b Kumble          0   1   0  0
Extras           (lb 1, w 11, nb 1)                  13
Total            (all out, 47.2 overs)              185

Fall of Wicket: 1-19 (Hudson), 2-29 (Klusener), 3-49 (Kirsten),
     4-60 (Rhodes), 5-84 (Cronje), 6-92 (Cullinan),
     7-96 (Boje), 8-184 (Richardson), 9-185 (Symcox),
     10-185 (Donald).

Bowling                      O      M      R      W
Srinath                     10      0     45      0 
Prasad                       9      0     28      3 
Kumble                       8.2    0     26      4
Singh                       10      1     40      2 
Joshi                       10      0     46      1