India take the Test, and the series

Prem Panicker

In the end, it all ran according to script - the five remaining South African batsmen did their best to delay the inevitable.

But the defensive pushes of Symcox and De Villiers, the brief defiance by Klusener, all proved too short-lived. And as we suspected, India wrapped up the match not with its spinners - so much for the 'India can win only at home, and that too on doctored spinning tracks' merchants - but with its pace spearheads Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad.

Srinath was, in a word, brilliant. Bowling through the first hour of play, he bowled a bewildering array of inswingers, outswingers, breakbacks and reverse-swinging yorkers all at a blistering pace. And a review of the innings shows that besides the three wickets that have been credited to him, he brought about the run out of Cullinan by sheer hostility that had the batsman scrambling a non-existent single to get away from him, and also demoralised Gibbs to such an extent that his strike partner, Prasad, merely had to apply the coup de grace.

Spare a thought, too, to Sunil Joshi, who bowled unchanged through the morning session, striking in the very first over of the morning when he had McMillan sweeping for substitute VVS Laxman to take a great catch at midwicket. The less said about McMillan's exit the better - time and again the South African batsmen have demonstrated on this tour that when it comes to technique against spin, their repertoire alternates between sticking a pad out at everything, and trying to sweep irrespective of line, length and direction.

But the most interesting development - at least, by my lights -was this. That Sachin began with the pace of Srinath at one end, kept it up for a little over an hour and, after giving his leading quick bowler a brief rest, claimed the new ball after 93 overs.

Consider the implications of that. The Indian cricket team, on home soil, on a wicket that was taking turn and giving bounce to Joshi and Kumble, opting for the new ball to break through when, even as late as last year, the thinking would have been to let the ball get softer and softer, and the spinners bowl over after over, till patience gave out and the batsmen succumbed.

Today, for the first time in recent memory, the Indian team went the other way. Was Sachin Tendulkar sending out a message, ahead of the upcoming tour of South Africa, that when the two teams take each other on in a Test situation next (on December 26 at Durban), the Indians have the firepower, and now the will, to match pace with pace. And Prasad and Srinath underlined the fact that India has now found real sharp teeth in its bowling department when, in the course of seven balls after lunch with the second new ball, Prasad and Srinath blasted out the two remaining S'African batsmen and closed out the game before most spectators had even settled back in their seats.

In the process, the Indian side gained more than a very convincing 2-1 win in the series - they also succeeded in putting an end to the theory that it could never bowl a top class side out twice in course of a Test. South Africa is rated, as of now, the best Test side in the world, courtesy Wisden - and the Indian attack destroyed them not once, but twice in course of three Tests.

And while we are about it, let's not bring up that old bogey of doctored wickets all over again - the scorecard is evidence enough that batsmen who can use their bat as something more than fly-swatters could get runs easily on this wicket. And even more to the point, one set of statistics militates against the whole notion of spinning wickets - in course of the three Tests, Indian bowlers took 50 wickets. Of these, 25 were taken by the spinners - Kumble, Joshi, Kapoor and Hirwani. And the other 25 by the only two pace bowlers India used - Srinath and Prasad.

Spinning wickets? Tell me another one - what the figures indicate are that the wickets helped both pace and spin. And the correct term for a track like that, where batsmen too make runs, is 'Test wicket'.

This is a gain that the home side will now need to use to demolish yet another myth - that India cannot win anywhere except on home soil. And for once, the Indian cricket team is uniquely placed to do it, on the twin-tour of South Africa and the West Indies.

The immediate reaction, when someone reads a comment like this, is to put it down to patriotic - even jingoistic - pride and its concommitant, hype. But such a dismissal does not take into account the lessons of the last couple of months.

India, in this space of time, managed to defeat Australia in a one off Test, then went on to defeat South Africa 2-1 over the course of three Tests. Surely these victories did not come through a combination of umpiring errors and doctored wickets?

What we sometimes fail to see, when making these assessments, is the folly of treating 'India' as an unchanged, unchanging entity. Our line of logic tends to veer to the absurd - India lost to England in England, the latter is not rated very high among the fraternity of Test playing nations, ergo, India must be even lower on the scale.

What this fails to take into account is the fact that between that defeat and these victories, the Indian team has uncovered strengths, and is moving towards plugging weaknesses. If Saurav Ganguly was a gain of the England tour, then Rahul Dravid's development as one of the most talented players in the world is an outcome of the period since then. If the maturing of Prasad into a bowler who can bowl well with both new ball and old was a discovery of the England tour, then the ability of Srinath to produce consistent reverse-swing and breakback is a discovery of this series. If the rather directionless captaincy of Azharuddin was a negative of the England tour, then Sachin Tendulkar's win-hungry attitude, as evidenced by his aggression in the fourth innings at Ahmedabad after setting South Africa a low total, and by his challenging declaration here, are gains made since then.

And these entries in black, in the right side of the ledger, need to be totted up when looking at the immediate future. Do your sums right, and you will see a young team on the make - a team that, moreover, has tasted success and will, therefore, be reluctant to settle for less.

There is one other factor that merits mention - and that factor was very visible when the adjudicators announced the Man of the Match, and Man of the Series.

It was a hard fought series, this. Three Tests, three results - and that is not achieved without more than a fair share of good performances with bat and ball. There was the sustained hostility of Allan Donald. The scintillating, and sustained, strokeplay of Gary Kirsten. The hugely successful debut of Lance Klusener. The incredibly parsimonious, and at the same time successful, bowling of Anil Kumble. The pace and fire of Javagal Srinath, who took 18 wickets on the lower, slower wickets of India.

And yet, the standing ovation that greeted the announcement indicated that this series will in the end be remembered for the exploits of one man - Mohammad Azharuddin.

When the tourists finally succumbed by a mammoth 280-run margin, there was a good four hours of play left on the last day at Green Park. Four hours including, it must be remembered, the mandatory 20 overs in the last hour.

I wonder if Mohammad Azharuddin glanced wistfully at his Patek Phillippe watch as he made his way to the podium to receive his accolades? For when Indian skipper Sachin Tendulkar applied the closure at lunch on the fourth day, Azhar was on 163 - and the only thing that looked likely to stop him racing to what would have been the first double century of his career was a declaration.

Does he rue the missed opportunity today? Somehow, I suspect not.

Azhar, you will remember, was coming into the series with his future place in the side very much in doubt. The ghosts of England continued to haunt him, a run of low scores had the chorus baying for his blood, and it was pretty obvious that a failure or three on this series would have in all probability seen the selectors "resting" him for the twin tours of South Africa and the West Indies.

In the event, he was named man of the match. And of the series. "Incandescent brilliance," said one commentator. "It was a privilege just being here to watch him bat," said another on the ESPN panel. "Extraordinary, what else can you say about him?" shrugged Sachin Tendulkar.

And on our commentary-cum-chat site, a grandfather quoted his grandson: "Azhar is batting like a god!"

No, somehow, I don't think Azhar would have minded the closure coming when it did. For he would somewhere at the bottom of his heart have appreciated the poetic justice of it all. In England, the team - all 11 of them - played badly, yet he ended up carrying the cross. Here, he replied in the only way a player of class could reply - by batting his team out of trouble on one occasion, and to victory on another.

This performance came about through two very obvious factors. One was the fact that his private life had, finally, ceased to be an issue for both the press and the public. Azhar, an intensely private person, had visibly wilted when the glare of the media pinned him in its sights in England. With his marriage, that spotlight was now off for good - and Azhar, in consequence, looked a happy, relaxed man on the field.

The second factor was his change of technique. A more open stance, which he first unveiled in the first innings in Calcutta, and which ensured that in the three innings since he first took middle stump guard and squared himself towards the bowler in a manner reminiscent of Mohinder Amarnath's golden period, over fifty per cent of his boundaries were coming on the off side, and that too off authentic cover and off drives played with minimum force and stunning precision.

What this means is that another myth has been now laid low - conventional thinking for bowlers thus far has been that Azhar can be contained, and prised out, by bowling the offstump line, cramping him for space to play his wristy flicks on the on. That is no longer true, and this, in turn, means that Azhar - a batsman who loves the ball coming onto the bat - now becomes a formidable figure on faster wickets.

That just about sums it up, then, for the home side - a convincing win in the third Test, a 2-1 win in the series. And a massive psychological edge to take into the second leg of the face-off, when India combats South Africa on the latter's home turf beginning December 26.

What of the tourists, meanwhile?

In all fairness, South Africa has a little job on its hands over the next fortnight - it needs to take a long, hard look at its batting lineup. More than the two defeats here, the manner in which they came about have underlined the conviction that South Africa has a lineup that is not only intrinsically brittle, but very suspect under pressure. As skipper Hansie Cronje said after the III Test was won and lost, "We scored only 170 and 180 here, and this is not a 170 and 180 wicket."

But having said that, it must be added that this result does not, automatically, toppled South Africa from its Wisden-given position of the top Test nation in the world. What it really does is underline the fact that international cricket today is being played on an increasingly level playing field, where on its day, any of the nine nations is the equal of all others. The days of one country - West Indies, to give it a name - dominating Test cricket scene for a decade and more is gone for good and today, a team is just as good, or bad, as its last series.

The challenge, for South Africa, is to bounce back. And going in its favour is the fact that when the two teams resume battle in a fortnight's time, the menacing Allan Donald will be backed up by the pace and aggression of probably the best young all-rounder in the world today - Shaun Pollock.

If Donald provides the cutting edge, then Pollock supplies much needed additional muscle, both with ball and bat. Add to this the return of Jonty Rhodes who, on his home turf, is as much a performer with the bat as he is on the field.

The ingredients are all there - it will be interesting to see if South Africa can put it all together in the time remaining; more interesting to see what, if any, psychological scars have been left on the side's psyche by this defeat.

We'll know soon enough, won't we? When the bell for round two sounds on, appropriately enough, Boxing Day?

A postscript: This result has had one more effect. It has put an edge to future face-offs between the two sides. And that edge, we suspect, will be first seen when India and South Africa go head to head, for the last time this year on Indian soil, in a day-night match at Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium on December 14.

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