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Tornado Tudor!

Dhritiman Hui

It's about that time of the year again. Time for the English cricket fraternity to stand up, inflate their chests with an insecure pride and announce the arrival of the 'next Ian Botham'.

They even have a suitable candidate this time around!

A 23-year-old, playing his first Test at home, had walked into the second innings with his team looking at one of those targets that's neither too big nor too small, but just that aggravating total that makes top orders collapse, as they try to decide whether to attack or exhibit more prudence. And he'd been sent in hold the fort till stumps - as a sacrificial night-watchman - so that the more established batsmen in the side could complete the task the next day.

Hold the fort, he did, and when he walked out the next morning, Alex Tudor decided that being the night-watchman included the license to attack. So, a rasping square drive was unleashed, and then a pair of square cuts, and England had rushed past fifty even before the ninth over.

Stephen Fleming looked flabbergasted, and his bowlers found that banging it in short wasn't going to suppress young Tudor. The Surrey man cut and pulled with even greater consistency and authority. England's newest skipper Nasser Hussain joined him midmorning at the crease, and decided that Tudor's natural exuberance was best left untampered.

Allowed the sanction of higher authority, the night-watchman lay about the bowling with even greater relish, and all three bowling changes made by Fleming were greeted by fierce braces of boundaries in their opening overs. After lunch, Tudor came out, with England still 81 away. Somebody evidently forgot to tell Tudor to get it in singles and twos, as he continued in his merry vein, and New Zealand returned to the hut, just a little over an hour later, licking the wounds inflicted upon them from the most unlikely quarter of the enemy camp.

Such forthright batting and lack of inhibition has been in this decade the very antithesis of all things English cricket. And the last time an English greenhorn demonstrated such remarkable surety at the crease was probably when David Gower serenely tucked the first ball he faced in international cricket through square leg. And, oh yes, the man happens to bowl too - fast medium - and that's why they picked him in the first place.

Alex Tudor hails from the island of Barbados, the same patch of green and yellow that gave the world Wesley Hall, Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall, and he grew up, nursing the desire to bowl just like them. God-given height, and a fast bowler's build, ensured that his efforts to be a tearaway soon got somebody's attention.

Middlesex were up against Surrey at The Oval, and Mark Ramprakash, who despite all his stodginess at the international level is still one of the county circuit's most ebullient stroke players, had run into some good form. The Middlesex man then ran into Alex Tudor, debuting for Surrey, and confessed to feeling decidedly uncomfortable every time the debutant hustled him with pace and bounce. Ramprakash's dominance over the rest of the Surrey attack finally ended with his personal score at 214, with Tudor getting his wicket, still bowling as fast as he could, and with it, his first commendation of note.

Ramprakash, under the 'buddy system' devised by David Lloyd, became Tudor's batting coach when he first toured with England Down Under last year and has remained one of the greatest champions of the Barbadian's cause since that day at The Oval.

But it wasn't his ability with the willow that anyone was interested in. Tudor blew away five Australians on a bouncy track at Perth on debut, and suddenly England had found someone to bowl fast, straight and pick up wickets. But in the next match, one look at the dull Adelaide pitch ensured that the management dropped him in favour of a tweaker.

Everybody forgot to look at the fact that he had carved out 48 runs at Perth.Came the Test match at Edgbaston, everybody in the dressing room laughed heartily as young Alex narrated stories of how he had scored hundreds twice as a teenager in his school's second team. An incident that Tudor took to heart.

And, as the scribes descended upon him after his demolition of the Kiwis, Tudor reminded them all, tongue in cheek, that he had scored hundreds, twice, as a teenager in his school's second team.

Genuine potential had translated itself into achievement, and now no one will be giggling when Tudor tells them about what he can do with the bat.

Hussain said he felt delighted about Tudor's unexpected success.

"Anyone who knows him and his family will know that no one deserves this more than them."

Most of Tudor's youth had been spent in West London, in a deeply religious community, to where, maybe, his self-belief can be traced back to.

Tudor's heroics mean that the English selectors now find themselves spoilt for choice, a dilemma that has evaded them for a while now. Darren Gough picked up four wickets in his comeback game to declare his recovery from the leg injury that had forced him to sit out the first Test, and Nasser Hussain declared that he wanted his best fast bowler back in the side as soon as possible. And if everyone thinks back to the first of June - the start of the Test, they'll remember that Tudor was picked in the side for taking wickets and not for scoring 99 runs in 121 balls under three hours.

Tudor hadn't done his cause a bit of good till that third day, having conceded 69 runs in his 16 overs for just a single wicket, banging it in far too short on a track that cried for the clever use of the seam. He was, without a doubt, the weak link in the English bowling, and if Phil Tufnell hadn't taken out the Kiwi tail in double quick time in both the innings, Tudor's lack of contribution with the ball wouldn't have been so easily glossed over.

Tudor stated that he would get that Test hundred soon enough with great conviction, highlighting the fact that he's riding a huge crest of confidence right now. Now would be the right time for the selectors to overlook commonsense for a while, and allow Gough the benefit of two more weeks for a safe, steady recovery and instead allow Tudor to have another tilt at the disoriented tourists from the Isle of the Long White Cloud.

Tudor apparently has been travelling to Chelmsford quite frequently for one on one batting sessions with Graham Gooch, and was seen out on the ground at eight in morning, every day of the Test match at Edgbaston, improving his judgement outside the off stump under the watchful tutelage of Ramprakash. But what the English think-tank has probably been doing for the last week is drilling the advantages of bowling basic line and length into their new hero's head.

Tudor's 178 minutes at the crease in the second innings weren't marked by any of the British bulldog spirit, nor was it a personification of methods that batting coaches advocate throughout England, but it was marked by a certain amount of dash and verve that hasn't long been demonstrated by a man wearing the three lions on his chest. It had a taste of romance in it; the romance of the uninhibited ways of youth, something that caught the imagination of the crowds at Edgbaston.

Maybe, someone who can marry English cricket to flair again, has finally come along. And just for that, Alex Tudor deserves to be picked for the rest of this series.