Fairly and squarely devalued

AS STABLE as the Leaning Tower of Pisa India's batting has been in Australia! Four times out of five, the ball had only to hit Sachin Tendulkar's pad for the umpire, native or imported, to put his finger on where, precisely, the problem for Australia lay vs India! That Sachin (given his `Bradmantle') was going to be morale-shatteringly targeted from the word go was something that became manifest from the vicarious way the Aussie media mounted pressure on Tendulkar even before the Ansett Test series got underway. The tenor of the campaign was crystal clear - get Tendulkar and you have got India!

That the campaign succeeded is a sad TV commentary on the remainder of India's batting - batting going beyond Tendulkar only the day after the fair,as Laxman at last underlined that the willowy successor to Azharuddin had arrived,with 167,for this Hyderabad thoroughbred at last stretching himself,was the fateful final run of the Sydney Test.For the rest,beyond Tendulkar,what we got to view consistently at one end was not merely the failure of Indian batting skill,it was the total collapse of Indian batting will. This was obviously going to be a `make' series for Rahul Dravid and a `break' series for Sourav Ganguly. That both these batsmen (with world reputations behind them) failed in the Test moments that mattered left Sachin, ultimately, with the task of batting for India at both ends. That was something beyond even Tendulkar in a series in which not once did the Indian captain get the fringe benefit of the umpiring doubt.

Until recently, it had been India's plaint that we rarely got invited to Australia. Indeed, even after just two tours in 20 years (1947- 1967), it was not as if Australia was overkeen to have India. Only Kerry Packer forced Australia's hand here. With the advent of the World Series idea, the traditional game had somehow to be saved. This was when Australia thought of India (with its world-class spin quartet of Bishen Singh Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna, B.S. Chandrasekhar and S. Venkatraghavan) as the spectacular counter to Packer. Bobby Simpson (7 and 89; 176 and 39; 2 and 4; 38 and 33; 100 and 51) came out of retirement to lead his country Australia in the five-Test series that depleted Australia won 3-2 during that 1977-78 season. And it is Bobby Simpson (with the advantage of having been consultant to India's World Cup team) who got to the essence of our troubles now in Australia. As Adam Gilchrist (ultimately 78) tore into the Indian bowling after that clear caught-and-bowled was denied, early on, to Anil Kumble in the Melbourne Test, Simpson noted how India seemed to lose all heart at this turn of events. And that moment in which India so lost hope, observed Simpson, was enough for Steve Waugh's Australia to wade in and deliver the 2-0 knockout punch.

Here is where India went mentally unprepared to Australia under the aegis of Sachin Tendulkar and Kapil Dev. The point that should have been dinned into Indian ears by this two-man `team management' was that there would be moments in Australia when the whole cricketing world would appear to be set against India. It was at such pressure points - this duo had to underline - that India was expected to pick up and get on with the game. We never looked a team psychologically attuned to the fact that the umpiring was going to be 60-40 -if not 65-35 - in favour of Australia on its native heath. We let those umpiring disappointments get to us and paid the supreme penalty.

India's batsmen (bar Sachin and Laxman - as the sword of Damocles hung over him) revealed the backbone of a jellyfish in this rubber. Since a jellyfish has no backbone, you have a vivid telepicture here of how motivated we were in coming to grips with Australia's sustained combative approach calculated to ensure a whitewashout for India. After this rubber, Sachin or no Sachin, India has no ground for complaining if it fails to get invited to play Test cricket, too soon, in Australia. Could the one-day Carlton & United Tri- series (starting tomorrow) metamorphose the picture? It could in India, where the TV audience, by now, lives for one-day cricket. For all that, the odds would seem to be weighted against India, seeing how `Kargilt-edged' Pakistan is the other team we have to take on here. Still, if we did put up a good show in the C & U Tri-series, the Indian public would be ultra-swift to forgive our countless Test failings in Australia. And that would be the tragedy of Indian cricket all over again. For our batsmen are champs, in redeeming themselves, once the ball is not coming up, too much, above the hips. Now, in the C & U, the contest is going to be cosier. And, in such a setting, if we witness some big hitting (on the small screen) from the very batsmen who so signally failed us in the three Tests, the C & U will be captive viewing for Indian eyes, Fevicol-glued to the set!

There is to be no `Kunvar Ajay', and therefore no Millennium Dhamaka, in this C & U. Yet give full marks to `Kunvar Ajay' Jadeja for instinctively recognising his limitations and venturing to work strictly within them. You saw how Jadeja manoeuvred his lack of fitness, for the five-day fray, in such a way as to get left out of the Ansett Test series! Yet come the C & U Triseries and Ajay (with `All that Jadejazz') was ready to get his shoulder to the wheel. For here was a tournament for 'Kunwara' Ajay to emerge eligible, as ever, in his Fan Club's eyes, so that Jadeja pronounced himself ready for battle again. Indian Cricket Board President Muthiah, therefore, deserves kudos for putting his timely foot down in the matter of Ajay's shoulder.

Player power was getting a little too uncomfortable, by then, for the autonomous status that the Cricket Board commanded - and President Muthiah chose the right icon on whom to assert his authority. The idea of the `team management' in asking for Ajay Jadeja, now, was not just to keep Mohammed Azharuddin out. It was to cement the bonds of 'cricketing cronyism' that Sachin Tendulkar and Kapil Dev, by their blinkered outlook, had forged in Australia.

Maybe Sachin, by then, had performed. But even Sachin, great as he is, is surely not greater than the game? The spectacle of the `team management' insisting on Sameer Dighe made nonsense of Selection Committee Chairman Chandu Borde's policy of ``looking ahead''. This is not written in a personal strain against Sameer Dighe. Yet the fact remains that Dighe, for so long now in the reckoning, is almost a memory. I sincerely hope Dighe does well, now that he is in the team. That way Australia is a funny tour. Tiger Pataudi just did not want Rusi Surti on the 1967-68 visit to Australia. Yet that southpaw turned out to be one of the stand-out performers during the Siamese twin tour of Australia and New Zealand that time (367 runs from 8 Test innings in Australia for an average of 45.87 - plus 15 wickets, in the four- Test series, at 35.20 runs each, when the Kangaroos were strong indeed in batting).This time out, was there not a similar `Kangarooted' objection to Ajit Agarkar's being considered for the tour, now in its second lap? Yet Agarkar had so much to contribute with his eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation during the three Tests in Australia. Of course, no one expected Ajit Agarkar to 'zero in' with the bat the way he did, considering that he had the potential to develop into a top-class all-rounder. Yet, who knows, Agarkar might still surprise us, in this direction, come the C & U. Whatever else Agarkar lacks, he does not lag behind in the vital matter of attitude. And motivation was the one trait missing in the team that lost batting caste in the Ansett series in Australia. One Sachin swallow could not make India's Australian summer. I had said (before the tour got going) that here was a Test series sure to separate the men from the minions. Ansett has certainly shown where we stand in Test cricket today. India's batting display (if you exempt Sachin) has been a vivid reminder of the title that Graham Yallop gave to his book: Lambs To The Slaughter.

Slaughter of Warne we in this series expected - but never got - from the now better honed MRF blade of Sachin.True Tendulkar played Shane Warne well,but without achieving the style of little masterful authority `Sachignome'did, over this chunky wristie in India and Sharjah. It had looked an 'unequal' invitation when Shane Warne accompanied Sachin Tendulkar to meet Sir Donald Bradman at Adelaide. Now, in Australia, Warne showed his Kangaroo paces with his well-varied slows. To think that Steve Waugh had let it be known that Indians play spin even better than Pakistanis! In this Ansett Test series, there was no evidence of Indian batsmen playing either spin or pace well. Tendulkar, of course, was the glorious exception. The way he handled the electric pace of Brett Lee came as an eye-opener. It also came as a third eye-opener when Sunil Gavaskar, after initially giving a clean chit to Brett Lee, called into question this tearaway Aussie's action - at the end of the first day's play in the third and final Sydney Test. By that stage, Brett Lee had shown himself to be an arm no less 'bent' upon destruction than Shoaib Akhtar. Sunny sardonically noted that we could be certain that no (ICC) action would be taken against Brett Lee's action. Sunny also talked of ``double standards'' in viewing (vis-`-vis Venkatesh Prasad) the aggro of Glenn McGrath, after that Ugly Aussie had dubiously claimed Tendulkar (45) - hit on the roll of his front- pad - lbw yet again.

It is important to remember that this part of the Sunny-Harsha ESPN telecast was being beamed only to Asia! Still, even if the umpire officiating be the highly respected David Shepherd, it passes cricketing comprehension how it could have been so promptly determined that Sachin (52) was out, lbw, to Shane Warne (in the second innings of the Melbourne Test), simply because the ball had pitched on the middle stump. In the case of the conventional wrist spinner (as distinct from Kumble or Chandra), I maintain that it is difficult, for even a master umpire, to be certain about whether a pitched-up ball would hold course.

Sachin thus had a right to feel scurvily treated. Not so our other five-star batsmen. No matter how impressively these other men now play, day-and-night, they will not be able to erase this impression that they are overrated. These men had reason, before the start of this tour, to resent the singular focus Sachin was getting. Now they know exactly why the cognoscenti placed Sachin where they did. For too long had too many passed themselves off as current coin. Now they stand, fairly and squarely, devalued.

RAJU BHARATAN

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