It is now a 'visual' battle of wits

WAS IT not John Gloag who tellingly observed: ``We have become visually illiterate.'' All the more so after TV left no drawing- room for doubt about cricket's having become a fixation with the nation. Kapil Dev ironically it was who made the World Cup such a big happening on the small screen. From that razzledazzle June 25, 1983 moment in which Clive Lloyd's mighty West Indies stood diminished as never before, scores (in the level playing field of cricket) have been settled in a `visual' battle of wits.

Lloyd and his vanquished West Indies came rushing to our country (less than four months after that `hat-tricky' World Cup had been lost at Lord's) to blackwash Kapil Dev's India 5-0 in the one-day series here. As the six Tests (concurrently played) saw India beaten black and blue (3-0), Lloyd and his men felt blood thirstingly avenged, as TV beamed their triumph back home in the Caribbean Isles. But the telepicture - of their invincibility in India - was not as graphic as had been the BBC's coverage of Kapil Dev's World Cup rollercoaster ride, so that the image of India's having Prudentially prevailed (over world-beaters West Indies) abided in the mind's eye.

Today, TV coverage has attained a technological level that makes it imperative to, not just pay, but be seen to pay, the opposition back in the same coin. This is precisely what Sourav Ganguly's India did on that October 7 Saturday afternoon of sunshine and no laughter for Steve Waugh's Australia, as we `visually' reversed The Oval tide of June 4, 1999 - of the Super Six World Cup defeat at the ruthless hands of the World Champions-to- be. So dizzying was the spectacle of India's 20-run `grudge' win now that I wonder about how many of you paused to ponder the point that ESPN's visual formatting of this `mean' match was as stunning as the picture we glimpsed, in The Oval discomfiture of Azhar's India, 16 months ago.

That brings me, interestingly, to a point Satyajit Ray made to me. Observed Satyajit Ray: ``Your mind itself is your camera when you go for the day's shooting - in the sense that you are already `viewing', inside it, what you are going to `can'. You only look at that part of the script you are going to shoot, during that day, and the moving images are etched in your mind. From that point, it's just a question of the camera rolling in the mind.''

Likewise has TV ensured that there is, almost, a camera rolling in the mind of each telecommentator today. Only, now, there is no scope for a `pre-written' script in the game of cricket - certainly not in the month in which the King Commission should normally have met. To return to that `camera' inside turbaned telecaster Gavaskar's mind, rewind to how much more restrained Sunil was, compared to other commentators, in assessing India's refreshing-enough October 7 comeback win over Australia. Sunil spoke, in even tones, of the battle for Indian cricket's redemption having been won but the ICC Knockout war's still being on.

Bang on the ball was Sunny in the sense that this Saturday is not last Saturday - the telepicture could have altered radically by now. But that is cricket and who in the audience cares, as long as India is seen to go full throttle, the way we did exactly a week ago. Sourav Ganguly is no Satyajit Ray to have had India's script, for the tournament, readily written in his mind. Having lifted India to a peak from which the Kangaroos were sent nosediving down in a way least expected, Sourav instinctually knew that the ascent, for Indian cricket, had barely begun, that he and his team still had miles to go.

It is this Ganguly sobriety in heady victory that is a heartening sign. Sourav never looks satisfied with what he and his team have accomplished. And that is how it should be in the ruthlessly demanding modern-day game, for tomorrow is another day-and-night, another bat-game altogether. For example, the fruits of victory tasted sweet enough, last Saturday, for us to forget altogether that, at 90 for 3, Steve's Australia had India by the gullet. With Sachin (38), Sourav (24) and Rahul (9) gone, the tender torso of our neo-batting stood starkly exposed, as the re- seasoning Vinod Kambli had the total fresher, Yuveraj Singh, for moral support at the other end!

I know a one-day match is not the same as a five-day Test. Certainly not the same as a Test match played in the Don Bradman era. For all that, the way Yuveraj Singh came off (last Saturday) - in what was as stern a test of temperament as any in this go-go game - his willowy artistry was a harkback to the time Neil Harvey made good in his second match for Australia. That was on Thursday, February 6, 1947 - in the fifth and final Test at Melbourne vs Lala Amarnath's India. Such was the fluidity of Neil Harvey's left-handed strokeplay, then, that he raced to 153 in heart-holding time.

The Harvey family was happy at this star-turn in the dainty dazzler's career. But it still did not look upon that 153 as the real McCoy. Only when Neil Harvey - as the youngest member (at 19) of Don Bradman's all-conquering 1948 Australian team - went on to hit 112, on his first appearance against England (in the Leeds Test), did his family feel that the boy had truly arrived, bat in left hand, as he acknowledged the resounding cheers of the Headingley crowd. For, in that July 1948 fourth Test at Leeds, Australia (when leading 2-0 in the series) had been reduced to 68 for 3, for once, in response to England's 496 (Don Bradman b Dick Pollard 33). This was when yearling Neil Harvey came up with his great rescue act of 112 that set up the platform for a seven- wicket Australian win - as the rubber-clincher.

I dare say Yograj Singh's bent of mind, as Yuveraj's proud- enough father, was the same, a week ago, as the boy hit that resourceful 84 against mighty Australia. Yograj, having missed his chance to be a second Kapil Dev (remember, the man could hit powerfully too), certainly would not have smacked his lips in approval as Yuveraj, losing focus in the instant that mattered, gifted away his wicket, caught and bowled, to non-regular bowler Shane Lee.

Still Yuveraj Singh had delivered amply enough for the TV spotlight to be on him from the moment he returned to the Indian dressing- room with a breakthrough 84. But the opportunity of a hundred missed (on first appearance against Australia) is the opportunity of a lifetime missed. That impatient dismissal should have been an object-lesson to this stripling that cricket, as the great leveller, could take away, in a mindless second, what it has lavished on you in your sudden hour of glory. As a young man in a hurry, Yuveraj could be forgiven his lapse in concentration, that time, only because India won through in the end. For all that, it is well for the lad to remember that his `trial by media' has already begun. `Ooh-La-La' Yuveraj is the pineapple of everyone's eye already. That is a measure of the high telly expectations aroused, on the spot, by this rising star with his batting, catching, throwing and hitting the stumps. That way TV is a prurient intruder on your organised growth as an India player. As an instant medium, TV's demands are instant in instant cricket. Yuveraj now, as the potential crorepati, will have no respite - and his father, at least, knows it. For Yograj Singh went on the 1980-81 tour of Australia and New Zealand at a time when the media glare and blare had just about begun. Yograj let through just one four, on the boundary- line, in a crucial one- day international and the press came down on his broad back like a ton of bricks. Yuveraj, compared to papa Yog, is more slim, more wiry. It is his fielding that makes 18-year-old Yuveraj Singh the most exciting thing on two legs with the bat! Yuv has everything. Yet this game yields little, remember, to those who fail to build solidly on their initial gains.

Indian cricket was in a shambles when Steve Waugh asked Sourav's India to bat first last Saturday. This psychological ploy put the onus on India to tame Glenn McGrath straightway. Sachin reacted to the situation from the gut. The limb-loosener against Kenya had revealed Tendulkar to be not in the best of touch. But Sachin sensed that the first blow against McGrath had, ego-shatteringly, to be his, now or never - if India was to cross this major hurdle to the game's finding public acceptance, again, in the country.

The six that Sachin brought off, in the bargain, would have been a catch on a ground even slightly vaster than Nairobi Gymkhana! So this certainly was India's day. You don't believe that? Cast your mind back to the Eden Gardens on Wednesday, March 13, 1996. To the semifinal encounter of the World Cup, that D-Day, between India and Sri Lanka. Play back, in your mind, the first overs of that crunch encounter. Both Romesh Kaluwitharana (0) and Sanath Jayasuriya (1) were nerve-tinglingly viewed to be caught then, on the third-man boundary, off sumptuous square-cuts - square-cuts that would have coasted through, for sixes, on any ground save the gigantic Eden Gardens.

So you could now say that Sachin was lucky with that third-manly six he struck off McGrath. But then luck is pluck, pluck is luck, in one- day cricket! From what we saw of Australia's renowned quick in the World Cup Super Six set-to last year, McGrath we recalled as `Glenn of the Baleful Eye'. Into the eye of that storm sailed Sachin now. And the `sixy' tone had been set. Ian Chappell and Sunil Gavaskar said Australia's ICC `Knockout' began from the point at which Robin Singh caught Ricky Ponting (46) with that daredevil dive. Boycott had to differ - if only because he is Geoffrey - and this canny Yorkshireman drew penetrative attention to how Yuveraj Singh's running out of `finisher' Michael Bevan (42) had settled the issue conclusively in his gaze. A third commentator could have picked out Zaheer Khan as the `turning-pointer'- for the verve and curve with which this lithe left-armer persevered to send the seasoned Steve Waugh (23) packing.

But all the above action came after Sachin - with his `six- appeal' - had cut to size Glenn McGrath (finally 9-0- 61-0). There are as many viewpoints as there are watchers - and I, for one, say Australia lost poise from the piquant point at which that planned assault on McGrath was so surgically executed by Sachin. Steve Waugh's Australia never was the same World Cupping team, in the field, after that - otherwise India could not have got to as far as 265 for 9 from its 50 overs.

RAJU BHARATAN

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