Sport - Cricket   

Damp end to a drawn series

By G. Viswanath

Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly (right) and his English counterpart Nasser Hussain pose with the npower Trophy after sharing the honours 1-1 in the four-Test series. The final Test was declared drawn owing to the abandonment of the final day's play at the Oval on Monday.

London Sept. 9. Grey and dismal do not go down well with cricket.

There is always the grim pointer to it, which was not omnipresent during the course of the long English summer.

There were brief spells of thin rain between May and August, but then as old-fashioned Englishmen point out, the rainy season in this part of the world commences on January 1 and ends on December 31.

In spite of predictions, using modern technology, rain does not follow the time table, as was evident from the cloudy and wet weather that brought the npower Test series literally to a standstill on Monday.

It was a regret for many, though the two teams would have probably depended on the entire spectrum of the `glorious uncertainties' of the game to come into play to force a result.

The Oval was empty in the stands and things were a little bubblier in the corporate boxes where `gentlemen' were relishing rounds of lager. Green plastic covers shaped like a `plus' protected the pitch, the bowler's run up and the square areas on both sides.

It seemed as though the next ball would be bowled in April 2003 to herald the start of another season!

The scoreboard showed England's second innings at 114 for no loss — when the umpires, Dave Orchard and Ashoka De Silva, called off the match at 1 p.m. — thanks to the wonderful batting of Marcus Trescothick and Michael Vaughan, who in the present form might have been fancied to make his fourth century.

Test match cricket has never been played in England beyond September 8 since 1880 when Australia and England played a three-day Test on September 6, 7 and 8. It was also the first time in 22 years that a day's play in an Oval Test match was washed off.

The Indians have good memories of the Oval, but it has not been as good for the home team, which was mesmerised by Muttiah Muralitharan and beaten by Sri Lanka by ten wickets and thereafter defeated by Stephen Fleming's New Zealand by 83 runs.

England came back to winning ways in 2000, only to be thrashed by Australia last summer by an innings and 25 runs.

For the Indians, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar's six for 38 here 31 years ago has been etched in memory for a long time.

Eight years later Sunil Gavaskar led the India's challenge in the fourth innings with a 221 made in less than eight hours.

And a little over a decade ago, India made 606 with Ravi Shastri making a formidable 187. So the Indians knew that one way or the other history favoured them.

The placid nature of the pitch also turned out to be a great ally of the batsmen who scored freely to make over one thousand runs in the first innings with the likes of Michael Vaughan and Rahul Dravid stretching their golden run.

Vaughan's 195 came in 379 minutes as against Dravid's 217 in 629 minutes, which was understandable because India was facing a stiff target of 515 in order to stay in the Test match.

Whichever way one looked at the proceedings, the Oval proved to be a batting paradise and the absence of a good quality `finger-spinner' made life easy for the batsmen.

Harbhajan Singh might have taken five wickets, but it was another foreign tour where he did not make a big impact. He will be better for experience when he turns out for Lancashire in the next season.

The Indians, who have spent nearly six months in West Indies and England, would be spending close to two months in December-January in New Zealand, immediately after the home series against the West Indies. England's next assignment is in Australia.

"I think we have played a great summer, but we have to make the switch from being a competitive team to a team that can finish off Test matches. We have played excellent cricket against Sri Lanka and India and against a batting side that has Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly, Laxman and Sehwag.'' said English skipper Nasser Hussain.

Rain left the two teams sharing the npower series 1-1 and as Ganguly said: "We have moved forward. We scored 450 plus runs three times after the Lord's defeat. The spinners bowled well and so was Zaheer Khan. Sanjay Bangar was the find of the tour, but what we need is some one who can take five wickets consistently and win matches. We have to get bowlers who will learn to get 20 wickets on flat pitches.''

Summing up the tour, Ganguly said: "I think we had a very pretty successful tour. We won the Natwest Trophy final and then after the defeat at Lord's came back strongly in the next Three Tests. England was a hard team at home than it was in India.''

"This is the most positive England side I have captained and Duncan Fletcher is the best coach I have played under. It's my job to see that the bloke gets another contract, said Hussain

Rahul Dravid was adjudged the `Man of the Match' and he and Michael Vaughan were declared `Man of the Series' for their respective sides.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport

News: Front Page | National | Southern States | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary |

Stories in this Section

Athletics

• Anju George equals National record
  
  Chess
  
• Russia reduces deficit
  
  Cricket
  
• Damp end to a drawn series
• Youhana back in Pakistan team
• A summer to remember
• Dravid's innings, a statistician's delight
  
  Football
  
• Hat-trick by Mukund
  
  Tennis
  
• Mahesh jumps to No. 4
• Wilawan upsets Diana Costa
  
  Table Tennis
  
• Sharath Kamal, Anindita take honours
  
  

Copyright © 2002, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu