Sport

India’s best chance to beat Australia

CANBERRA: Counter-intuitive as it sounds, Perth represents India’s best chance of defeating Australia.

That the touring side believes it can win — and this is neither bluff nor bluster — after a draining week says everything about Anil Kumble’s leadership. Is it any wonder that he has looked imaginative, enterprising and forceful in attack, but irritable and ceding in defence?

It outrages Kumble’s nature to defend, which is why the early switch from attack at Sydney was strange.

By all accounts, the conditions at Perth will encourage cricket that advances the third Test: the strip is expected to arrange pace and bounce; the Fremantle Doctor, Perth’s stiff cooling breeze, is likely to favour swing. Kumble should be in his element as captain.

But, a couple of matters are pending resolution.

The Indians arrived here in Canberra, hoping to road-test an out-of-touch opener, an out-of-sorts number six, and the options for a third seamer.

Wasim Jaffer made runs, Yuvraj Singh didn’t, and Irfan Pathan out-bowled Pankaj Singh and V. R.V. Singh, though it isn’t saying much.

Two contenders for a batting spot, Virender Sehwag and Dinesh Karthik, made the additional day — appended to the tour game at the last minute — count. So, where does that leave India?

Kumble will have to make two separate decisions, but the nature of side-composition will ensure they overlap.

The first — the assigning of rank here is the writer’s — pertains to the balance of the bowling attack.

Does Kumble play his four best bowlers (as judged in evenly-weighted conditions) or does he adopt that old favourite — horses for courses?

India’s four best bowlers on the evidence of the first two Tests and the tour game here are R. P. Singh, Ishant Sharma, Harbhajan Singh and the captain himself.

R. P. Singh responded magnificently in Sydney to the responsibility of leading the attack in just his ninth Test.

He has a lovely, loose left arm and a faultless wrist — the tools for whippy pace and swing.

Despite bowling well within himself here, he picked a wicket in each spell.

Ishant was luckless and consequently wicketless at the SCG. But, his fortune seemed to turn in the tour game, where he was rewarded for his hostility.

His natural angle across the left-handers and lift from a 6ft 6in frame troubled Australia’s top-order in the second Test; encouragingly, he showed signs of straightening the ball to the right-hander, if not genuine cut away, as he squared Ricky Ponting up.

R. P. Singh and Ishant are certain to play at Perth: so debilitating have been India’s problems with injury that a 22-year-old and a 19-year-old are shouldering the seam attack.

The presence of Zaheer Khan (who left Sydney after a long-standing heel injury played up) or Sreesanth (home with an injured shoulder) would have added immeasurably; it also would have made up Kumble’s mind on a third seamer.

Instead, the Indian captain will need to choose between Harbhajan and Pathan (the alternative, Pathan for Yuvraj, is part of Kumble’s second decision and will be discussed later). The off-spinner has looked world-class whenever he has bowled with flight, slowing himself both in delivery and through the air.

He will appreciate the bounce at Perth. Moreover, he has the wood on Ponting.

Knowing Kumble, if Harbhajan is selected — as he can be, awaiting the verdict of the appeal against the three-Test ban — it will be on cricketing merit and not to prove a point.

Pathan swung the new ball here at the Manuka Oval, but surprisingly didn’t appear to hurry any of the batsmen.

Since un-knotting his action under T. A. Sekar, the left-armer has hit the early 140s (kmph) in ODIs, though he has also taken to bowling cutters with the ’keeper standing up in the middle-overs.

In the Test against Pakistan, he did enough on a slow track to suggest the correction in action was beginning to pay.

Also in Pathan’s favour is the fact that he’s a fierce competitor who steps his game up against Australia.

Although Pathan can do no worse than Yuvraj with the bat, it’s unlikely he’ll replace him at six.

In bowler-friendly conditions, playing six specialist batsmen and four bowlers is prudent, for you need every run as a bargaining chip, and four bowlers, if selected wisely, work as five.

Sehwag, who should have played at Sydney, must be slotted in. But, here it gets tricky: open with him and displace Rahul Dravid and perhaps V. V. S. Laxman or bat him at six in a straight swap?

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