Notes on the New Zealand series

India's New Zealand tour has gone to plan, so far, for the visitors. If you ignore the T20 result, which is mostly a lottery in these early days of that form of cricket, India have done better than could've been reasonably expected. A comfortable win in the ODI series, and a comprehensive win in the first Test, have demonstrated that this Indian team is easily better at touring than its predecessors over the years.

One factor that has certainly helped is that the pitches haven't been 'deadly' like on the previous tour. But they certainly haven't been "flat tracks" as some reporters have claimed. Flat tracks are what you get in India (or these days, the West Indies), which are just rolled mud. The ball doesn't deviate off the pitch, and doesn't rise above knee height, on those pitches. The pitches this season in New Zealand have provided a fair amount of assistance to the seam bowlers - some movement off the pitch, and certainly some bounce, especially with the new ball. That has helped India's seamers make early inroads into the inexperienced NZ top order. But as soon as the ball loses its hardness (not so much its shine), that assistance disappears and the pitches become quite benign. I suspect that the pitches are quite hard, resulting in the ball getting softened up quickly.

Swing hasn't been much of a factor so far -- not surprising considering that neither team possesses a genuine swing bowler. Zaheer Khan comes closest to that description, but he's primarily a seam bowler who can exploit reverse swing rather than the conventional kind. But there's no Jimmy Anderson or Irfan Pathan in these sides. Certainly we haven't seen any significant swing beyond the first few overs. I wonder if this is partly because of the way teams "take care of" the ball these days, hoping for reverse swing later. They keep the shine on one side of the ball, and the other side becomes rougher and heavier. Until reverse swing kicks in, this makes it hard to get conventional swing. In more innocent times, teams would work hard to keep the shine on both sides of the ball, and that'd keep the swing going for 15-20 overs at least. These days it doesn't seem to last 10 overs. In any case, the genuine swing bowler seems to be a disappearing species.

Coming to spin bowling, it's been a disappointment so far -- and I say that despite Harbhajan's performance in the second innings of the first Test. The pitches have actually been pretty responsive to the spinners. But the quality of spin bowling overall has deteriorated so much that a Vettori is considered the best left-arm spinner in the world these days, and a Harbhajan probably the second-best offie! Vettori is a smart cricketer all right. He does his best with his control over line and length, and clever changes of pace and angle of delivery. But the classic spinner's armoury of flight and spin is missing! Harbhajan too has lost hit bite these days. On hard, bouncy pitches like these he ought to have been deadly. He does generate a nice swerve in the air, but the zip off the pitch is missing, the big turners aren't in evidence, and I've hardly seen a flighted ball! These days the radar gun reveals changes in pace all right, and the commentators have been demanding the slower ball from Harbhajan, in the 80-85 kmph range. But it's not just the slow pace! Where's the flight? The ball really needs to come down from above the batman's eye level. It's just basic, that sort of trajectory makes it harder for the batsman to judge the length, leaving him unsure whether to move forward or back. And then you need to put plenty of rpms on the ball make it dip, making it even harder to negotiate. Neither Vettori nor Harbhajan has made this happen. Today's spinners grip the ball so deep in their hands that there's no way they can impart a lot of spin. The limited amount of spin they do get is due to the wrist movement rather than the traditional snap of the fingers. As I write this, I'm watching Harbhajan get clobbered by the NZ batsmen in the second Test, which just drives home the point.

The batting, on the other hand, has thrived, prospered, flowered... Sachin Tendulkar's innings in the first Test was superbly constructed, and he just doesn't play an ugly shot, ever (well, almost never). His natural movements are so graceful that even his defensive strokes are bliss. And Jesse Ryder is a wonderfully talented young batsman (we already knew that about Ross Taylor). Just another in a long line of left-handers to torment the Indian bowling over the years! Remember Shiv Chanderpaul, Matt Hayden, Andy Flower, even Jimmy Adams? Or going further back, Clive Lloyd, Allan Border... The list goes on and on. India seems to have a penchant for letting lefties have monster series against them. Ryder now has a fifty, a century and a double-ton in three innings of this Test series, not to mention his big scoring in the ODIs before. And he's such a pleasing batsman to watch, with the fluidity and non-violence of his strokeplay, which still scoring at a good rate. He's also displayed a maturity that one wouldn't have expected of him, given his chequered personal history. Coming in with his team in dire straits (twice, now), he's played less aggressively than his natural game, let other batsmen (Vettori and Taylor) dominate the scoring, and gone serenely.

Amazing how Dhoni's presence or absence seems to affect the fortunes of the Indian team, though! He skips the series in Lanka and we're promptly thrashed (credit to Mendis too, of course). He skips this second Test, and New Zealand promptly post a huge first innings total and put India under pressure. He's a talisman, although it's hard for the rational person to say something like that! Hard to find any causality other than the vague effects on morale and mindset of the players.

We're less than half-way through with this Test series, and although it has not necessarily been gripping cricket so far, it now promises to be a good contest. The Indian batting needs to be tested under pressure, and although I'm confident they'll prevail in the end, it'll be interesting if they are forced to follow on in this second Test.

When Mumbai's batting ran amuck...

Given the long and storied history of Mumbai/Bombay cricket, and especially its batting prowess over the years, the title of this post might not immediately suggest a particular game! But I'm referring to one particularly awesome display of Mumbai's batting might -- a Ranji trophy semifinal against Hyderabad during the 1990-91 season.

The match was played at the Wankhede stadium at the fag end of the domestic season. It was late April, and already very hot. The great thing was that the Indian team was idle, so the stars were able to turn out for their Ranji teams. Mumbai had the services of Vengsarkar, Sanjay Manjrekar, Tendulkar and Kambli among others. Hyderabad didn't boast of such riches, but they did have two Test spinners in Arshad Ayub and Venkatapathy Raju, and a third spinner Kanwaljit Singh who was perhaps unlucky not to play for India.

Mumbai won the toss and proceeded to grind down the Hyderabad bowling on day 1, despite the early loss of the openers. Dilip Vengsarkar scored a 100, and Sanjay Manjrekar had made his merry way to a big score (in the 190 range, if I recall correctly) by stumps. Sachin Tendulkar had just joined him at the crease.

Day 2 was a Thursday, and I was a final-year college student... I decided to play hookey and go to the Wankhede. And what a fine decision that turned out to be! The Mumbai batsmen lit up the stadium with their strokeplay, and scored close to 500 runs in that single day's play! Absolutely no uncultured slogging either... after all, it's Manjrekar, Tendulkar and Kambli we're talking about.

In the morning session, it was the young 18-year-old Sachin Tendulkar who hogged the strike and the limelight, carting the Hyderabad bowlers all over the place. I particularly remember a couple of lofted on-drives off the spinners, where he hardly seemed to hit the ball -- and yet, the ball cleared the boundary for six. Sachin was already in the Indian Test team of course, and a sizeable crowd had turned up to watch him and Kambli bat.

Sachin's innings though was short-lived. Having sped his way to 70, he holed out to the bowling of Ayub. Enter Vinod Kambli, without quite the swagger he acquired after his India debut (two years later). He picked up right where Sachin had left off, and proceeded to dominate the bowling even more thoroughly than Sachin had. Sixes and fours on a regular basis... Meanwhile at the other end, Sanjay Manjrekar was proceeding serenely (or so it seemed, in contrast to the Tendulkar-Kambli duo). He passed 200, 250, and then the triple ton. Sanjay was a particular favourite of mine, being from the same school in Bombay. And of course his batting was always a delight to watch, even when he was deadbatting the most innocuous of deliveries! This innings though was special, with strokes flowing freely and smoothly, and without any of the violence at the other end.

Eventually, Manjrekar fell to a tired shot, having made 377 -- the second-highest first class score by an Indian, behind only the famous 443* by Babasaheb Nimbalkar. I thought Mumbai would declare at that stage with 700+ already on the board. But they had been scoring at such a hectic rate that there was plenty of time in the match. So they piled on the agony, with Raju Kulkarni swinging the bat around with gay abandon. Eventually, they declared after passing 800 (and got a few more runs tacked on as penalty for slow over rate).

I was sitting at the pavilion end in the Garware stand. Next to me was an elderly gentleman who was obviously a regular at the Wankhede. Once a Hyderabad player misfielded a drive badly, and let the ball through his legs for four. I did a LOL, err... laughed out loud, and the old man promptly scolded me! He said I should understand the plight of the Hyderabad players, having been in the field for so long, and at the receiving end of such a thrashing. I enjoyed that thrashing nevertheless!

The match ended in a draw, and Mumbai progressed to the final by virtue of the first-innings lead. But it wasn't a "dull draw" really. Hyderabad fought well to score nearly 500 in their turn, with their warhorse M.V. Sridhar scoring a big ton. With little chance of a result, Mumbai didn't enforce the follow-on and proceeded to thrash the Hyderabad bowling all over again, scoring nearly 450 at 5 runs an over! Kambli scored another rapid ton, and Sachin thrashed his way to 88. Sadly, I wasn't able to play hookey and watch this repeat performance :) But certainly, I went home that day having seen Manjrekar create history, and having had yet another glimpse of the prodigious talent of the Shardashram twins.

New Zealand, The Final (?) Frontier

India embarks upon a rare tour of New Zealand this month, and the team has just been announced. In the old days, whenever India toured Australia, they would also tour New Zealand. Of course travel was much tougher, so if you'd already travelled all the way to Australia, might as well hop over to New Zealand and play a few games there. These days, the cricket calendar is so crazy, and driven by marketability, that we don't travel often enough to that lovely country.

Truth be told, New Zealand might be seen as the final frontier for this Indian team. They have proved themselves capable of winning Tests (and even series, in some cases) in Australia, South Africa, England, West Indies, Pakistan, and now Sri Lanka as well. But New Zealand has always been a tough tour. Even before this tour, no less a person than Sachin Tendulkar has gone on record saying that, perhaps to manage expectations. This is despite the fact that New Zealand is a pretty weak team overall. Their top-order batting has been struggling for ages now, although their lower order (with the likes of Oram and Vettori) has bailed them out regularly. Their pace bowling doesn't appear threatening, in the tragic absence of Shane Bond. Their spin attack of Vettori and Jeetan Patel is competent but hardly one to run through an Indian batting lineup. And yet, we quiver at the thought of a Test series in New Zealand.

The reason is simple -- the Indian batting is simply untested in the conditions that prevail in New Zealand, conducive as they are to seam and swing bowling. Knowing their strength, and our weakness, it's clear that the pitches will be grassy and moist, like they were on the last Indian tour. These days, batsmen don't get to play on such pitches at all. Pitches in India were never seam-friendly of course. But even in the West Indies, England or Australia, pitches are increasingly batsman-friendly, due in no small part to the demands of one-day and T20 cricket. So I'd suspect it's not just Indian batsmen who would struggle on New Zealand pitches.

So, does this Indian team have it in them to conquer this final frontier? I think so. The bowling is not a concern really, with the likes of Zaheer, Ishant and Munaf Patel perfectly capable of exploiting the seaming conditions. But that's never been a problem in New Zealand really. In helpful conditions, even "ordinary" bowlers can produce the wickets. Back in the 1980s for example, Chetan Sharma and Roger Binny had done well in England. Venky Prasad did superbly in South Africa in helpful conditions, as did Sreesanth more recently. No, it's really the batting that's going to be tested.

Now my prediction is that Rahul Dravid will reclaim that sobriquet of "The Wall" -- he's perfectly equipped technically to succeed in seaming conditions. Laxman is a bit less certain of his off stump, but he's still likely to dominate the bowling. I think he will enjoy the relatively gentle pace of the current New Zealand bowling. Sehwag is likely to struggle -- he does not enjoy playing the moving ball at all, and generally succeeds because his sheer talent at hand-eye coordination bails him out. In seaming / swinging conditions, he will be sorely tested. Much the same can be said of Yuvraj Singh. If Yuvraj is lucky, he'll come into bat at #6 with a decent score on the board and the ball having lost its shine. But I don't expect him to particularly shine on this tour.

That leaves Gambhir and Tendulkar among the top-order batsmen. Gambhir is untested in these conditions. In his early days, he was clearly susceptible outside the off stump, and often got out nicking the ball to the slip cordon. However he seems to have tightened up his technique considerably, so he stands a good chance of surviving the new ball. And given his current streak of form, if he does so, he will cash in nicely. Certainly, he looks a better bet in these conditions than Wasim Jaffer, whose natural movements leave him susceptible to the moving ball.

And finally, Tendulkar. The man has proved his ability again and again, over the years. He made those two 150s in Australia not too long ago, to shut up a lot of the critics. How long ago was that "Endulkar" headline now? And yet, and yet... despite being a big big fan of Sachin, I have to admit to nervousness over his chances in New Zealand. These days, his mindset is so completely different from those glory years. He doesn't look to dominate the bowling, and plays the survival game at least for the first 50 runs. And he doesn't survive often enough, for his talent. Look at how Brian Lara played right till his retirement. Or for that matter, Sanath Jayasuriya still does, at the age of 39. They simply trusted their ability and their bodies more than Sachin seems to. Survival isn't a great strategy on pitches where the ball seams both ways, and even innocuous bowlers like Nathan Astle or Gavin Larsen pick up wickets. I think Sachin really ought to try and dominate the bowling, but I'm almost certain that he won't attempt to. Make no mistake, in a 3 Test series, he will still succeed a couple of times using his strategy. And that might be good enough for the team to pull off a win or two, especially if a couple of the other batsmen have good series. But somehow it's less than satisfactory for old fans of Sachin like myself, who have been watching him from age 15 (I saw his Duleep debut at Wankhede, where he scored, no surprise, a century).

Having said that, I do believe that India this time around have the bowling firepower, adequate batting, and thanks to Dhoni, the belief, to win in New Zealand. It may not be generally seen as a great achievement, but I do think it will be fabulous if we can pull it off.

Notice that I've said nothing about the one-dayers or T20s. Now those formats just don't test the batsmen enough, so we might have a relatively easier time there - although New Zealand do have a decent team now, having just proved that against Australia. But ODIs are just not interesting enough these days, and T20s are starting to seem all-too-familiar, so I can't bring myself to be excited about those games. It's enough to read up a match report in the newspaper, or follow the game on CricInfo. But the Tests will be really interesting, and watchable ball-by-ball on TV.

Here's looking forward to alarm clocks going off at unearthly hours in the next month!

India's batting -- who's next?

My previous post speculated that we have seen the Golden Era of Indian batting, with the likes of Tendulkar, Sehwag, Dravid, Laxman and Ganguly.  This era is clearly ending, so it's natural to wonder -- and worry -- what next?  Or more properly, who's next?

An inevitable side-effect of a successful team with several greats is that a whole generation (in cricketing terms) finds itself shut out of the team.  In the 1960s and 1970s, India's spin quartet of Bedi, Chandra, Prasanna and Venkat was so well-established that their competitors on the domestic scene totally missed out on Test cricket.  The likes of Paddy Shivalkar, Rajinder Goel and V.V. Kumar would have walked into most Test sides of their day, barring the Indian side!  Dilip Doshi was unlucky as well, since the early part of his career overlapped with Bedi.  By the time he made it to the Test side, he was on the wrong side of 30.

A similar situation has prevailed with the Indian batting over the past decade.  Quality batsmen like Amol Muzumdar, Hemang Badani, Badrinath, Yuvraj Singh and Mohd. Kaif had little or no opportunity to play Test cricket.  Yuvraj and Kaif at least got plenty of opportunity to show their wares in the limited overs game, but as they themselves will aver, that's not "the real thing".  Now that the spots are opening up in the Test batting order, Kaif, Badri and co. are the lost generation -- too old to be considered long-term prospects for the side, and too young to be forgotten totally.  They'll probably soldier on in domestic cricket for a few years, but are hardly likely to have Test careers worth speaking of.

So, who then can India look to for the future?  Limited-overs cricket, and domestic cricket, have thrown up several names.  How suitable, and ready, are they for Tests though?  Consider Suresh Raina for example.  Still only 22, he's certainly a candidate for the long term.  He's proved himself to be a useful performer in the one-day format, but does he have the ability to build long innings?  That remains to be tested.

The same might be said of 21-year-old Rohit Sharma.  Until this domestic season, he had done practically nothing of note in the first-class game.  However, two things go in his favour: (1) His performances in this year's Ranji trophy, including a big double hundred and a 141 under pressure in the final, and (2) his natural talent!  Just watching him play for a brief while makes it obvious.  The fluidity of his movements at the crease, the timing of the ball, the smooth follow-through, and even his graceful fielding, all point to a natural-born cricketer.

Another batsman with potential is Virat Kohli.  As a limited-overs batsman, I think he's a shoo-in for the future India side.  He has also started his first-class career well, with some good knocks for Delhi.  His technique seems a bit loose currently, and he hasn't really been tested on bowler-friendly pitches.  But of course he's very young, so there's hope that he will learn to adapt to the different forms of the game, at the highest level.

Notice that all these candidates are naturally aggressive batsmen, brought up in the era of ODIs and T20s.  Would any of them be able to play a sheet-anchor innings?  Who can replace The Wall in the Indian lineup?

If Dravid goes soon, India will need a short-term, stop-gap replacement for him.  None of these kids can play that role against top-class pace bowling, in bowler-friendly conditions.  I'd suggest falling back on a couple of tried-and-tested performers -- Aakash Chopra and Wasim Jaffer.  Both of them are openers, and can move down to #3 without breaking a sweat.  Both of them have Test experience and maturity on their side.  They're not young, but they do have 3-4 years of cricket left in them.  And if form deserts one of the openers, they'd be ready and willing to step in there too, at short notice.

In the longer term though, Cheteshwar Pujara seems like a strong candidate for the job.  He's only about 21 currently, and has just had a barnstorming season of domestic cricket.  The biggest positive is that he's shown the ability to play the long innings, piling up huge double and triple hundreds.  However his technique and temperament has not really been tested yet.  His home ground of Rajkot is famous for its placid pitch.  And the only time he came up against a strong pace attack (vs. Mumbai in the semis), he failed.  Sadly, big Ranji performances aren't a reliable indicator of batting talent -- remember the likes of W.V.Raman and Raman Lamba scoring multiple triple-tons in Ranji/Duleep matches?  So, some question marks remain, but Pujara's clearly a great prospect.  Taking him on some India-A tours will help.

Apart from these, there are a few other young batsmen clamouring for the selectors' attention -- the likes of Ajinkya Rahane, Shikhar Dhawan and Tanmay Srivastava.  So overall, I'm not too worried by the upcoming end of the Golden Era...  While these guys won't be as good as Sachin, Dravid, Laxman and Ganguly right away, the future of Indian batting seems to be in good hands.