Vijay’s first innings century was probably valuable. Zaheer and Sreesanth’s reverse swing in the second possibly useful, as were the spells of spin bowled by Harbhajan and Ojha. Pujara’s second innings fifty was also significant I guess, but as far as the bigger picture is considered, I was responsible for India’s win in the Second Test.

Ok… me and God himself who scored the double century and the fifty.

Fine… God, me and the sixty thousand odd Bangaloreans who turned up to watch this Test Match over five days.

I’m not being immodest here! Captain Dhoni himself acknowledged my efforts at turning up for the game! I humbly accept the thanks of a grateful nation..

Today’s game wasn’t as close as the Mohali Test, and the match as a contest virtually ended with those two identical strokes by Tendulkar off two consecutive balls from Hauritz. These were no Sehwag-esque slogs and there was no element of brutality in them whatsoever. It was just Tendulkar in such imperious form that he could got down on one knee and send the ball sailing over the deep midwicket boundary with a graceful arc of the bat. Those shots killed whatever hopes Australia had of creating some pressure with a wicket or two as their shoulders dropped when they realized the impossibility of getting past Tendulkar’s blade on this day. The rest of the day after that was basically a formality.

A fifteen year jinx was finally broken. For fifteen years, Bangalore/Bengaluru hosted Test matches without giving the Indian team a taste of success. In each of these Test Matches, Bangaloreans turned out in their thousands on all the days and cheered their team on to little or no avail. The closest India came to a victory at Bengaluru in the last fifteen years was when an unlikely combination of cloudy weather and Anil Kumble bowling seam up nearly dismantled the Pakistani batting, only to be stopped by bad light.

The reports of Test Cricket’s demise are greatly exaggerated of course. At least in India. Sure, the smaller cities like Mohali, Nagpur and Kanpur have struggled to fill up their vast stadia for Tests there, but recent games at Bengaluru, Kolkata, and Chennai have seen packed houses on most days of the match. It’s probably no co-incidence India has won the latter matches in thrilling encounters. A 30,000 strong crowd getting behind the players is probably the difference between winning and losing (or drawing) the match in such tight games.

Not that the following for Test cricket has diminished in India.

Take a walk through any market or crowded place on a Test Match day and you will find dozens crowding around TVs and radios eagerly following the scores. Go to offices with internet connections and you will find workers surreptitiously following the score on cricinfo while pretending to be deeply engaged in work. Should God himself be batting or the chase get exciting the numbers multiply manifold and all productive activity seems to come to an end.

For sheer drama, Test cricket is unrivalled by any sport and the Indian cricket fan knows it. Test cricket fans aren’t restricted to any one demographic and any region. Nothing demonstrated this better than sitting in the stands at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium. One saw retirees with binoculars and grim expressions who can possibly verbatim recall the commentary on the day Gavaskar made his debut. One saw families with children in tow, fathers patiently explaining to the children (boys and girls, mind you) the intricacies of the game and the significance of proceedings. One saw young men (and no small number of young women), taking a break from work or college to relax and enjoy themselves in the stadium, rooting for their heroes and providing the atmosphere so necessary for the game. It being Bangalore, one heard a smattering of different languages in all directions, Kannada dominating of course, but excited commentary in chaste Tamil and loud cheering in Hindi making their presence felt!

Much as the luminaries of other sports complain, cricket continues to be a national obsession, and on the evidence of the last few days, probably a good one at that.

A Coda:

A young man who’d just finished college and gotten an offer from a top IT firm wanted to watch the game in Bengaluru with his friends to celebrate. On the day before the Test, he bought his tickets from the stadium counter, and headed home on his two wheeler. Minutes from home he met with a terrible accident and passed away on the spot, the tickets still in his pocket and unstained.

His family was (and probably continues to be) in great shock at the loss of someone so young. To console himself and cherish his son’s memory, his father wrote a letter to his son’s hero, Sachin Tendulkar, explaining what had happened and asking for a small memento; a photograph of his son, autographed by Sachin.

The match had already begun and tight security meant it was going to be difficult to get the letter and the photo to Tendulkar. Fortunately, the brother of the bereaved father was an ex-Ranji trophy player and he happened to be in Bengaluru. The letter and the photo were handed to him with instructions to get it to Sachin in any way possible before he left Bengaluru. Eventually, the letter found its way to Ravi Shastri and on the fourth morning of the match, with Tendulkar 9 runs from a double century, Shastri managed to catch hold of Sachin and hand over the letter and the photo, briefly explaining the situation.

Sachin nodded, briefly looked at the letter and went up into the dressing room.

At around lunch time, the ex-Ranji player got a call to come up to the India dressing room. There, Sachin handed over the autographed photo, with a message to the family expressing his condolence at their loss, and also handed him an autographed India cap that he wore during the match.

He kept the letter.

All four results are possible. It is going to be a great day for Test Cricket tomorrow. The team which holds their nerve will win. It is never easy chasing a total on a fifth day pitch. There’ll be something in it for the bowlers…

There. Much better.

I missed most of today’s actions thanks to a rogue muscle pull in the lower back that I attribute to the hard plastic seats in the M Chinnaswamy Stadium. Forced to catch the action from the alleged comfort of my sofa and having to listen to the banal nonsense being served up by Arun Lal and co. in the form of commentary, my Test Match viewing experience diminished drastically.(For those in a similar position, I would suggest the test match sofa to escape the drudgery of the NEO Cricket commentary team). Also, Tendulkar got out pretty quickly, and the rest of the tail folded up so my attention drifted.

Suddenly though, Australian wickets started tumbling and the match got interesting as the Australians generally contrived to give themselves a chance of losing this match. To repeat an oft repeated cliche, this is not the great Australian team of old (i.e., four years back), and their stunning propensity to indulge in very 90s style batting collapses is a bit of a shocker to those of us used to seeing hope disappear when Ponting was followed by Martyn who was followed by Waugh and then Gilchrist.

There’s still one man standing from that great middle order though. Ricky Ponting.

Ricky Ponting is not a popular man in India. Certainly he has never tried to win over the hearts and minds of the Indian fan, and his abrasive, cussed nature is not naturally endearing to most Indians. Nor has he particularly distinguished himself in India. India continues to be the place where he’s had the worst personal batting average in any country. Plus he seems to get out to Harbhajan Singh a lot, raising questions on his abilities against quality spin on turning tracks.

Captaincy wise, he had a great start with a great team. Now he’s having a tough time, with a not so great team. He has to be the best batsman, inspirational leader and most experienced player all at once. Naturally, he’s never won a single Test match in India as captain. A record he has only one more chance to erase.

With all this on his mind, Ricky Ponting played one of the best innings by an Australian batsman in this “series” so far. Marcus North’s century was a career saving (and maybe Test match saving one too) knock, but Ponting’s 72 in the second innings of the Bengaluru Test was far more important. He’s held a crumbling innings together and single handedly given his bowlers a chance to make something of this Test. On a turning, testing track, he has kept out Harbhajan and Ojha, backed by an unusually sharp fielding unit and a vociferous and vocal crowd, long enough to keep at least one more result open as a possibility for this Test.

This innings is also more poignant in the context of his own career. Toward the fag end of his long and distinguished career, Ponting is in the danger of going out on a low. No longer as prolific with the bat as he was in his heyday, he’s still the best batsman in the side, but that only goes to show how much he’s been let down by his team. Already, he’s lost the Ashes twice, and this January, for the first time in over two decades, there’s the very real prospect that he may well see it retained by the old enemy. Australia are no longer the dominant force in world cricket, and have rapidly slipped down the ranks in Test Cricket. The latter half of Ponting’s six year term of captaincy so far has been one of slow, but certain decline. Likewise, his batting.

With all this, he still has a shot at redemption tomorrow. Today’s efforts against the tide have brought him the time he needs to take one more shot at success and glory in India. A victory here will be far more cherished than any half a dozen against any other opponent anywhere else. It may not re-write the declining fortunes of the Australian team, but for Ricky Ponting, it offers an opportunity to rage, rage against the dying of the light**.

* & ** Apologies to Dylan Thomas

Cheteswar Pujara gets a taste of the life of a lawyer

So you’ve finally made it to the Test team. You’ve forced your way through by the sheer dint of runs scored. You’ve done well on the field and gotten your team a run out through a brilliant throw side on. But you’re really a batsman and you can cement your place in the team of tomorrow with a well timed 50-60 odd. Visions of glory start dancing in your head as you see the bowling is mostly pedestrian and the pitch barely responsive.

And then that innings happens. And that partnership. You sit there with your pads on for six hours. More than any debutant ever in the history of cricket. You watch solid defence and great stroke play, and you are straining at the bit to go on and show off your solid defence and great stroke play.

At last, sometime in the post lunch session, you get your turn. You’ve got the nerves and the butterfly stomach situation, but the Great Man is at the other end and the bowlers are tired.

The second ball you cream through the covers for a four. Test cricket doesn’t seem so hard.

And then you get that ball.

Zipping in from way outside off stump, you see it move in line… but horror of horrors! It’s a shooter! You bend, try to get your bat in the way, but it’s all in vain. You don’t even need to look up to see the umpire raising his finger. You know you’re a goner.

On so many days you prepare for a case, get everything ready, hope against hope that you will get a chance to show off your preparation and your legal skills and your oratory. You wait for days for the case to reach, sit in court patiently just in case the other case gets over quickly, and then finally, finally, when it’s your turn… its adjourned. In less than a minute. This is of course, if your case is actually taken up and not removed from the list or deleted from the board for what seems to be no apparent reason. You sigh and move on, and hope there’s another chance somewhere around the corner.

“Che”, I feel your pain, man.

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The Futility of Being Nathan Hauritz

At some point, most Indian fans stopped enjoying the remorseless beating being handed out to little Nathan Hauritz in Bangalore.

India is not always the best of places for non-subcontinental spinners, and many greater than little Nathan have gone back with nightmares and bad experiences where batsmen relentlessly charge out of the crease and keep hammering them into the stands as the crowds bay for your blood and cheer the batsmen on.

It is the rare spinner that goes back home without suffering major trauma. Little Nathan will not be one of them.

What do you do really? Attack the batsmen and find the ball sailing over your head? Bowl defensively and watch as singles are milked off your bowling with remorseless regularity? Keep them men and close and watch the boundaries flow? Or push them back and give away singles galore?

At the end of the long hard day of unremitting punishment, little Nathan reminds of you that kid in your class who always seems to bring out the worst in the biggest bullies (your teachers) who somehow seem to find fault with everything he does. You just want to put your arm around his shoulders, give him a comforting pat on his back and tell him it’s (probably) going to be ok.

****************
The Other Source of Entertainment for the Day

The people of Bangalore were spoiled for choice when it came to entertainment options today. On the one hand, there was the cricket in Chinnaswamy Stadium with Tendulkar at his best flogging Australia around the ground. A cricket ball’s throw away, in the Vidhana Soudha, Karnataka’s MLAs put on quite a show in their combined effort to convince the people of Karnataka that democratic government is really great because of the sheer entertainment value of the spectacle.

If the events of today were put into a script, it would be instantly derided as a typically unbelievable C-grade movie. Layers of “security” were forcefully and destructively breached by the disqualified MLAs as they sought to assault the citadel of Vidhana Soudha and cast their vote in the no-confidence motion. So charged up were they for the love democracy that no force on earth (or at least no force capable of being mustered by the Karnataka Police) could stop them from barging into the Assembly and exercising their democratic rights, Speaker ruling or no ruling.

Credit must go the Speaker for performing a near super human task. Amidst the din and chaos that had taken over the House, he was able to call for a voice vote, and stunningly, be able to tell that the Government had managed to get the two votes more they needed to carry the motion. So stunned were some of the distinguished Members that the only response they could think of was to channel Salman Khan and express their awe (at the Speaker’s superhuman abilities) and anguish (at the fact that they had just lost the vote).

In a testimony to their commitment to the principles of separation of powers and federalism, the disgruntled MLAs ran across the road (literally) to the High Court of Karnataka and Raj Bhavan to remedy the grave wrongs committed against democracy. Then the Government and all its MLAs flew to Delhi to demand the President uphold the principles of federalism and not dismiss the Government under Article 356. The commitment to the principles of constitutionalism among the elected Members of the legislature have touched the people of Karnataka greatly.

A plague on all their Houses.

Apparently Marcus North scored a hundred, and Tim Paine gave him company with a fifty. Apparently Harbhajan Singh took four wickets, young Pragyan Ojha bowled his heart out for three and Virender Sehwag scored a helter-skelter 30 or so. I am taking all of this from the cricinfo bulletin because, though I was there, for the life of me, I can’t remember any of these. It’s almost as if my brain’s overwritten all of this to store, in high definition, high quality memory, Sachin Tendulkar’s 44 not out.

It’s not often that the local boy’s dismissal barely elicits disappointment from the crowd. They know who’s up next. The people in the stands opposite the pavilion see the familiar diminutive figure padded up and move down the stairs. The cheers start from that section. Soon the rest of the crowd knows and the reactions border on the delirious. It maybe one of the last two occasions He is playing in the Chinnaswamy Stadium and the 30000 odd crowd do not want to miss a minute of it. Indeed, today is probably the best day crowd wise, it being Sunday and India’s batting likely to begin.

The disappointment of Sehwag’s premature dismissal and Dravid’s poor stroke are quickly forgotten as He takes strike. As always, He begins slowly, but steadily, taking the measure of the pitch and the bowling before unfurling the best 90 minutes of the match so far.

Sachin’s shots have been described and re-described by writers far better than me and in far more evocative terms than I could hope to match. Indeed the written word can do little to describe what is simply poetry and artistry in motion, nothing more and nothing less.

The effect of seeing His straight drive, or square cut, or on drive, or even just his paddle sweep around the corner is akin to seeing, say, the Himalayas, or the Grand Canyon, or any wonder of the natural world that is such an amazing sight that it literally takes the breath away from you.

And His batting is exactly that. Entirely natural. It is not untrained brutality like Sehwag’s or almost entirely dependent on hand eye coordination like Laxman’s. It is as batting should be. It is as if He was born to bat that way. Knowing where the feet, hands, body weight and head should go seem as natural to Tendulkar as breathing to any other human being. Like his great predecessors in batting greatness, WG Grace, Victor Trumper, Don Bradman, and Sunil Gavaskar, Tendulkar’s batting is the simple employment of the technique of batting to the task of scoring runs.

It’s a ruse of of course. Batting is only natural to Tendulkar because of the hours, days and months he put into practice long after mere mortals felt they had enough. Yet, it seems unacceptable to imagine that Tendulkar’s success and brilliance is entirely the result of coaching and practice and owes no small amount to genius. Here too, Tendulkar has added sheer hard work to his innate cricketing genius and gone beyond what mortals can even dream of.

The television can only give you images of what Tendulkar’s strokes are like. In the stadium they are real. You can almost reach out and touch the moment. It is a near religious experience. With a lot of modern religion being corrupted by the thirst for money and power, Tendulkar’s batting is something pure, divine and spiritual. When that square cut is unfurled or the ball is caressed into the straight boundary, it is the closest non-believers and atheists get to understanding religious ecstasy. Grown men, who spend all day dissecting each batsman’s innings and each bowler’s spells with clinical, and almost professional detachment erupt into oohs and ahs and beam with blissful content at having seen just one of His on-drives.

Tomorrow, it continues. Monday morning, bosses across India can expect to be more than slightly short staffed as a good chunk of their employees are going to be either at the stadium or watching the game on TV. Those who turn up will have cricinfo open in a tab, and pretending to work, just as long as it takes the boss to realize what’s happening in which case they can drop the pretence ’cause the boss is also logging on to cricinfo or constantly dropping by and asking what the score is. Work lost on such days should be treated as being “lost” to another religious holiday (the only real secular religious holiday if you can wrap your head around that concept): Sachin Day.

“Why?”

It’s a recent phenomenon I guess, to be forced to offer justifications for leaving the comfort of one’s own tv, sofa, remote and cable connection to watch a Test Match in one of India’s concrete monstrosities, with amenities few, and noise, confusion and danger plenty. Before TV, I guess no one would doubt the superiority of watching a cricket match and one’s cricket heroes in the flesh and blood instead of having to depend on the fickle radio and the evocative descriptions of commentators. With tv, replays, all the information you need to follow a game at your fingertips, why subject yourself to the stadium and its filth to follow Test cricket?

I’ll tell you why.

It’s the only authentic experience as far as Test cricket is concerned.

Not that the filth, dust and crumbling stadia add any charm to it. It adds a level of challenge that one would rather not have to tackle, and one hopes that BCCI and the local associations get their act together and clean up some of our stadia, at least before the coming World Cup. No, there are other, real reasons why watching Test Cricket at the stadium is the authentic experience.

For one thing, TV does not show you everything.

Sitting high up in the stands you see things that you otherwise miss between the replays, the banal chatter of the commentators and of course, the endless, endless ads. You see the subtle changes in the field that take placed when strike changes between batsmen. How Harbhajan has an in-out field for Ponting and a much more attacking one for Hussey. Also how Harbhajan, unlike great spinners, reacts to batsmen and sets fields according to where the ball last went instead of coming with a plan and sticking to it.

You also see how the other players react to not-so-obvious things when the camera forgets to pan to them. Sreesanth’s obvious disappointment at having his spell cut short by Dhoni. Raina and Pujara egging each other on in the field, high fiving good saves and stops.

But all of these things are not trivialities. The other reason why one watches a Test at the ground is the total immersion it offers and the engagement it requires of you. Unlike the action packed adventures that are T20 and ODI cricket, Test Cricket is like a long 3 Act drama with multiple plot lines, twists and turns, and intrigue all coming together for a final denouement (or not… even that is in doubt). Enjoying a Test match requires a level of engagement with the material, so to speak, that TV somehow does not provide. TV is great for watching the action part of the Test Match, but it is the quieter bits, the less obviously action filled sections of the Test Match that make for the complete experience.

Watching Harbhajan try to play on Ponting’s mind with attacking fields; Sreesanth troubling Hussey with late swing away and try to rein in his excitement and keep it going; Ponting grafting and fighting his way through difficulty and then unfurling some glorious drives and ferocious pulls; all of these things require sustained and close viewing to truly appreciate and enjoy. And to truly appreciate and enjoy test cricket, one other thing is needed: context.

It is a much abused word these days on cricket blogs and fora across the internet. This one day series has no context, that T20 match has been thrown in only for money, etc. Context is not just “what-does-this-matter-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things” type context. With Test cricket’s emphasis on drama as much as action, each ball has its context in each over; each over in that spell; each spell for that hour’s play; each hour adds context to the session’s play; each session in that day and so on. Seen merely as a discrete collection of overs and fours, Test cricket loses its meaning and becomes… boring. Watching the game with an understanding of the context is what makes test cricket so compelling and unlike any other sport anywhere else.

Finally, watching Test Cricket in the stadium gives one the sheer aesthetic pleasure of a three dimensional view of cricket. The rhythmic and smooth run up of Sreesanth; the sound of the bat hitting the ball as Ponting drives as being noticeably different from the crack that resounds across the stadium when he pulls it; understanding what 140 kmph is as you watch the bowling from behind the batsman.

All of these make you forget the cramped seat, the deafening noise, the heat and the dust omnipresent in the Indian stadium. Even among the better maintained ones like the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Like the adventurer climbing up a steep, dangerous hill for the view, in the end, it is all worth it.

For the (boring but mostly accurate) report of the day’s play see here.

For a (possibly inaccurate, but greatly funny) version of the same, read this.

No, that’s not a typo. I want Australia to win the next Test and share the series 1 – 1. In these days when national pride seems to be at stake over the smallest and most trivial of things, I guess that counts as treason.

The India fan in me knows that India have never had it so good and this is the best Indian team EVER, a fact borne out by the dominance of current players in a recent All time XI. India is no. 1, on home turf and about to continue its run of being the No.1 Test team for some more time. I’ve swollen enough with pride already, but the sports fan in me wants a contest, and more importantly, a fair result.

Admit it. Australia deserved to win the last match as much as India and were denied only by someone at his very best (VVS Laxman) and someone at his very worst (Billy “Wildfinger” Bowden) apart from a little bad luck. Two inches here or there and Australia would have won this Test and we would have been starting a national campaign for the introduction of the UDRS in all matches played in India. Instead, India is 1-0 up and Australia is facing the very real prospect of two consecutive series in India without a win.

In pure cricketing terms, it has already been correctly and widely pointed out that this is not the strongest of Australian teams to tour this country, and as a recent survey showed, this is probably the strongest Indian team to take on Australia ever. For once, just once, India is not the underdog and somehow that does not sit right. To make up for it, Australia must be supported, even against India.

I’m expecting a great match, and while keeping a close eye on the proceedings on the pitch, I hope to use the much, much needed time off work to contemplate about things in life, cricket, law and otherwise and share a few musings after each match day. The point of this short series of articles is to generally reflect on cricket and life and not give you a cricinfo type “match bulletin” or the even more cringeworthy “Page 2 Fan Following“.

Hopefully it will be at least a bit entertaining and thought provoking.

Check back here for links to each days posts.

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5