Cricket without boundaries

Are Australia going down under?

Has the meltdown begun for Australia’s triumphant cricket team? That is the big question. It was not just India handing them a record 320-run defeat, the match also showed up a flat Australian team who were well behind from start to finish.

Australia are suffering much more by the retirements of Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne and Adam Gilchrist than they would admit. Their replacements have come nowhere near making an impact on the game.

Their leading batsman Matthew Hayden has repeatedly failed and express paceman Brett Lee was so bad he was not given a bowl an entire session in the Indian second innings in Mohali.

Australia’s meticulous planning has also been called into question.

Their batsmen fell to the swing bowling of Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma while their bowlers have struggled to find any movement.

Captain Ricky Ponting admitted his team were outplayed in Mohali and was confident the number one test team would bounce back. A week’s break is expected to help the tourists pick up the pieces but will they really be a force in the Delhi test starting on Oct. 29?

India are favourites to win the Delhi test and clinch the series.

India’s Sri Lanka defeat adds spin to their batting

Have Indian batsmen lost their skill to tackle quality spin bowling? That is the big question that has followed their crushing defeat in the first test in Colombo last week.

Their innings and 239-run defeat on a good Singhalese Sports Club ground pitch saw a line-up boasting Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly and VVS Laxman bundled out twice around four sessions of play.

Off spinner Muttiah Muralitharan, test cricket’s highest wickettaker, captured 11 wickets, but Indian batsmen were also clueless against debutant Ajantha Mendis, who snapped up eight with his mysterious mix of deliveries.

Indian batsmen have struggled under pressure against off spin in the past, contrasting with their command against leg break bowlers, including Shane Warne.

In Colombo, even the wristy Laxman misread the subtle googly from Mendis twice while Dravid looked even more unsure.

With the batting heavyweights towards the final stages of their careers, the concern in the Indian camp is understandable, Mendis having ripped through their younger set of batsmen in the Asia Cup final, scalping six for next to nothing.

Former batsman Sanjay Manjrekar acknowledges the challenge.

25 Years – Memories of a Miracle

Back in the early 80s, cricket had already captured the hearts and minds of impressionable kids like me, my elder brother and our band of boys who had nothing but disdain for those ‘studious’ kids who were more into science clubs and lending libraries.

Hardy Boys, Famous Five and Nancy Drew were considered a conspiracy hatched by mothers to keep kids at home. While other kids went to bed safely tucking their favourite book under the pillow, I hit the bed with my batting pads and gloves on. India Poised!

Luckily, our mother felt better off sending us to the playground in our residential colony rather than spend money on books and a lot more on replacing broken lamp shades and window panes – collateral damage as my brother and I played eleven-a-side ‘Test’ matches at home, where the bowling side got a chance to bat only after the entire opposition was bowled out.

Given my cricketing skills, my brother and his ‘Indian’ team (which again is him calling himself everything from Kapil Dev to Roger Binny to Madan Lal) never took more than 5 overs to clean up my batting order, irrespective of who I was representing the Aussies, the Windies or the Englishmen.

Coming to think of it, he always got to be India and won too, something which I never accepted in the true spirit of the game.

As I dragged myself away from the wicket after trying a left-handed wallop a-la Graham Yallop, I always felt ‘it’s just not cricket.’ I hated ‘India’ though Sunil Gavaskar was my favourite and I was plotting moves to hijack my brother’s Indian team.

That opportunity presented itself when the World Cup came calling to Indian homes in 1983. We still didn’t have a TV at home (we had to wait till 1986) and our parents had already warned us against either pestering them to buy a TV or seeking permission to go over to our neighbour’s place (one of them had a Dyanora Colour TV and the other had a Solidaire) to watch.

Half a cheer for Indian cricket

So some of the cheerleaders are going home, and some of the others are being forced to cover up? If you ask me, that’s a bit of a shame. More importantly, it’s an example of people getting worked up about the wrong things.

A female, feminist friend of mine, living here but born in England, was complaining to me about the cheerleaders, saying they were simply not appropriate in a country like India, and demeaning for women.

I am not sure. As anyone who spends too long watching ESPN will know, cheerleading is a serious business in the United States, a sort of synchronised gymnastics with some pretty impressive routines.

I doubt that many of the girls from the States, or Uzbekistan, felt like they were being exploited when they were invited to India for what promised to be a thoroughly enjoyable few weeks.

That is, until certain, male sections of the crowd, began abusing them.

“It’s been horrendous,” Tabitha, a cheerleader from Uzbekistan, told the Hindustan Times. “Wherever we go we expect people to pass lewd, snide remarks but I’m shocked by the nature and the magnitude of the comments people pass here.”