Of and for cricket

One of the few outstanding players of his rather limited team, Lala Amarnath, who scored a century on his test debut -- against England in 1933-34 and which incidentally was the first century by an Indian in tests -- was sent back for disciplinary reasons before the first test. Amarnath, who had blossomed into a genuine all-rounder, had, when he was sent back, scored three centuries and taken 32 wickets in first class fixtures of the tour. A subsequent inquiry exonerated him. Years later after the War he was to captain India himself but by then the years had inevitably taken their toll.

The Indian team, though completely outclassed, did have some players of class and calibre. Its opening attacking of Nissar, genuinely fast, and Amar Singh, of lesser velocity but who seemed to make pace off the pitch in the manner of Maurice Tate, and could swing and cut the ball to devastating effect, was perhaps as good as any to open the bowling for India. The batting line-up included the likes of Merchant, Mushtaq Ali and CK Nayudu; at their best they would certainly vie for a place in any Indian team, past or present.

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Whatever Sir Gajapat's deficiencies as player or captain, he was a true aficionado of the game, who could savour its great moments and challenges, and appreciate a masterly innings or a great bowling effort as well as anybody. He found his true metier or vocation after the War as a commentator over radio, using the far easier to remember name of Vizzy. His style of commentary was bluff, anecdotal and at times discursive. In his articulation or power of description, he was not quite the equal of his compatriot Pearson Sureta, but he was so full of cricket lore and trivia that he was just as easy and more informative to listen to. When the tempo of a game became too staid or sedate for his taste, he would reminisce about great days, deeds and players of the past, the likes of Hobbs, Hammond and Learie Constantine.

In the 1958-59 tour of India by the West Indies, the latter were for the first time in years without any of the 'terrible trio', Weekes, Walcott and Worrell, to bolster their middle order batting. The West Indies was in effect rebuilding its side around Garfield Sobers, who had achieved astonishing feats at home against Pakistan earlier. In the third test, Kanhai plundered a double century off the Indian attack. Vizzy was almost ecstatic in his approbation, as a new star announced himself to the world of cricket. Kanhai's late cut, he felt, was so late that it could be called posthumous. There were a few homilies and prescriptions that he would never tire of repeating. Matches were won by bowlers and not batsmen, unless they were of the Bradman class, cricket was a game of such uncertainties that anyone foolhardy enough to make persistent and dogmatic predictions would invariably have, at some point, to eat the humble pie; so true.

India recently concluded its triumphal tour of Pakistan. It is futile, fruitless and odious to compare teams of different eras. Few would disagree though that India has ever before been such a potent force to contend with in test cricket. In Pakistan they won, and handsomely too, both the test and one-day series. Earlier, against every prediction of the foremost pundits of the game, they had drawn the test series in Australia. No other team has performed so creditably against Australia, especially in Australia, in recent years. With a modicum of luck, India could even have won the rubber; it was Australia that was lucky to get off with a drawn series.

Prior to the Australian tour, the likes of Ravi Shastri had expected no better than a 2-0 defeat for India. They were wrong. Before the Pakistan series Imran Khan suggested that India would win the one-dayers and Pakistan the tests. He was wrong. After the first test Ian Chappell asserted with characteristic aplomb that Pakistan would be "brown-washed" 3-0. Even he was wrong.

Pakistan's strength was in its much vaunted bowling attack; India's in the depth and solidity of its batting. At the end of the day, the team that prevailed was the one that played as a team, was more professional in approach, mentally tougher and more resilient, and also better attuned temperamentally to the demands of the modern game. Television replays would suggest that India also enjoyed "a little bit of luck" in the shape of a few crucial umpiring decisions.

Pakistan has the quickest pace attack in the world today in Akhtar and Sami, and also a good pair of spinners in Kaneria and Saqlain. Sheer pace can accomplish little, however, without some help from the wicket, and unless the ball is pitched in the right spot and aimed at the right direction. Old shibboleths about line and length for bowlers still hold true. Pakistan's batting is competent enough but still a little green. It is inexplicable thus that a player of the class of Saeed Anwar could be so cavalierly jettisoned and forced into premature retirement -- shades of Sir Gajapat and Lala Amarnath! Surely, precious few teams today can claim such an "embarras de richesses" in batting that would justify such an omission. It is equally enigmatic that Pakistan could not prepare pitches that would have reinforced its bowling strengths, a practice that is acceptable and commonplace in all cricket-playing countries.

The Indian bowlers performed to potential, and perhaps more, but were not unplayable. It was in its batting, however, that India excelled. Tendulkar remains in a class by himself and opener Sehwag is a player of verve and panache. The basic responsibility of an opener is to take the shine off the new ball. Few, however, go about this task with Sehwag's gusto and uninhibited stroke-play from the very first ball of an innings. Barry Richards and perhaps Greenidge come to mind. And there is, of course, Victor Trumper of the "Golden Age", who according to contemporaries and even later generations, epitomised the essence and true spirit of the game and set new standards of batsmanship. That India could score 600 without contributions from Tendulkar and Sehwag is testimony enough to the pre-eminence of its batting. And yet, virtually this same side floundered in New Zealand when the ball was, in cricket parlance, doing something.

The uncertainties of cricket of which Vizzy spoke are much reduced today. Pitches are covered and not, as before, exposed to the elements. Neutral umpires officiate in tests. A third umpire is also available to give a definitive ruling, when asked, with the benefit of modern technology to obviate human error. Unlike Popes, umpires never will be infallible. Umpiring errors, though reduced relative to the past, thus continue to be made. Appeals for run-out and also stumping are not infrequently referred to third umpires, but there is a reluctance to refer appeals for leg before and catches, even in cases where a decision on the basis of the human senses or reflexes is difficult. It only compounds matters that television replays instantly expose any umpiring error. Paradoxically or coincidentally, the relatively vulnerable teams more often than others seem to be at the receiving end of bad decisions.

Umpiring mistakes have always been part of the game, as Vizzy would say, but to the extent these can be remedied or reduced, it makes no sense not to do so. Bad decisions can distort the outcome of a match. When a batsman misjudges the length or speed of a delivery, he may lose his wicket. When a bowler bowls a half volley, he may be hit for four. When an umpire errs, however, someone else pays the penalty, a bowler, a batsman and inevitably a team. In days of old this was accepted, but now, with technology affording remedy, some change is perhaps called for. Umpires can surely be encouraged to make more liberal use of the facility of the third umpire.

One would not wish to complete a column on cricket without mention of Brian Lara's recent phenomenal feat against England. Left-handed batsmen have a special elegance and appeal to the aesthetic senses. One hopes that Lara in his pomp, with his high back lift, lissome, feline, almost feral grace will continue to enthrall and give pleasure to cricket lovers the world over for several more years more to come.

Sir Neville Cardus and R.C.Robertson-Glasgow are said to have helped raise cricket reporting from journalism to an art. Sir Neville rose from the humblest of origins to become a knight of the realm and President of his beloved Lancashire County Cricket Club. To Australian Prime Minister Menzies, he was the "supreme stylist". Bradman saw in him a "literary genius" and cricket writer, Alan Gibson, was of the view that in the 20th century, possibly only George Orwell, PG Wodehouse and Bernard Darwin could match him for felicity of prose. Robertson-Glasgow, as his hyphenated name would suggest, came from the upper echelons of society. He was a product of public school --Charterhouse -- and Oxford and also played first class cricket for both his University and Somerset. In their time, the greatest left-handed batsman was Frank Woolley. His professional career spanned over three decades, and his aggregate of runs in first class cricket is second only to that of Hobbs. Singularly enough Cardus and Robertson-Glasgow evoked similar imageries in writing about Woolley. Cardus wrote: "Cricket belongs entirely to summer every time that Woolley bats an innings...

.The bloom of the year is on it, making for sweetness. And the very brevity of summer is in it too, making for loveliness". For Robertson-Glasgow, "...there was all summer in a stroke by Woolley and he batted as it is sometimes shown in dreams".

If Sir Neville and Robertson-Glasgow were alive to see Lara on song at the crease, they would surely be hard-pressed in their search for superlatives to describe the batting phenomenon of cricket today.