TEST One to come and two to go! This Saturday of reckoning, Bloemfontein materialises as a rare Test of blood and guts for Sourav's India. "Where to draw the bodyline?" was the Harold Larwood dilemma. Ditto is the dilemma of Andrew Nel, Makhaya Ntini & Co now. A dilemma of which Rahul Dravid, for one, should take mental note, going by how Harold Larwood expounded the Allan Donald breed's creed in his autobiography as follows: "Purely defensive batting reduces the speed bowler to panting futility. That is why he must drop a few short. In doing so, we put the dynamite into cricket. Every fast bowler in history has done that. And when he does drop one short, everybody knows it is a ball intended to intimidate, to unsettle, to test the batsman's combination of nerve and skill."
So did Allan Donald address Rahul Dravid's "nerve and skill" in The Wanderers' Test of January 1997. That Rahul came through the ordeal by fire - in a 148-&-81 style calculated to have Allan Donald exploding on TV - sums up the calibre of batsmanship that South Africa now demands from Sourav's India, as its superfasts operate with no Kookaburra holds barred. The setting promises to be no different from the one that confronted The Elfin Sachin (as non-striker) on the Saturday of January 4, 1997, as Tendulkar haplessly beheld India nosedive to 58 for 5. This in responding to South Africa's 529 for 7 (decl.) in the Newlands Test having Donald and Pollock, McMillan and Klusener, bowling with their sails up. How we saw Sachin "go to Cape Town" then! To be India's last man out, at 359, while notching 169. Before being so tele-rivetingly caught by Adam Bacher, one-handed, off a McMillan bumper looking predestined for six. That stunning Bacher catch meant Sachin had to settle for 26 fours, no six, in his 169 as India's Atlas.
It is a knock of like pedigree India expects from Sachin's "MRF fervescent" blade in the Test of verve and nerve that is Bloemfontein. If Laxman still is (going by Steve Waugh's "Skipperspeak" word) "potentially as good as Tendulkar", Sachin has, in the three Tests to come, a satin rival to put him on his Wisden mettle. That Laxman joined the team rather late in the day-and-night should be no handicap to a player of VVS's flair. Rather is it a reflection on Sachin, Sourav and Rahul that they could not, as the awesome threesome, so settle the one-day score as to escape the "ODIum" of Laxman's being needed for any contest, in South Africa, save the three-Test one!
By the stage it came to asking Laxman to give India's one-day batting a "leg up", Sourav had impressively retrieved lost ground with 127, 24, 24 & 85. Sachin too had entered the getback highway with 101, 38,3 & 37. But those contributions weighed against Rahul's 1, 54, 11 & 71 not out (off 87 balls) - up to that critical Tri-series juncture - meant that "The Big Three" had not quite pooled their resources to hold, at ODI bay, a Laxman straining at the Irani Cup 148 leash. "Do it yourself!" is the healthy maxim that Sunil Gavaskar (as a STAR TVIP) had preached to Rahul, Sourav and Sachin. For there always is a Laxman waiting in the Air-India wings!
By the way Rahul failed to get going straightaway in the Standard Bank one-dayers, this technician failed to notice that ROTATOR reads the same - "running" from beginning to end, end to beginning! In failing to rotate the strike from the moment the Tri-series got going, Rahul opened the Pandora's box-office. A box in which, against an Aussie opposition no less battleworthy than this South Africa outfit, Laxman had punched an ODI ticker-tape message of 45, 51, 83, 11 & 101. A super scoreline coming in the vivid wake of that dream Test run of 20 & 12; 59 & 281; 65 & 66. Conclusion - Laxman after that actually did Rahul a timely favour by momentarily vacating the key one-down niche. But now in the Veldt - a Veldt ripe for VVS to strike a rich vein - what is the Bloemfontein ground position? That Rahul is sadly back to being reminded of the positional happening surrounding that epic Eden Test 180. A stroke-laden 180 that, by way of a counter, came (at No.6) almost as an afterthought, by Rahul, to Laxman's 281 at No.3.
Queried then if he preferred batting at No.6, pat came Rahul's graciously apt reply: "I have batted at one, three and six. If Sourav and John (Wright) ask me to carry the drinks on to the field, I will be glad to do that. I have no hard feelings that Laxman has gone in at No.3. He has grabbed the opportunity with both hands." Did Rahul, for his spot part, "grab the opportunity with both hands" when circumstances, fortuitously, accumulated to open up, anew, the one-down India slot for him? It could, of course, happen that Laxman is yet to find his stepdancing feet in South Africa. Yet with Laxman, remember, there is no such norm as needing tour-match practice to be fit for the Test fray! Fray at the bat-edges Laxman may for the moment. To emerge, in the very next moment, as the willowy virtuoso nonpareil! If Laxman's arriving earlier than anticipated in South Africa serves to draw the very best out of Sachin, Sourav and Rahul, this stump-vision stylist would have acted as just the shot in the arm that India's batting needed in the sternest of Tests.
What Sachin, Sourav and Rahul would do well to remember is that it is they who (in the grand ODI scoring sum) invited Laxman to join the party (before he was due to celebrate) by creating the opening for VVS to put on his touring knee-cap. Now the three compete, not just with each other, but with Laxman of Wisden vintage! True, Sourav rediscovered his heavy-scoring touch with a lighter bat in South Africa. But that was in the one-dayers. The three five-dayers represent a different class of "Speed Test" altogether. Here the bouncy idea is to "rib-cage" Sourav from the instant he steps into the middle of nowhere. After the way Sourav broke free in the one-day competition, the viewing public, naturally, goes by the thoroughbred formbook in expecting Ganguly to turn up trumps, in the Tests too, when the chips are down.
Short point, even while leading from the front, Sourav now simply has to be viewed as scoring, lower down, at No.5. Steve Waugh, while being grudging in acknowledging that Sourav twisted the Kangaroo by the tail, had a point when he observed: "As far as Ganguly is concerned, I would not like to comment on his captaincy. I'm sure the Indians are happy, since he has led them to victory and that's what matters. While I have nothing personal against him, I would have to admit that it was not an easy relationship. The Indians definitely had a tough edge to them, this time round, and are a different side, at home, from what they are abroad. For them the real challenge is to win Tests away from home."
There you have a measure of the Gordian knot that Sourav has to cut in the Tests now, taking on Shaun Pollock in the same adversary strain as he did Steve Waugh. It is not enough that the Indian batsmen, led by Sourav, deliver in the Tests. There is the urgent little matter of bowling out South Africa twice for Sourav's India to win against the run of five-day play. Here I expect Harbhajan Singh, even Anil Kumble (endeavouring, after the one-dayers, to get his shoulder to the giant wheel), to strike tellingly. South Africa's strong suit being pace, they have no go but to make the wickets (for the Tests) bouncy. And bounce is just what the curator ordered in the tandem Test-case of Anil and Harbhajan! For all the runs slammed by Shaun Pollock's South Africa in the ODI Tri-series, I have genuine misgivings about this nation's capacity to neutralise spicy spin in the longer edition of the game. In fact, almost every South African approaches top-drawer spin in the speculative way Ricky Ponting did in India. And, vis-a-vis Ricky, Harbhajan hit the bail on the head when he remarked: "If you notice, Ponting doesn't have a good defence. He likes to attack all the time and, when made to defend, he lunges at deliveries. He is thus an easy candidate for catches in the close-in cordon."
Isn't what Harbhajan says true (to the hilt) of South Africa's star batsmen too? Do they not represent a Bob Woolmer tribe - viewing the green-top as the lap-top? With the overs' restriction off, Anil and Harbhajan have only, ceaselessly, to keep probing for the chinks in the Proteas' Woolmer armour for our prospecting spin to strike gold in the Veldt. Andy Flower's Zimbabwe (as Rhodesia) was a Colin Bland part of South Africa once. And from this most prolific of left-handed scorers in recent times we have fresh insights into Harbhajan and Sachin alike. Identifying India's turbaned turner as a "top-quality bowler", Andy Flower observes: "Harbhajan Singh is not your standard off-spinner. He has a lot of variations and tends to mix up his deliveries all the time. He keeps you thinking. You can't line him up."
If Andy Flower, in full bloom, had problems "lining up" Harbhajan, are the best of South Africa's batsmen any more adept at playing high-octane spin? So I say that our spinners have only to forget the ODI series (as a "day-and-nightmare") and proceed to bowl, in the Tests, with their wonted flighting skills, leaving the rest to Andy Flower's "Rhodesian" judgment. What Andy Flower has to say of Sachin is equally revealing. Encapsulating Sachin as "a very special player", Andy Flower comes up with this cameo: "Tendulkar has been superb to watch from behind the stumps. His balance, timing, eye-position and technique don't seem to have changed at all. It's all been very simple. Or let us say he has made it look very simple. That is one of his great strengths - a very simple technique." Even while saying that, Andy Flower does feel that Sachin, as "one who likes to go for his shots", is "slightly vulnerable against the outswinger".
Where Sachin is only "slightly vulnerable" against the outswinger on South African wickets full of juice. in the case of Laxman, if VVS fails to fall to such a wobbly delivery at the start of an innings by him, it is never for want of trying to "flourish"! Beginning with Sourav, all our batsmen have this tendency to drive on the up, too early, even on the pacier wickets in South Africa. Rahul alone is the total grammarian here. But then Dravid simply must learn to get a move on - in a Bloemfontein face-off that is as much a Test of drive as of craft. Here, in fact, is a Test series diabolically designed, by South Africa, to put the stamp on Sourav's India as champs at home but hams abroad.
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