SUPERFAST was a white South African I espied bowling against India in times when we did not play that "apartheidreaded" country in cricket! Springbok Cuan Neil McCarthy, raising himself to six-foot-two as the fastest bowler in England then, unfolded (in my eyes on the hard, bouncy Fenners' wicket) as the quintessential quick for Cambridge - as G.S. Ramchand met white lightning with dark thunder. It was a ruggedly masculine grandeur that Gulabrai Ramchand brought to his stroke production as Cuan McCarthy sent Pankaj Roy (1), Madhav Mantri (19) and Polly Umrigar (24) packing to reduce Vijay Hazare's England-touring India to 49 for three on the wicked Wednesday morning of May 14, 1952. Yet McCarthy held no terrors for Ramchand - as an Indian oaken of heart, swift of eye and fearless of foot. The 134 that Ramchand "Fennerslammed" that day (in just under three hours) saw this mettlesome all-rounder cut, hook and pull off 21 fours - his first blows, here, being inspirationally aimed at the frighteningly fast Cuan McCarthy.
How I wish we had that 134 Ramchand knock on film now - for Sourav & Co to view! Ramchand (in exemplary Cuan combat) would have acted as just the spur India needed in the fortnight leading up to the Test series in South Africa. For the three Tests (starting on the Saturday of November 3) are going to be "a different pair of shoes" even for Sachin T. The run-laden "mistletoe" of Sachin is Allan Donald's Achilles' heel. This spiteful speedo's fingers are already itching to go full throttle for the gullet of Sachin. Go for Sachin first, for Laxman, Sourav and Rahul alongside! As Allan Donald observes in his "On All Cylinders" column:
"While the Indian batting line-up is full of class batsmen, everybody values most the wicket of the great little man himself: Sachin Tendulkar. That is the case with most bowlers the world over. In fact, one of my most cherished memories of Test cricket is the way I dismissed Sachin (15) in Durban the last time the Indians were here. Sachin had come in just before lunch and, during the break, we decided that, if we got a ball to come back, we would have our man. We had studied videos of how Sachin had got bowled through the gate, in the past, and decided that it was our best chance. I bowled the first two balls a little wide and Sachin despatched both to the boundary. For the third ball I went wide of the off-stump. And pitched the ball half a foot outside the off-stump. The ball did the rest by knocking back the off-stump! It's great when a plan works, especially against someone of Sachin's calibre.
"We have been planning on how to attack Sachin and Sourav for weeks now," reveals Allan. "The Indian batting line-up is potentially one of the most dangerous and we have done a great deal of homework on each one of their batsmen. All fast bowlers fancy their chances against the first five Indian batsmen! The subcontinent's wickets render them completely open to the temptation of driving - even when they play outside India. For instance, Sourav falls in the category of batsmen who have 'caught-behind' as their most common mode of dismissal," concludes Donald, stressing: "Steep bounce is invariably Ganguly's undoing and, believe me, all Indians are going to get a lot of that."
Coping with that steep bounce on the opening day of the tour proper was one-day thing, the Test rubber is going to be a different Kookaburra ball game altogether. If Sourav (127 off 126 balls: 14 fours, 5 sixes) at last brought style to India's "Johannesburgeoning" total of 279 that time, Sachin lent the innings substance with his 101 (129 balls: 9 fours). Yet "Ten's" 30th ODI hundred, his crackling opening stand of 193 with Sourav (from 32.5 overs), were not quite enough, as Rahul (1) fell to the first legal bouncer he encountered in one-day cricket. Pithy point - the embargo (of one bouncer an over) is drawing to a crunchy close! The Test matches, knowing no speed limit, portend to be bouncers, bouncers all the way.
The acid Test series for Indian cricket, therefore, is to come only now. The ODI Triseries has been, at best, a Standard Bank holiday dress rehearsal! The big bouncers (calculated to see how fast still stand our men in the middle) are going to be unleashed only in the Tests, come November. That is when India's Ramchand spirit is going to be subjected to its supreme Test of character. That is when we viewers are going to have recurring reason to recall what 'A Typhoon Called Tyson' malevolently meant when the Fiery Frank wrote in his book of that numbing name: "To bowl quick is to revel in the glad animal action; to thrill in physical prowess; and to enjoy a certain sneaking feeling of superiority over the other mortals who play the game. No batsman likes quick bowling and this knowledge gives one a sense of omnipotence." Further argues Frank Tyson (28 startling wickets at 20.82 runs each from 151 eight-ball overs - 16 of them maidens - during the Len Hutton-masterminded 3-1 Ashes-regaining 1954-55 Test campaign in Australia): "One of fast bowling's great attractions for me is its straightforwardness. It is an honest pursuit whose rewards are gained by the sweat of the brow and not by any underhand or surreptitious methods."
Am I overstating the challenge waiting to be hurled at Sourav's India in this era of helmets when cricketers are wrapped in "cotton-wool" thigh-pads and what not? Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to teleview Sachin and Laxman, Rahul and Sourav, prove me strikingly wrong. I zero in on those four as they represent India's top-drawer order, it is their bats that have to set the fast-stroking example for our younger performers to summon the gumption to seize the baton. There is no more tempestuous Test series than this - a series in which the "gentlemen" are going to be separated from the "players"! The opening October 5 ODI of the Triseries now ending demonstrated that, on wickets where the ball comes on to the bat, the runs will come - if our batsmen hold firm. In sum, our Test will to stay has to match our Test skill to slay. The skill to slay was written all over Brijesh Patel (for one), only the will to stay was lacking. Towards the end of his career, Brijesh (still scoring heavily for Karnataka) was viewed to be a Patel trading only in fours and sixes. Brijesh, by then, had shed the fitness to run between wickets, yet was good enough to score runs by the ton, still, in the Ranji Trophy.
Brijesh is the kind of signal failure in the Fast Lane that I would not like to watch a single young batsman finish up as during this litmus tour on which there is no sightseeing. Seeing the ball that split-second sooner is going to be all-important in the three Tests even for the seasoned performers in the team, as Allan Donald - venturing to give the lie to the notion that he is fast going slow - senses an opportunity to devour the Indian head, torso and tail. The greased-lightning pace at which the bouncy South Africans are now going to get after our batsmen has to be matched by the kind of bravura that Rahul Dravid brought to his 148 and 81 in the January 1997 Johannesburg Test. From the biographing pen of Vivian Richards we have the apt attitude of mind for such a grim situation. "I had these clashes with Len Pascoe," writes Vivy. "Lenny tried to intimidate me and it was up to me to show that I wasn't afraid. He didn't like it when I repeatedly hooked him out of the ground. But unless you take the attack to a bowler like Pascoe, he gets the better of you. It's either him on top or me," underlines Viv - "in black and white"!
The Brown Blaster image of Sachin, it has now to be burnished, inside South Africa, through the eyes of another master Richards called Barry. Sourav (no matter how well he fares in the ODI Triseries) has to proceed to live down the reputation of being here "one-day" and gone tomorrow. Rahul is at that plotting point in his careergraph when he should be peaking, as a technocrat, against the best fast-bowling combo in the world. As for the fleet-footed Laxman, this is his chance to "kneecap" it! Wristy and willowy, Laxman is pre-eminently a Test-calibre player. Lax's batsmanship means taking the cricket law into his own hands. "On the ball" VVS could be from the word go even sans match practice! The grammar might be all wrong as VVS begins scripting a fresh innings. Yet to the composition of a Test essay VVS brings a limpid laidback elegance that has been known to make the Ugly Aussie wonder if his country really won 16 Tests in a row before taking that "059-2816566" Laxman call.
In Laxman's unpredictability lies India's nirvana. Sachin, Rahul and Sourav, the Proteas know what precisely to expect from their well-honed Test blades. But Laxman, in pacy South African terrain, remains an unknown run-minting quantity. The South Africans could call for all the videos of VVS's knocks against Australia and reach the verdict that they could snare Laxman on or around the off-stump. But all such circumstantial evidence marshalled is going to be of value against every batsman in the game except Laxman! For VVS's charm derives from his vulnerability. A vulnerability that progressively becomes his strength. Laxman goes to centrepitch with no pre-written scenario in his mindscape about how an innings by him should shape. Eden is where Laxman is! Art is long, life is short.
All India thus fondly feels that Laxman now explores South Africa as a run-prospector reserving his best for the sternest of tests there. We need Laxman in full flow to "round" India's Test innings in the Veldt. And Laxman has this habit of "arriving" when least expected. Even the 59 salvo at Eden did not quite hint at that 281, did it? As for that whiplash 167 in the new-millennium Sydney Test, it came as a blast from the blue. If the three Tests in South Africa are going to put Sachin on his toes afresh, VVS goes into the fast-and-furious fray refreshingly uninhibited, shrugging off the six letters of Wisden as no white man's burden imposed on the six letters of Laxman! On how competitively Sachin and Laxman blunt the keen edge of South African pace, in Tests, rests our hope of wresting the initiative in what otherwise looks like being a series of setbacks for India.
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