Tuesday, Dec 16, 2003
Tuesday, Dec 16, 2003 |
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Cricket
Gilchrist then threatened to take the game away again with a typically aggressive assault on the bowling. When Patel missed stumping him off Kumble, it looked like he may have fumbled any chance of India winning this intriguing Test match. By the time Agarkar had claimed his sixth wicket to dismiss Stuart MacGill, the Indian team was in a position where it could pull off a famous victory. Only one previous Australian team has made more than 550 runs in the first innings and lost. That was at the Sydney Cricket Ground against England as far back as 1894/95. And only one team — Clive Lloyd's great West Indians — has chased more than 200 and won at the Adelaide Oval in the past 50 years. The fact that this pitch was re-laid last year is a positive for India. Nothing that I have seen so far in the last 24 hours suggests that this wicket will contain any serious demons on the last day. The first hour on Tuesday could decide the test. The Australians will come out hard so if Sehwag and Chopra can withstand the initial onslaught the match should be as good as won. For India, Dravid and Laxman, it seemed, had gone a long way toward saving the match with their mammoth partnership from late Saturday to the middle of Sunday. All of a sudden it looks like a match-winning effort. This is what Test cricket is all about and this is why it has survived into the start of the new millennium. It is an anachronism in this day of fast food and instant gratification but its beauty lies in its unpredictability. No script is written and none followed. Nothing that had preceded the Australian innings suggested this Test was going to be turned on its head so dramatically on the fourth day. The Indians would have been relieved to get within striking distance of the Australian total and might have been thinking how good it would be that they could go to Melbourne with the series still all tied up. Surely they weren't thinking of a victory! The Australians would not have been thinking of losing. So what happened? Perhaps they were a little complacent and did not have a clear focus of what they needed to do. Normally they would have set their sight on a positive start and the usual run rate of four an over. Had they achieved that in the 70 odd overs available they would have been 300 in front and set to put pressure on the Indian batsmen on the last day. The psychology of it all and the fact that the Australians had been kept in the field for over 10 hours for the first time for a long time may have contributed. Physical lethargy can affect timing. Mental lethargy can be fatal! With his bowling arm a little higher Agarkar seemed to have been rejuvenated. His rhythm was there, he swung the ball and he bowled a line that asked questions of the Australian batsmen. With Zaheer and Harbhajan sidelined for this Test a victory was surely too much to contemplate, but opportunity can be a great motivator. One or two smart catches gave the bowlers a lift and all of a sudden the Indian squad looked like a team of winners. If the batsmen can hold their nerve tomorrow and complete an unexpected victory, Sourav Ganguly and his band will be heroes at home and will have done much to revive the ailing image of Test cricket in a region that prefers to worship at the altar of limited-overs matches.
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