The Hindu : Sport : Back to on-field battle

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Tuesday, Sep 20, 2005

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Back to on-field battle

S. Ram Mahesh

HONING SKILLS: Virender Sehwag's batting defies all coaching tenets, but when it comes to bowling he definitely needs coach Greg Chappell's tips. — Photo: V.V. Krishnan

Harare: Two teams roiled by controversy will try and put cricket where it belongs — centrestage — in the second and final Royal Stag Test, which begins at the Harare Sports Club here on Tuesday.

India steam-rollered Zimbabwe by an innings and 90 runs in the first Test at Bulawayo and is on course for a series win outside the sub-continent after 18 years.

Unfortunately, both the quality of the opposition and the events off field have ensured this particular entry won't be highlighted by fluorescent felt markers in the cricketing part of the almanac. Look instead under `Pointless Controversies'. Or `Points of Inflection'.

To get that far, though, India must buck Harare's historical trend lines. In Zimbabwe's maiden Test in 1992, David Houghton, Grant Flower, and Andy Flower forced Sanjay Manjrekar into an eight-hour hundred to keep the hosts at bay. In 1998, Henry Olonga and Neil Johnson humiliated India. And fresh off the epochal triumph against the Australians in 2001, and after winning the first Test at Bulawayo, India surrendered by six wickets.

The Harare hoodoo should be exorcised this time around. "I hope we can change it this time," said Sourav Ganguly. "We've come here before 1-0 up."

Even accounting for the Indian team's inability to land the killer punch in series abroad, the current Zimbabwe team must come up with hitherto undiscovered reserves of skill and temperament to trip the visitors.

Positives

Zimbabwe coach Kevin Curran said as much: "Look, you can't turn a bunch of young inexperienced players into world-class performers overnight. Rome wasn't built in a day and it's the steady improvement I'm looking at. For me the last two one-day games have been very, very positive."

The hosts have struggled with the left-arm swing of Irfan Pathan. "It's always difficult for an hour or so," said Curran. "Four of them were soft dismissals. Pathan didn't deserve those wickets. We did much better on the fourth morning and the first when it didn't swing as much for him. Fifty to sixty per cent of his dismissals are lbws and our strategy is not to give him any, or probably just one."

Curran said his batsmen would look to bat outside their crease and play late, "feeding off (Tatenda) Taibu's efforts" in the first Test.

The side called up Allan Mwayenga to give the batsmen a taste of left-arm fast medium in the nets. Replicating Pathan's swing is a different matter. While the African nation's poor batting has drastically cut short match time in recent Tests, its bowling has allowed the opposition batsmen to make up time as well — a double whammy. If Ganguly had hastened in Bulawayo, India might have achieved a rare three-day victory.

Unchanged team

Ganguly said India would play an unchanged eleven because of the wicket. "The grass is dry grass. And it's pretty dry underneath. I was surprised at how much turn the spinners got in Bulawayo," said the Indian captain. "Even here, it helped the spinners in the one-day finals. The under surface of the wicket matters."

The Indians had a three-and-a-half-hour session, which included the usual stretches, a version of French cricket, `Mayhem' the catching routine, regular fielding drills, and the customary nets session. Yuvraj Singh and Gautam Gambhir worked on their footwork with Ian Frazer.

Indian coach Greg Chappell said it was important for India to "finish the series off in a positive way." He said he wasn't concerned about the openers' failure to convert good starts. "You'd like to see people go on. But if you have a look at the scores, you'll see only one or two batsmen do the bulk of the scoring."

The teams (from):

India: Sourav Ganguly (capt.), Rahul Dravid (vice-captain), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, V.V.S. Laxman, Mohammad Kaif, Yuvraj Singh, Dheeraj Jhadav, Dinesh Kaarthick (wicketkeeper), Irfan Pathan, Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, L. Balaji, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh.

Zimbabwe: Tatenda Taibu (capt. & wicketkeeper), Heath Streak (vice-captain), Andy Blignaut, Blessing Mahwire, Hamilton Masakadza, Keith Dabengwa, Charles Coventry, Terrence Duffin, Dion Ebrahim, Anthony Ireland, Waddington Mwayenga, Brendan Taylor, Sean Williams, Prosper Utseya, Gavin Ewing.

Umpires: Daryl Harper (Aus) and Aleem Dar (Pak); Third Umpire: Russell Tiffin (Zim). Match Referee: Mike Procter.

Hours of play (IST): 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., 4:10 p.m. to 6:10 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. to close of play.

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