The Hindu : Sport : Irfan Pathan has Zimbabwe in a bind

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 21, 2005

Sport

Sport

Irfan Pathan has Zimbabwe in a bind

S. Ram Mahesh

ON THE WAY OUT: Brendan Taylor becomes one of Irfan Pathan's seven victims nicking into the safe hands of Rahul Dravid. — Photo: V.V. Krishnan

HARARE: It was over almost before it began. As a contest, the second Royal Stag Test between India and Zimbabwe at the Harare Sports Club here ended within the first hour of day one on Tuesday. Four wickets fell and Irfan Pathan ran amok. The Zimbabwe innings ended 49 minutes before tea as the 20-year-old finished with career best figures of seven for 59.

Responding to the host's 161, India finished with 195 for one — a lead of 34 with four days left.

Gautam Gambhir capped a day dominated by left-handers as he got to within sniffing distance of his second Test hundred. Gambhir (95 batting, 183m, 116b, 17x4) and Virender Sehwag frolicked to 44 in 44 balls before the Najafgarh resident was adjudged caught behind rather dubiously.

Ian Frazer, the bio-mechanist with the Indian team, said coach Greg Chappell was looking to take Sehwag to the next level — one in which he plays close to 100 balls every innings. If the 26-year-old had stayed that long and maintained his strike rate, he would have gotten himself a century.

Exquisite drives

Gambhir didn't miss a step during the switch of dancing partners, turning off his hip with alacrity. He cut well, both to ground and over gully. The man from Delhi also played a variant of the exquisite left-hander's cover drive.

Rahul Dravid (49 batting, 124m, 103b, 8x4) looked determined to make up for the lack of a Test hundred on tour as he spread out his sleeping bag. The pair will look to engorge their partnership of 120 on day two.

Side unchanged

Earlier, Ganguly curiously chose to bowl despite not having a third seamer. The side was unchanged. A desire to end things early may have dictated the decision. Pathan, on Tuesday, made sure any talk of the folly of not picking a third seamer froze unsaid.

Pavlov and Pathan, despite differing cultural backgrounds and intellectual curiosities, have a lot in common. The former through the ingenious use of meat balls and a buzzer caused lab dogs to salivate whenever they heard a ring. The latter uses a Kookaburra red ball to cause the batsmen of Zimbabwe to froth at the mouth.

The African nation's strategy to counter Pathan was simple and, in hindsight, simplistic — deny him the leg before wicket. Coach Kevin Curran had spoken of limiting him to one such dismissal an innings. So he called up left-armers to help batsmen tweak their alignment to the differing angle and get used to batting out of the crease. Accordingly, those who strode to the middle shortened the distance between them and the bowler's arm.

Grass on the track wasn't treated with a vehement mower — the extra bounce expected to reduce the risk of leg before decisions. But in trying hard to prevent one mode of getting out, Zimbabwe opened another.

Pathan showed his opponents the ace he held; the trump card stayed concealed. Brendan Taylor and Tatenda Taibu — self promoted — played for the in-nipper and nicked deliveries that were angled across. The host's left-handers though were served swerve.

Terrence Duffin drove ambitiously at a delivery whose trajectory couldn't have been better charted. V.V.S. Laxman denied Dravid a straight snaffle with a tumble across.

Andy Blignaut betrayed a lack of nous and did all he could to catch up with a short, wide ball after he had been dropped twice in successive balls by Pathan.

For Zimbabwe, Charles Coventry and Hamilton Masakadza waved a brief but truculent flag. Pathan got his first leg before wicket when he arched one past Masakadza's forward press. Coventry was the only batsman who tamed the broad-shouldered man from Baroda.

The bespectacled 22-year-old slapped Pathan over his head; the feet didn't move. A bouncer was met with a savage hook that prompted an anxious search in the bushes, which Daryl Harper joined. But, Coventry threw it away — Dravid swivelling and running from first slip to pouch the steepling miscue at long stop.

Pathan has now taken 16 of the 30 Zimbabwean wickets to fall in three innings. But the most spectacular dismissal of the day didn't belong to him. Dinesh Kaarthick's attempt at unassisted flight in the region of Dravid's eyebrows combined with a sticky right glove won that award; Zaheer Khan the beneficiary, Dion Ebrahim the victim.

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