The Hindu : Sport : The World XI bowled over by MacGill and Warne

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Tuesday, Oct 18, 2005

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The World XI bowled over by MacGill and Warne

Rohit Brijnath

Australia bowled with discipline and intelligenceStuart MacGill claimed five wickets to finish the match with nine wicketsDismal show by World's top six batsmen

Sydney: As an innings collapsed on Monday so did an idea. The World's finest batsmen will return home, pull on a shirt of patriotism and continue to burnish their reputations. Of the Super Series nothing much will remain except unsold merchandise, two days of wasted tickets and its obituary.

Spectators only dotted a famous ground on Monday and rarely has such a congregation of talent drawn such a spare audience. Two Indians from Jakarta, starved they cried of cricket, had flown in especially for the match; before lunch itself they were seen scurrying to the airport to catch an earlier flight. Dravid had gone, Lara, too, so why not them?

Legends came and went, leaving little impression on spectator or scoreboard; by now, on the fourth afternoon, indignation had long passed and lethargy took its place. The World was bowled out for 144, Stuart MacGill took five wickets (nine for 82 for the match), and Australia won by 210 runs. Record books will note the match, the memory will mostly erase it.

On Monday morning, Dravid and Lara for a while demonstrated intent, the Indian sternly circumspect, the West Indian, wonderfully exaggerated in his movements, sending shots stinging through square that woke up the senses briefly. Then Warne arrived, all ambling guile under a blond mop, and had both caught behind, and defeat began its embrace of the World.

Perfect bowling balance

Australia bowled with discipline, intelligence and invention, a mix of textbook and genius, and will be buoyed by their discovery of a bowling balance of two quicks, two leggies, one all-rounder that evaded it in England.

Only Inzamam of the batsmen can claim misfortune; the one occasion Rudi Koertzen raised his finger without referring it upstairs was to give Inzi leg before to a Lee delivery racing down leg-side.

Elsewhere, the most nimble footwork of the day arrived from ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed, who said that with regard to the Super Series, what the ICC could control, he was pleased with. To which he then deftly added, "the performance of the players is not under our control".

Footwork was followed by spin. An early ICC press release apparently stated that the Super Series was expected to become a regular feature, planned to be played every four years.

Speed now said that was hardly the case, that the Series was not something to be held on a regular basis, not every two, four or six years, but when a champion team emerged to justify such a contest. An idea once embraced now appeared to be rapidly abandoned by its owner.

Getting that extra bit

World team coach John Wright and captain Graeme Smith grappled more with the inability of passion for nation to be sparked within a dressing room of cricketing strangers. Men were struggling not to play with each other, but for each other, to push themselves harder and further.

Said Wright: "It's about getting that last extra bit that comes a bit more to the fore for your country. That was the challenge."

Smith gave that "last extra bit" a number; a staggering 20 per cent, he said was absent, and it was left unsaid that it is too much to expect victory without it. Said Smith: "For your country it's do or die. This isn't."

It defined perfectly a dismal Test's lack of authenticity.

Undoubtedly some players had only just released their talents from cold storage, but not that, nor pitch, nor absence of teamwork, nor Warne, can totally account for the astonishing failure of the world's best batsmen.

The top six batsmen between them own 115 Test centuries yet mustered a top score of 76 (Sehwag). No one else even reached a half-century.

Scores in this Test placed beside career batting averages make for fearful reading: Smith 12, 0 (avg 55.5), Sehwag 76, 7 (avg 55.8), Dravid 0, 23 (avg 58.3), Lara 5, 36 (avg 54.09), Kallis 44, 39 not out (avg 56.87), Inzamam 1, 0 (avg 50.8). In the end the World's batsmen delivered us neither a contest, nor even an exhibition.

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