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Magazine
Past & Present
Catches win matches
RAMACHANDRA GUHA
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Spin bowlers and specialised fieldsmen at slip often make for scintillating jugalbandis.
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Photo: PTI
In a special league: Kumble and Dravid celebrate the dismissal of Butt.
Some years ago, I was due to give a talk, the most important talk of my life, in Delhi. For weeks beforehand, I was very nervous. However, on the night before my talk I had a dream, in which Anil Kumble bowled a leg-break that caught the edge of Alec
Stewart’s bat and was caught low down by Rahul Dravid at slip. When I woke up the next morning the butterflies in the stomach had disappeared. That I had visions of a success won by two cricketers from Karnataka at the expense of an Englishman was surely an omen that my talk would go all right. And so it did.
I was reminded of that dream when, fully awake, I watched Anil Kumble bowl on the third afternoon of the Delhi Test against Pakistan. India had taken a narrow first-innings lead; this disappeared in an array of bold shots played by the Pakistani opening batsmen. Kumble then clean bowled one opponent and had a second leg-before-wicket. However, Salman Butt was stroking the ball very fluently indeed. He got to his 50 in good time; now, he was threatening to take the match away from the Indians.
Kumble was bowling, as he generally does, from over the wicket. After that line proved futile against the left-handed Butt he switched to around the stumps. Three or four deliveries were played defensively. Then came a ball with a higher, slower trajectory that was a few inches wider of the off stump. Butt went for the cover drive — his most profitable shot — but the ball gripped and turned out of the footmarks and turned in a direction other than anticipated. The ball caught the edge of the bat and flew hard and high to slip, where Dravid held it with both hands, in front of his face, stumbling backwards as he took it.
Classic dismissal
It was a magical, classical, dismissal. As a former spin bowler myself, I admired the art that lay behind it. First, the change of line, then, the change of pace and trajectory. Then, the use of the footmarks, and finally, the shrewd concealment of the googly (which Butt had not read, and which in the end accounted for his dismissal). But as a hopeless fielder myself, I equally admired the part played by the man at slip. Would anyone else in that Indian side have taken the catch so coolly, indeed taken the catch at all?
Soon after Butt was out, the television informed us that this was the fiftieth catch taken by Rahul Dravid off the bowling of Anil Kumble. The complete list of the pairs who had achieved that particular landmark was also flashed on the screen; headed by Mahela Jayawardene and Muttiah Muralitharan, it also contained the pairing of Mark Taylor and Shane Warne.
I have not watched many Tests played by Sri Lanka recently, so cannot easily recall sharp catches taken by Mahela off Murali. But I have vivid memories of the Taylor-Warne jugalbandhi. Through the 1990s, there was a pattern to matches played by Australia at home. They would lead on the first innings and then, with Michael Slater leading the way with a brisk 80, set the opponents about 350 runs to win late on the fourth day. (Unlike his successor, Steve Waugh, Taylor was a bold captain, who believed in giving the other side a sniff, a bare sniff, of victory, trusting his bowlers to do the rest.) After McDermott or McGrath had got rid of one or both of the openers, Warne would come on to bowl. Before stumps were drawn he would have claimed at least one wicket, this usually as a result of a catch taken by his captain.
At least when fielding to Warne, Mark Taylor stood closer than any slip fielder I have seen. He placed himself a mere 18 inches behind the wicket-keeper, his position both a taunt to the batsman and testimony to his confidence in his own prowess. He was quite brilliant, whether taking catches low down off a defensive bat or high above his head off a drive gone awry. After he retired the other Mark, Waugh, took his place. While fielding at slip to Warne, the junior Waugh was marginally inferior to Taylor — although he was a better all-round fielder, equally at home at short mid-wicket or in the gully. The catch he took to dismiss Laxman in the Madras Test of 2001 (diving full length to his right to stop a fiercely struck pull) was one of the finest I have seen in four decades of cricket-watching.
One of the best
Day in and day out, Rahul Dravid is probably the greatest Test batsman the country has produced. And he is without question the best slip fielder ever to don India colours. He has, on occasion, helped and encouraged bowlers other than his Karnataka team-mate, too. Once, the man who took advantage of his gifts was the very person who rivals him for the title of “best Indian Test batsman ever”. I refer, of course, to the Adelaide Test of 2004, when Dravid took two marvellous low catches at slip off Sachin Tendulkar, setting India on the road to a historic win.
ramguha@vsnl.com
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