CENTURION
India's 2001 tour of South Africa came to an end four overs after lunch onthe final day of what, at this stage anyway, remains an unofficial Test match --a five-day international friendly, if you will. The match, the tour and, somewould still argue, the series finished when Jacques Kallis trapped Deep Dasguptalbw to give the home team victory by an innings and 73 runs.
The final setback for India was the inability of their last two batsmen,Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad, to come to the crease. Srinath has afracture finger, Prasad a pinched nerve in his neck and the Indian inningsclosed at 261 for eight.
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It was not, then, a tour and a series that will be remembered with fondnessby India, either for performances on the field and the events that surrounded itoff the pitch. At the end of it all Shaun Pollock reiterated his views offeredafter the first day's play that South Africa had not regarded the game as aproper Test.
Pollock tends to be careful when he speaks in public, but he did offer thethought that if nothing else the Denness affair has underlined the need for theICC to standardise its disciplinary regulations and procedures. If players knewthat this penalty would be imposed for this offence and that penalty for thatoffence, he said, then players would at least know where they stood.
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The implication is that as a result behaviour might improve. This may seemblindingly obvious, but the match referee system has been in place for a decadeduring which time standards of behaviour have fallen and at the end of which amatch referee has plunged the game into serious crisis.
As has been the case for almost the entire tour, the Indians were unable towithstand the South Africans on the last day even though the tourists weresupposed to be treating the match as an official Test while the South Africanswere playing a practice game.
Rahul Dravid took three fours off Nantie Hayward's first over and was thenbowled by a snorter that angled in and then held its line to take off stump andIndia were off to a poor start.
Sachin Tendulkar was dropped by Gary Kirsten at gully off a dolly of a catch,spanked it around a bit before being bowled for 40 by Makhaya Ntini as he failedto offer a shot and VVS Laxman clipped Ntini straight to Herschelle Gibbs atpoint to be caught for 23.
Thereafter the Indian innings subsided gently. There was, in truth, verylittle fight left in the tourists. They have been systematically unravelled by atough South African team, a fair bit of ill-fortune and, in the end, thecontroversy that has swirled around their heads. It is difficult to imagine abetter-equipped, mentally more resilient side faring much better.
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South Africa, then, took the series 2-0 (or 1-0, if you wish, the ICC seemsto be having difficult making up its mind about this) which is a fair reflectionof the difference between the two teams in South African conditions.
Indian coach John Wright acknowledged as much even as he had to tread theofficial line that India had played the game as a real Test.
"We lost," he said. "We got beaten. We did not approach thegame in any other manner than as a Test match."
Pollock was named man of the match for his unbeaten 113 while HerschelleGibbs, who scored hundreds in both the first two Tests, was named man of theseries.
