'Lesser Players Came Good'

The Indians went through the gruelling week pretty nicely. There were threewins and one loss in the last week so you cannot really fault the team for itsefforts. It was a huge pull for the Indians who were missing quite a few starsin the line-up. The lesser players stood up to the task and the Indians are inthe final.

I guess there could be a few murmurs because Zimbabwe ran them close intwo games and Australia claimed a lost cause at the SCG. But the Indians haveplayed fantastic cricket. It is the nature of one-day cricket to produce closeresults. Even though its ground fielding does not measure up to overallstandards, India's catching has remained exceptional.

Ajit Agarkar has been brilliant and stepped up to the job nicely. IrfanPathan is a quality cricketer, superb really, for his bowling shows a lot ofmaturity for a 19-year-old. Once the likes of Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh andAnil Kumble are back and India's batting being what it is, the team has somereally good years ahead. Indian cricket could look forward to some reallyproductive years.

V.V.S. Laxman keeps propping up because his batting has got better andbetter. It has been Laxman's summer even though the two sides have someexceptional batters and most of them have scored heavily. It is the manner ofLaxman's run-making, which is so pleasing to the eyes.

Fans in India must already be aware of his capability but to the outsideworld Laxman has now shown how good he could be. He has done so playing his owngame. Having been allowed to come up the order, he has scored his runs playingno differently than he does in Tests. He has played cricketing shots andwalloped the bowlers. He is a superb player and it has been a privilege to watchhim this summer.

There have been two incidents last week which the Indians would have hopednever happened. First was the ball-tampering issue and the other the slowover-rate for which the Indians were fined and received bad press.

The ball-tampering incident did appear damning on television. But people inthe cricketing world should not appear shocked. It has happened all the time inover 100 years of cricket's history. Cricketers have tried to put things on aball, sunscreen, grease or some sort of substance. It is nothing new.

But that it involves Rahul Dravid, a very popular and respected internationalcricketer, a very, very straight-sheeter, is causing the muck. It could havebeen purely accidental but the bottomline is he was caught in the chin.

What the substance does to a cricket ball is debatable. Just keeping theshine on the ball on one side is not enough unless the other side is scruffedup. Only then it makes the ball to behave differently.

Scratching the ball is the really damning thing. You see it in the nets allthe time when the ball is scratched up on one side, the other is kept smooth andreverse swing starts happening. I don't think just applying substance andshining one side makes a ball behave abnormally. But Dravid has been caught fordoing something really silly.

The other matter is of slow over-rate. Indian captain Saurav Ganguly reallyneeds to address this issue. If the game wants to retain its popularity andgrow, it cannot be allowed to get slow. It must keep moving and it is theresponsibility of players, more so of the captain, to be alert to the matter.

If you slow up the game, and adopt go-slow tactics, you are liable to bepunished. It is not like times in the past. It is now a professional sport, abig business.

Bowlers have to keep a certain pace about their overs, fielders need to bealert and the captain must get things moving. It just cannot be allowed to hurtthe paying public or the big business, which runs around the game, only becausea team wants to maximize its winning potential.

One keeps coming back to the exceptional batting seen in this series. I doubtif one has seen batting of such sustained brilliance in any Australian summer inrecent memory.

Both the Australian and Indian batsmen have been phenomenal. Though it hasbeen enjoyable, the bowlers have suffered and it is time to sit back and try towork out the curve of the game's flow. 

Finally to David Hookes, 'Hooksey' to his mates, who lost his life in asenseless accident. He has been very popular in Australia, and dare I say, evenin the sub-continent where he was popular in the commentary boxes in recenttimes.

Personally, he was a close chum from the schoolboy days when we used to getinvolved in cricket carnivals. To me, he was a great mate and it is just so sad.It will be hard to get over with it soon. 'Hooksey' is gone but he has leftbehind so many wonderful memories.

PTI