Zimbabwe Falter On Day One

NAGPUR

Winning the toss and electing to bat first, Zimbabwe threatened to make goodtheir skipper's threat of putting a 450-plus score on the board. However, athreat alone, without a show of force, is never worth much. Just when thesupport cast decided to click, the lead actor dropped out. Without a big knockfrom Andy Flower, it was evident that there was no way Zimbabwe would do betterthan their eventual 248/8. No disrespect at all to Stuart Carlisle and hisfighting 77, though; he did his bit admirably.

Zaheer Khan, fresh from his consecutive 10-wicket hauls in domestic cricket,generated good pace on a wicket that is better suited to a game of clay-courttennis than three seamers charging in and trying to snuff out defensive batsmen.Flat, dry, and with cracks that threaten to open up and beckon to the tweakersfrom as early as the morning of the third day, this is a standard Nagpur wicket.

To his credit, the Baroda left-arm seamer made the best use of what littlemovement there was early on before using the old ball to reverse-swingprodigiously. Bowling from over the wicket to the right-handers, Zaheer Khanmanaged to get a good angle going away from the batsmen, ending the day withfigures of 3/45. Anil Kumble, a bit lucky at times, backed up well, taking 3/72.

Nasser Hussain, in England's recent tour of India warned of "turgidcricket." Carlisle has said to the press that he wanted to "attacklike the English." He means it. Despite a lot of people writing offCarlisle's Zimbabwe, the batsman took his job very seriously indeed. Maybe therewere no flashing drives, no powerful horizontal bat shots, and the spectatorsmay have been less than thrilled with Carlisle's approach, but it did thevisitors a world of good.

Carlisle, living upto the new-found responsibility of being captain, showedthat he was not overawed by the reputation of India being tigers at home, and hecertainly is not alone in that respect in this Zimbabwean team. The RoyalBengal, thus, looks to be highly endangered, struggling to survive these days.Hitting tweaker Harbhajan Singh over long-on for a six was only the icing on thecake - a wholesome, sumptuous one, rather than the rich kind associated withflat batting wickets.

Keen to stick around in the middle, Carlisle negotiated the swinging old ballwith care until a comedy of errors sorted him out. The visiting captain edged anoff-break from Harbhajan Singh, only for keeper Deep Dasgupta to grass thecatch. The batsmen should never have contemplated a single. Never run off amisfield, they say; but perhaps in Zimbabwe, they do not have any old sayingsabout running off dropped catches. Before Carlisle could make the 22 yards tosafety at the bowler's end, Shiv Sunder Das had fired the ball across for thebowler to whip off the bails, saving his East Zone colleague the blushes. Acaptain's knock of 77 (204 b, 10x4, 1x6) came to a sorry end.

Aside from Carlisle's knock, there were two events that Zimbabwean scribescan write home about. Depending on whom you support, and whether you want thegood news or the bad news first, here they are.

"Flower blooms," "Andy blossoms," "Indian bowlerswilt" and similar horticultural headlines were dashed by a searingin-swinging yorker from Zaheer Khan. Andy Flower's 3 will please the Indians noend. Nightmares of the last series, when Flower averaged an uber-Bramanesque270, will slowly recede into the background.

The good news for Zimbabwe was the tidy half-century that Alistair Campbellhelped himself to. Batting with elan, the tall left-hander timed the ballsweetly to the fence on nine occasions. On 57, Campbell must have had visions ofanother century at Nagpur. After scoring a boundary and a brace, with theadrenaline running high, Campbell slapped a cover drive to VVS Laxman at shortcover. The sharp catch was held, and Zimbabwe had lost their second wicket.

That apart, the batting card did not make healthy reading Trevor Gripper,Gavin Rennie, Grant Flower, Heath Streak and Tatenda Taibu all failed to reacheven 25.

Travis Friend provided some welcome entertainment towards the end, thrashingthe ball around to all parts to reach 33 off just 31 balls with six hits to thefence. In doing so, he injected some life into Zimbabwe's batting display. Thatmight have brought a smile to the Zimbabwe camp, but it will not be enough totake the visitors to a comfortable score in this Test match.

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