Searching for an Identity

On the front cover of Christian Ryan's book Australia: Story of a Cricket Country there is a photograph taken by Patrick Eagar at Edgbaston in 1975. It shows the Australian side after the dismissal of one of the England batsmen in a match which Australia won easily. Both the Chappell brothers are there, as are Lillee, Walker, Mallett and Edwards. Thomson and Marsh are out of shot but the implicit message is clear. We are Australia, we hunt as a pack and we mean business. Most of us may be smiling but we don't mess around. We are as one, and, if you're Mike Denness's England, we will crush you into the ground as quickly as we will look at you.

Almost thirty-eight years later Cricinfo carries a photo of the Australian fielders during their recent match against India A. The effect isn't quite so intimidating. Cowan is there, and Watson, and Lyon and Wade, but they don't look as hard. Like their 1975 forebears they are happy, as they have just claimed a wicket, but they also look younger and more fragile. Partly this is because we know what the 1975 side was capable of, but it is also because it is a realistic appraisal of where the Australian team is at this moment in time.

It is a side in transition and it is searching for an identity. And their current opponents, India, are doing just the same.

These are similarities, but there are also differences. The Australian team identity tends towards the collective: there are stars, whether they be the Chappells, or Lillee, or Thomson, or Warne, or Ponting, or Gilchrist, but the team is the thing. Get above yourself and you will quickly be dragged back into the pack.

This works. No team in Test history has won as many Test matches as Australia. At times - and those of us who've followed international cricket over the last fifteen years remember the best of these - Australian teams have strode the world like a colossus.

For a range of reasons, India has never done this, and the best Indian sides have relied far more on the brilliance of a few individuals than collective competence and iron competitive will puctuated with excellence.

In Chennai, India's victory was founded on the rediscovery of Tendulkar's equlibrium, the savage elegance of Kohli and the dominant brilliance of Dhoni, while Ashwin issued a reminder that he can bowl as well as bat like a clone of another man of the Indian south who preferred to be known by his initials alone.

Australia still have the same collective desire and competitive edge they always had - indeed it is hard-wired into their players' DNA - but they lack the experience of the particular challenges which sub-continental Test cricket presents, and they lack real era-defining quality of the type which India have in spades, even if the eras being defined have, in at least two cases, passed. Clarke is a very, very good - possibly great - batsman. If he can overcome his fitness problems there is every chance that James Pattinson could become a great fast bowler. Mitchell Starc, too, will have plenty of days in the sun if he sticks around. David Warner, you suspect, has a few more surprises up his sleeve. Perhaps Philip Hughes does too. But the majority of the side will finish their career as footnotes in their country's rich cricket lineage in a way that Tendulkar, and Dhoni, and Sehwag, and almost certainly Kohli and Pujara (though their greatest days lie ahead), simply won't.

However, there is no blueprint for success in Test cricket. In some matches and circumstances collective endeavour will triumph over sporadic brilliance. At other times the reverse will be true. This series is fascinating for many reasons; prior to its start the perception was that the sides were quite evenly matched and this idea shouldn't be abandoned completely.

India, playing at home and one up, appear to hold all the cards. However, people said that after the first Test of their last home series just three short months ago, and look what happened then.

Played in the Head

For all that Pujara - with his mature, seemingly innate, understanding of the mechanics of batting long on the dead tracks of western India - took India away from England at Ahmedabad, it was Virender Sehwag who set up India's first innings in the manner which was once customary but has become rarer over recent years.

This wasn’t the 293 at the Brabourne, or the triples in Multan or Chennai, or even the 195 at Melbourne, with attacks scattered to the winds like confetti for session after session. For a start, England, Swann aside, bowled poorly, and Viru these days is just slightly more moderate in achievement, if not execution or intent. Two years of fifties - at high strike rates, but fifties nonetheless - have seen to that. Also, as he himself said at the press conference at the end of the first day, batting wasn’t easy as the ball wasn’t coming on. It didn’t show.

But as a Test batsman - and even more so as an opener - Sehwag has always been an outlier. A player who instinctively ignores the textbook and plays simply as he feels. Where the textbook advocates that a batsman facing the new ball should be watchful and circumspect, Viru has always been ambitious, expansive and destructive, as much in the early moments of an innings as at its glorious conclusion or in its death throes. This is the essence of his greatness.

But this greatness - for that, conclusively, is what it is - can be disorientating. According to the conservative logic of the batting manual, Sehwag should have begun failing years ago. In fact, his career at the highest level should have ended almost as soon as it started. You can’t play international bowlers with such a disregard for your wicket, or such rigid footwork, or such a penchant for hitting the ball in the air, even if, when you do, it usually goes for six. These things can’t be done. Except, when Sehwag is batting, they can.

His ability to whip the ball through the leg-side off the back foot and to clear the ropes at will is well-known, but a facet of his approach which has perhaps become more noticeable as he’s aged is the glorious inventiveness of his off-side play. This is emphasized by the reductive nature of his footwork; to anything pitched on or around a good length with an off-stump line (by most conventional standards this is good bowling, but Viru re-writes the bowling textbook too), he simply plants his leading leg slightly inside the line of the ball and uses his bat to guide it into whichever off-side gap he fancies. If it is over-pitched it is driven with withering power and timing, if it is sliding away through the air or off the pitch, it is driven square of the wicket or guided between the slips and gully by opening the bat face at precisely the instant of impact. It is typically Asian in a sense - many another Indian or Pakistani or Lankan player has played in a similar manner - but there is somehow less fragility and more certainty to Sehwag’s off-side play than that of most of his compatriots.

There are two factors in this. One is his natural eye; that is an accident of birth. The other is his head. In this aspect of batting, if few others, Sehwag conforms to the textbook. In fact, he exceeds it. The next time you watch Sehwag bat - in all probability this will be tomorrow - watch how still and level his head is. Like much else about his batting, this is exceptional, but it is also natural and uncontrived. He has not had to think about it.

Like Jimmy White in his greatest years at the snooker table, Sehwag illustrates the way in which genius can both subvert and reinforce orthodoxy, but, apart from the odd embellishment, neither man has ever spent too much time thinking about what they do.

Sehwag may be reaching the autumn of his career. But he is a genius. It is for us to enjoy him while we can.

We Could Be Heroes

With India again dismantled and humiliated in an away Test series, questions, changes and further problems will surely follow. Duncan Fletcher, for one, must be wondering what the hell he's got himself into.

All the greats, suddenly and not so suddenly, appear to be slipping. Tendulkar looks good but can't make a century; Dravid, last summer's form increasingly looking like a mirage, has his stumps broken almost every time he goes to the wicket; Laxman is a prisoner of his own hesitancy and Sehwag is going through one of those periods - and they've always been there - when he looks a simplistic, shallow player, without footwork or runs.

With changes now certain other questions will be prompted, the most obvious of all being to ask how a country with a population of more than a billion people, where cricket is followed with ultimate fanaticism, can't produce a better team than this.

In time, new heroes - Yadav, Kohli, perhaps Pujara and Raina - will emerge, but things, for India, may well get worse before they get better.

Australia, meanwhile, go forward. They have a bowling attack which is adhering to the basics with persistence and skill (and they haven't required much more against these opponents), they have a captain who is a magnificent batsman and is in the runs, and they have Warner.

Warner who will soon assume Sehwag's mantle - in fact perhaps he already has - as the greatest attacking opener in the world. Warner who, with insouciant logic, pointed out that there often aren't many fielders in front of the wicket in Test cricket. Warner who, as someone said on the television yesterday, is changing the game. Warner who is the first world-class cricketer to graduate to Test cricket from the game's shortest form.

Warner is this week's all-Australian hero. For English cricket, even without its national team in action, this has been a challenging week. Its hero is a man that I saw bowl with impressive pace and verve for Derbyshire last season at a time when nobody knew anything about his role in the most concerning story to hit the county game in many years.

This week's English cricket hero is Tony Palladino.

Doing the Impossible

As with most things that go on in the mad, hectic world that is twenty-first century international cricket, I simply didn't have the time to comment on Virender Sehwag's 219 at Indore last Thursday. A pre-Christmas ramble round the pubs of St.Albans and some of London's most scenic open spaces saw to that.

I didn't, of course, fail to notice.

I can't do a better job of paying tribute to Viru than The Old Batsman did here, but, as usual with Sehwag, a few things - a few simple things - stood out.

When interviewed afterwards, his words were unassuming, trite even. As with his strokes, little energy is wasted on thought or analysis, and, like any genius, Viru can no more explain what he does than teach someone else to do it. To him, the things he does aren't extraordinary because he can do them.

Sometimes they may even seem as simple to him as they appear. Us mortals will never know, but we do know that many of the things he does are, for most people, impossible. They can never truly be easy.

If they were, everyone would be doing them.

England to Win

My most vivid memories of the last fifteen years of England-India Tests at Lord's (much of which I've been lucky enough to see live) begin with Tendulkar's early dismissal by Chris Lewis in 1996 and the way in which the debutants, Dravid and Ganguly, dominated the rest of the day, laying potent markers down for the future.

Then there was Sehwag in 2002, unfamiliar, flashy, apparently impermanent, but also giving notice of his potential with a rapid 84 before Ashley Giles snared him.

And then 2007. Rain a constant threat, but a gradually evolving match which was drawn with India nine down in enveloping gloom. On the Sunday afternoon I took a photograph of Tendulkar returning to the pavilion after he was dismissed by Monty Panesar (above). I felt the moment was worth recording because I never thought he'd be back. I'm glad I was wrong, and I look forward to savouring a similar moment or two this week, when the air of finality will be all the greater.

As to the result of the match and the series, much will depend on the weather over the next month and how England bowl. If conditions remain helpful and England - especially Anderson and Tremlett - perform as they can, India will struggle. If the sun begins shining and the wickets flatten out, things will be closer. But the Indian attack can't be discounted. Zaheer is short of practice but will surely come good at some stage, Ishant looks back to his best and Praveen Kumar looks as though he could swing it anywhere.

For me, though, it is England to win.

My train for London leaves in the morning.

Ending in Credit

As someone who grew up as a cricket fan in the days when satellite television didn't exist and Rupert Murdoch was just a newspaper proprietor (well, I'm sure he wasn't just that really, but you know what I mean), I try not to take for granted the fact that it's now so easy to see so much cricket from all over the world.

Back in the old days it was just a crackly TMS transmission from Bombay or Melbourne or Christchurch or St.John's and a few grainy pictures on the evening news if you were lucky. And that was if England were playing. If they weren't you'd be searching for the scores in the Daily Telegraph and then waiting at least a month for some grainy snaps in Wisden Cricket Monthly or The Cricketer.

Now, of course, it's all different. On a drizzly Monday morning, as the coldest English winter for years stretches endlessly on, what better way to make the return to the daily grind bearable than by watching a partnership between two of the greatest batsmen of all time?

Tendulkar was often subdued, content to play second fiddle to Sehwag's usual hypnotic and unstoppable blend of power and subtlety, but he emerged from his shell whenever he felt like it, notably when he despatched Wayne Parnell with a dismissiveness that suggested he might have been pointing out that he'd been seeing off better bowlers than Parnell since Parnell himself was in nappies.

Not that Tendulkar is ever that arrogant. He just likes to bat, and a placid Eden Gardens track, with a lively crowd in, was the type of situation in which he likes to bat most.

By the close they were both gone, but India ended the day in credit.

Footwork is for Mortals

One of the best things (and there are many to choose from) about Virender Sehwag is that watching him can make you re-consider all that you ever knew about batting. For example, every coaching manual you'll ever read will emphasize the importance of footwork in batting, but is it really that important? Not for Viru.

Sehwag has often shown (and yesterday was surely his apogee) that all he needs is a bowler and a bat. Some of the greatest hand-eye co-ordination and bat speed ever known will do the rest, coupled with under-rated shot selection and defence, insatiable run-hunger and a sprinkling of luck.

In a marginally less astonishing way it's worked for others too. Some very similar qualities have always stood Marcus Trescothick in good stead, and there are others. Sadly I never saw him in the flesh but all the footage of Graeme Pollock I've ever seen gives the impression of someone who'd just stand there and hit the cover off the ball until the bowlers couldn't take any more.

As with all kinds of aspects of all kinds of games, the Greats make their own rules.

One of the Best

A player who's never been accused of lacking ability is Virender Sehwag, but he has been dropped, he has been doubted and he has been disillusioned.

He is, though, fit to rank with the very best players that his country has ever produced. Indeed, he's always seemed to me to have an element of truly instinctive genius which the Trinity (Gavaskar, Tendulkar and Dravid) don't quite have.

And, unlike many a fragile genius he bats big. Two triples, countless scores above 150 and now a bat-carrying double against Murali and Mendis.

Many years ago I went on a cricket tour of Australia with a dour Yorkshireman who'd been lucky enough to see Brian Lara's 375 in Antigua the previous winter. He didn't say much about it but what he did say said a lot, if you see what I mean. And what he said then I'll say about Viru now as it sums things up at least as well as anything original I can come up with.

One of the best.

Grinding to a Halt

With the first Test grinding to a drawn halt this morning as Neil McKenzie took the opportunity to further improve his Test average, all that can be said is that the Indian authorities need to try to ensure that future Tests are played on surfaces which offer a bit more to the bowlers. Not easy, but necessary.

The Chennai crowds looked respectable, but, with Tests in India under increasing pressure from the encroachment of the ICL and IPL, there needs to be a bit of a contest for people to watch.

There won't be a triple hundred of the speed of Sehwag's every time...

Not Quite

Sadly Sehwag didn't quite make it to the holy grail of 400 and the Test record. It wasn't a surprise; people rarely do.

However, there's just one brief point I'd like to make. I wrote yesterday of his 'eternally risky style', but I thought about it afterwards and realised that while Sehwag's style would be risky for a mere mortal, for him, when he's in the groove, it really isn't. The eye is so, so, good that the feet don't have to be in the right place and the delivery doesn't have to be, as the cliche goes, 'there to hit'.

Unorthodoxy disguised as rashness, calculation disguised as spontaneity. Therein lies the genius of Viru.

True Genius

There were times during Sehwag's exile from the Indian side, when Dinesh Karthik was jogging along in respectable fashion, when my mind strayed to wondering if he'd ever make it back. Maybe the eternally risky style had been found out once and for all, and, even if it hadn't, would he return as a middle order player, away from the stresses of the new ball?

But then true genius writes its own rules. It's hard to think of anyone else who could play like that at the top of the order and get away with it.

If he's not too tired and manages to settle in again early tomorrow, Lara's record beckons.

And after a display of batting that was brilliant even by his rarefied standards, it would be no more than he deserves.

I'll be watching.

Settling Dust, Opening Issues

With the dust from a fine Test series settled it's possible to think a bit about the fallout from it. And what you keep coming back to is the fact that some things never change: Australia win Test series at home - usually with ease, sometimes with more difficulty - and India struggle to find a reliable opening partnership.

When so many things about the Indian team have started to go right over the last few years, it's confusing and depressing that the establishment of a stable pair of openers still seems a long way away.

In Australia Jaffer started the series on the crest of a wave after his polished displays against Pakistan, but was gone by the end of it, following his erstwhile - and not unsuccessful - partner, Dinesh Karthik, out of the door. At Adelaide they were left with Irfan Pathan and Virender Sehwag to carry the can. Unsurprisingly, one failed and the other succeeded.

It was great to see Sehwag back to something approaching his best, even though his second Adelaide innings lacked the blazing brilliance of his greatest days. He's always liked Australia and, while appearances can be deceptive, he's always been at his best at the top of the order. Also, when he scores, he always scores big.

Viru should have ensured that he's back where he belongs for the time being, but who's to partner him?

As regular readers will know, I'm a strong supporter of Jaffer, although I'm happy to concede that there are technical and possibly temperamental vulnerabilities which may continue to affect his chances of truly replicating his home form outside the sub-continent. However, anyone who can bat as he did at Eden Gardens late last year has to be worth going back to.

It's a persistent headache which India need to sort out, and fast. As I've said before, things currently look sweet on the bowling and captaincy fronts, but they're going to have enough on their plate when the middle order big guns start to retire without having to continue to try to plug up the top of the order as well.

Plenty to Prove

Following the announcement of the Indian team for the forthcoming tour of England and Ireland, the omissions of Sehwag and Harbhajan have made the headlines, but Anand Vasu sums things up well at Cricinfo, indicating that Harbhajan, at least, had it coming to him.

It's interesting to see Ranadeb Bose there, who I've never seen, but have written about previously here, and also Ramesh Powar, who's looked a decent bowler in his ODI appearances but, you feel, has a way to go to make an impression in Test cricket.

Personally I think they could struggle, especially at the top of the order, and the absence of Sehwag (who's surely too good not to come again) could be regretted, while the attack lacks experience and will have plenty to prove.

Uncertainties

With rain preventing any play at Leeds yesterday I took the first opportunity I've had to take any notice of the Bangladesh-India Test series. Not a lot, mind, as it ended pretty quickly, but it's clear that Bangladesh still have a lot to do to bring their Test performances up to a level where they can consistently challenge the better sides. In their case, more Tests and many fewer ODIs would help them develop, but the market forces of Asian cricket and commerce will probably dictate otherwise.

India are one of those better sides but many uncertainties remain ahead of their tour of England - no coach, the core of the side ageing, continuing uncertainties about their openers and seam attack - but at least they'll travel with a victory under their belt after the disappointments of the World Cup.

At the top of the order Jaffer and Dinesh Karthik have been shaping up well, but you have to have doubts about how they'll do in England, especially if the weather doesn't improve by July. I'd like to see Sehwag back in the side - perhaps reinvented as a middle order player - but I expect to see Jaffer and Karthik walking out at Lord's.

The seam attack could be capable of matching England's if Zaheer, Sreesanth and Patel all show up fit, but how likely is that? It was interesting to see Ishant Sharma, who looked so good on the under-19 tour last year, but his real time will have to wait, while one has to feel that more will be heard from Irfan Pathan. He's surely too talented and still too young for that not to be the case. But what's the key?

And, when it comes to spinners, although you know that Kumble will always be there (at least until he isn't), there's the question of support in a department which will be important in exposing England's vulnerabilities. Powar seems to have done okay in Bangladesh, but a Test off-spinner in preference to Harbhajan? Doubtful.

England have looked good in the first two Tests against the West Indies but they're playing a poor side. India should be capable of much better and it could be a decent series if India get their players fit and their selections right.

We'll see.