Well Played South Africa, Welcome IPL

“Wait till you come to the West Indies maan. Our pitches will be too hot to handle.”

That was the gist of what, a justifiably furious Viv Richards said to the Indian team, as India leveled the 4 test series, one all, at Madras in 1988. West Indies were already one up in the series, by the virtue of their win in Delhi, where they skittled out the Indian team for paltry 75 runs. To compound the woes for India, the captain and easily their best batsman, Dilip Vengsarkar, was ruled out of the final test due to an injury.

If the plot bears an uncanny similarity to the one played at Kanpur, then India’s response was even more identical. Throw an under prepared track, make the ball turn from day one, finish the match in three days and level the series one all!

I have no inkling if the South African skipper Graeme Smith has issued any veiled threat to the Indians on the type of pitches they would encounter on their next tour, but he must be ruing his team’s failure, for, chasing a series win in India is a bit like chasing mirage in Thar desert. Ask the West Indies who are still looking for one, twenty years on.

Having played great cricket all through the series, as also in the lead up to it, I thought the South African camp should have seen it coming. Sometimes it helps to have a better sense of history, a lesson they will not forget in hurry.

No such worries for the India captain though. He intelligently opened the bowling with Harbhajan in SA’s second innings. Again, I am not aware if Dhoni is a keen follower of Indian cricket’s history, but if he were to be one, he would find another instance when an off-break bowler opened the bowling for India. The year was 1967 and Gary Sobers was leading the West Indian team that included the likes of Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith. Making a complete mockery of fast bowling was the Indian opening pair of Ajit Wadekar and ML Jaisimha who bowled all of three overs between them at Bombay, only to let the more celebrated spinners in Chandra, Venkat, Durrani and Bapu Nadkarni to take over.

To conclude, India has leveled the series despite South Africa playing better cricket. For me, more than the fact that India has retained its number two ranking in the ICC test championship, it is the reinforcement of MS Dhoni as a future test captain and the sight of Ishant Sharma consistently rattling the opposition timber that holds so much promise for the future.

This series was played in the afterglow of India’s successful tour in Australia and also under the shadow of forthcoming Indian Premier League. A combination of other factors like injuries to key players, quality of pitches, an empty stadium and absence of live telecast in many parts of India added to the general lack of enthusiasm.

Cometh 18th April and all that will be a thing of past…..