Analysis

India haunted by past failures

For all the strides Indian cricket has made, every now and then they seem they can't move over from the past

Sidharth Monga
Sidharth Monga
14-Oct-2008

Who has more to worry about? © Getty Images
 
For all the strides Indian cricket has made, part of it still cannot break free from the past. When they get a chance to beat England 2-0 away, as they did last year, they forsake it in the fear of losing the opportunity of winning their first series in England for 21 years. That fear marked their reluctance to push for a win against Pakistan in the Bangalore Test last year: they don't want to risk a 1-0 lead for a mere Test win.
When India, favourites at the start of the series against Australia, go into the last day of the Bangalore Test needing a big effort to earn a draw, the thoughts of the collapse in Sydney in January, and other such failed efforts, are very much with them. In the end the draw in Bangalore, managed against a side without a quality spinner and carrying an injured seamer, is celebrated as a heroic one.
For the moment it is worth celebrating, because some of the leading Indian batsmen, feared opponents all, have had to live with the blemish that they can't save Tests in the fourth innings. However, it can only be hoped that the main lesson here is not lost, asit was after the Sydney Test. There, controversies notwithstanding, India failed to bat out 71 overs on a far-from-terrifying pitch, losing three wickets in 11 balls to Michael Clarke. In Bangalore, all through the game they played catch-up with one of the weakest Australian teams to visit India.
As much as the stodgy batting on the fifth day on a tricky pitch is worth acclaiming, it is worth acknowledging what Australia have managed to do. They arrived with an unsettled batting order, still coming to terms with life without Adam Gilchrist, and freshly jolted by the Andrew Symonds blow. For all practical purposes they didn't have a spinner; none of their fast bowlers had bowled in a Test in India before. Still, at the outset, they set the pace. They exploited India's old legs and tired minds. They threatened to inflict a follow-on. In the second innings, they recovered from a poor start to score enough to make a sporting declaration. Australia were clearly the better batting side in the first Test.
The bigger worry for India was that their spinners managed only three wickets. In fact, Harbhajan Singh took all three; but he, Anil Kumble and Virender Sehwag conceded 370 runs between them. In contrast, the Australian spinners picked up three for 166.

Harbhajan Singh was the only Indian spinner to take wickets in Bangalore © Getty Images
 
Australia can take many positives from this match. Ricky Ponting, the captain, has won a personal battle, the kind Sourav Ganguly won in Brisbane in 2003-04. Ponting's achievement, perhaps, was more significant: Ganguly wasn't called upon to lead the batting line-up, nor had he been as hopeless in Australia as Ponting had been in India.
It took two freak deliveries - a big reverse-swinger and a topspinner that hit a crack and turned in - to remove the immovable object, Michael Hussey, who ran India ragged in the first innings and threatened to do so in the second as well.
Twice in the last five years India have played exciting series in Australia; in both instances they have struggled in the series openers. Ganguly's brilliance and the weather earned them a draw in one, while they were mauled in the other. It is in stark contrast to how Australia have started this tour.
If India have come out scar-free from the first Test, it's thanks mainly to the batting of Harbhajan and Zaheer Khan. Zaheer and Ishant Sharma are the only Indian players to have come out of the match with credit; also Harbhajan to some extent, because of his batting.
Zaheer fired a cheeky salvo after the match: saying that Australia were more defensive than they have ever been. Indeed, they were defensive. Perhaps Australia know their own limitations well. Perhaps it was the slow pitch that made them play the way they did. At any rate, the comment came from a member of a side that is not the most aggressive, physically or mentally. Zaheer and Kumble both talked about the toss and the kind of difference bowling last here would have made. But at no point did India inspire confidence that they could run through Australia, on the first day or the last.
A close draw is a beautiful result. Both teams look at it as a moral victory: the side that pushes for a victory and the one that plays for time. The two possible moral defeats inherent in such Tests are that the aggressors can start to doubt themselves for not having crushed the opposition when they were down, and the defenders can feel exhausted by the effort of having to keep up for five days. Then, theoretically, they start the next game as equals.
With three days between the first two Tests, India have little time to celebrate a ghost that has been exorcised. If, come Mohali, they are to start as equals after the draw in Bangalore, they need to exorcise the cause of the strife.

Sidharth Monga is a staff writer at Cricinfo