Friday 19 / April / 2024
The cheerful, carefree teenage girls wearing T-shirts shouting ‘Kohli U are in my heart’ roar in delight when the camera pans out and the desperate guys who couldn’t get in through the normal way prowl the street outside the Green Park stadium hoping for a miracle to happen that helps them in or looking for a chance to somehow sneak in as Martin Guptill and Tom Latham walk out into the middle to launch an impossible chase of 434 runs for an incredible victory and walk back to the dressing room in the fourth over, leaving Kane Williamson and Ross Taylor to do the impossible in front of a yelling, chilling crowd of 33,000 or more.
And then Ravichandran Ashwin, just one short of his 200th Test wicket to become the second fastest player in history to reach the mark, begins his third over of the day.
Taylor comes forward to block the first ball and the edge skirts past Cheteshwar Pujara at short leg. The crowd screams in excitement and frustration. Taylor goes back to defend the second, is beaten by the turn, the ball lands in the gloves of Wriddhiman Saha and there’s a loud caught-behind appeal.
The shriek from the stands gets louder.
Taylor tries to sweep the third, couldn’t connect it well, the ball hits Pujara, Ravindra Jadeja catches it off the rebound and appeals and Virat Kohli steps in swiftly to clear the confusion. Ashwin sends down the fourth, Taylor is not sure whether he should go forward or be on the backfoot, but he blocks it somehow.
Taylor sweeps again as Ashwin tosses up the fifth, misses it completely, but manages to hop away to the non-striker’s end by the time the umpire turns down a big, aggressive lbw shout. Williamson, watching the horror from the safe end until then, steps out to flick, misses and is lucky to avoid being run out as Pujara doesn’t collect the ball quick and clean.
If ICC needs a new, 21st century poster to promote Test cricket, and it does, it’s this. A Test on the fourth day. The fourth innings begins post lunch. A stadium full to its capacity. The kids, schoolstudents, teenagers, young couples and families on their feet. The play ends, leaving enough time and wickets for the drama to begin, progress steadily and climax spicily on day five.
In the end, India won their 500th Test match in style, but the team need to do a bit of homework before they begin their campaign in the second Test match at Kolkata from September 30. A couple things looked unsuitable for a team setting their sights on the number one rank and home as well as foreign domination. The first is the two-spinner policy adopted in the first Test.
It was unlikely that India would prepare a pitch offering vicious turn from day one leading to the end of match inside three days. That would have spoiled their 500th Test party. A pitch expected to offer help for seamers in the morning session of day one would demand inclusion of two fast bowlers, but doing that at the cost of a spinner, Amit Mishra, in this case, looked unwise. They could have dropped a batsman and slotted Mishra in.
The absence of a third, regular spinner was felt throughout. First, when Williamson and Latham were going strong for the first-wicket pair to post a 124-run partnership that seemed to challenge the Indian total of 318. Kohli needed to toss the ball to Murali Vijay either to relieve Ashwin and Jadeja or to put a new spin in the proceedings. Imagine he having Mishra around — the possibilities would then have been more than a matter of luck.
Another area of concern was the lack of firepower when it was needed. After Kohli got out, Ajinkya Rahane and Rohit Sharma needed some time to take the total to a position of safety before they could accelerate, but neither was keen on doing that once they played themselves in. At some stage it looked like India might fall short of time to dismiss New Zealand in the second innings if the declaration was delayed.
The Indian innings would have prolonged uncertainly if Jadeja had got out early as the tailenders would have tried to hang around. The danger then was either a loss of time to get the New Zealanders out, or a total that might have been easier than the eventual 434 for the visitors to go about their task.
The Indian victory in the Kanpur Test was nothing surprising, but the New Zealand performance was. If they could improve their game by some margin, by 10 percent or so, we could hope for more fun in the coming weeks than expected before the start of the series.
The writer is a freelance contributor based in India. All the views and opinions expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not reflect those of Times of Oman
