The cultural morass we inhabit

Insidiously, unnoticed, something has infiltrated our collective consciousness. I speak, of course, of the word 'awww', in its multifarious, multiple-doubleyoued avatars. It's everywhere, waiting to make you cringe and bemoan the cultural morass we inhabit.

Cricket commentary, I noted happily - apart from Shane Warne's entirely acceptable "Aw, look mate," which possesses none of the fluttery-eyelashed connotations of its more copiously-doubleyoued cousins - was about the only thing in the universe free of its pernicious influence.

Until today, that is, when it emerged without warning from the unexpected lips of Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, when Gautam Gambhir drove Muttiah Muralitharan down the ground just after lunch.

Life as we know it will never be the same again.

Re-evaluating Gavaskar, the one-day batsman

No one talks about Sunil Gavaskar's one day international career, and the one innings that does get spoken about casts him in horribly unflattering light. That 36 not out has come to define his one-day career, which I think is unfortunate. By no means was his limited-overs career a progression of stodgy knocks that drove everyone insane.

His numbers, certainly, were no worse than most opening batsmen of his era. He even scored his runs at pretty much the same strike rate as Gordon Greenidge or Desmond Haynes, as these figures would suggest (strike rates of batsmen with a minimum of 25 innings as opener up to 31 December 1989, for innings played at the top of the order).

Which is not to say he was a great one-day batsman. He wasn't. He scored too few hundreds for a start. And he did terribly in the '83 World Cup. But it's unfair to call the 36 not out his defining knock.

So what is Gavaskar's defining one day innings? I've picked two, both of which came in matches that shook Indian cricket. Both times, he was dismissed in the 90s.

The first was at Berbice in 1983, three months before the World Cup win. Gavaskar made 90 against a pace attack containing Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Winston Davis and Malcolm Marshall, and from the platform he, Ravi Shastri and Mohinder Amarnath built, Kapil Dev exploded quite frighteningly to score 72 from 38 balls. India won by 27 runs, and West Indies had been beaten for the first time in a home one day international, portentously by the side that would knock them off their world champion perch.

Three years later, at Sharjah, Gavaskar made 92, out of an Indian total of 245 for seven. The fall of wickets column in the Cricinfo scorecard doesn't mention which over the wickets fell in, so I can't say how long was left when the second wicket fell at 216, but surely India should have finished with a bigger total. Gavaskar, seventh out at 245, clearly wasn't able to force the pace late in the innings.

But in the end, 245 nearly proved enough.

Now, while Javed Miandad's last-ball six has few parallels in limited-overs cricket for drama, I haven't quite understood how this match, the final of a relatively unimportant tournament, has resonated so much among Indian cricket fans, and how there's still so much dissection of Chetan Sharma's last ball. But in any case, this match is seen as the one that changed the equations of India-Pakistan cricket forever.

So coming back to Gavaskar, I see these two as 'defining' innings because they seem to represent his one-day career perfectly. Both times, his efforts were overshadowed, and rightly so, for Kapil's and Miandad's knocks belonged on a different level altogether. A level, perhaps, he wasn't capable of attaining in one-day cricket. But he was present, hovering in the background, a subtle but essential influence.

Anil Kumble versus Pakistan, Delhi, 1999

In this blog post about underrated footballers, The Guardian's Rob Smyth mentions what he calls the Denis Irwin Rule - "If more than 40% of the population say you are underrated, you cannot be underrated."

Similarly, I think enough cricket writers have called Anil Kumble under-appreciated to fully compensate for the original under-appreciation. Still, I notice a tendency among some people to downplay Kumble's 10 for 74, and credit either the dustbowlness of the Ferozeshah Kotla wicket or the trigger-happiness of umpire A.V. Jayaprakash for the wickets he took. Even the Wisden Almanack report.

Here's a video of the spell:

Of the ten wickets, those of Youhana, Salim Malik and Saqlain are classic Kumble dismissals - straight deliveries, catching the batsman either playing down the wrong line or, in the case of Malik, across the line. None of them were helped in any way by the pitch, nor was Ijaz Ahmed's, another straight one, catching his boot on the full.

With Moin Khan, it was the ball that turned just a hint, as opposed to the stock straight one that he played for, aided by a bit of extra bounce. Bounce also accounted for Saeed Anwar and Wasim Akram, both caught at short leg.

Inzamam was entirely at fault for his wicket, playing away from his body.

Which leaves just two batsmen, Shahid Afridi and Mushtaq Ahmed. Mushtaq was unlucky to face the only ball that actually misbehaved - it caused a surface explosion, and reared nastily at his glove. On a fourth day wicket, the occasional cloud of dust is to be expected. 

Afridi's caught behind is the only umpiring error I can spot. His bat seems to hit his front pad, and the replays show a gap between bat and ball as it passes. Wrong decision, but hardly a shocker.
So, in effect, one bad decision and one wicket aided by uneven bounce - hardly a biased umpire and a raging turner. Debate by all means whether this was Kumble's greatest spell (I think, for instance, that his seven for 48 in 2004 against Australia at Chennai was even better) but don't discredit his feat with inaccurate claims. 

Three debuts, one highlights package

Three men made their Test debuts at Old Trafford in 1974. This morning, I watched highlights of the third and fourth innings of that Test.

The first of the three to make an appearance on my TV screen was Madan Lal, running in earnestly as he would do throughout his career, attempting in vain to dislodge the feisty John Edrich.

Edrich, unlike his fellow left-hander David Gower, bats beautifully in highlights packages that I happen to watch. On this day he made 100 not out, cutting, pulling and picking off his legs with strong forearms and defiant lower jaw. This being a highlights package, and Madan Lal happening to go wicketless, all I saw of his bowling were military-medium long hops.

Set 296 to win on the final day, India was dismissed for 182, with 15 overs left.

Early in India's innings, Mike Hendrick, England's debutant, took a fantastic low catch, diving to his left from backward short leg to send back, appropriately, Eknath Solkar.

Hendrick then took another, much simpler catch, off the shoulder of Gavaskar's bat. Until Chris Old got one to rear in a distinctly ugly manner at his throat, Gavaskar had looked serene and undislodgeable - his 58 contained a couple of superb cuts, one late and one square, off Derek Underwood, and the best shot I've ever seen him play - Bob Willis bowled a fast, full inswinger on off stump, and Gavaskar waited, his feet perfectly still, until the ball pitched next to his right toe, and directed it just wide of gully for four.

Gundappa Viswanath made 50, an innings that the commentator, as was customary in those days, termed 'a brave little knock'. No one says that anymore. And no one calls a Test cricketer 'the Yorkshire skipper' anymore. 

"That brought a big smile to the face of the Yorkshire skipper," the commentator - I'm not sure who - drawled, after Geoffrey Boycott caught Abid Ali, running towards the boundary from square leg with the ball dropping over his shoulder.

Before that, India's debutants had displayed a frightening level of Test match newbieness in the manner of their dismissals. First up, the massively-moustached Brijesh Patel swished at Old without moving his feet from their initial position in his crooked, exaggeratedly side-on stance - the ungainliest, most restricting stance I've ever seen, especially viewed next to the relaxed compactness of Gavaskar's stance or  the potential energy of Viswanath's crouch, perfectly sprung to uncoil into that square cut of his.

Then, Bob Willis bounced Madan Lal, who turned his head away and flailed his bat at the rapidly-rising delivery in the hope of connecting. He managed that, but fell onto his stumps in a disorganised heap. Even tail-enders today look reasonably assured while facing the short ball - this ball must have scared the wits out of the helmet-less Lal, facing someone as quick as Willis for the first time in his life.

What do debuts reveal of cricketers? For Mike Hendrick, this was a Test pretty much like any in his career - four wickets in the match, precious few runs conceded - topped off by that brilliant catch.

Madan Lal proved a durable, if prosaic, international cricketer with averages of 23 and 40 the wrong way around - his batting and bowling will be forever associated with euphemistic adjectives like hard-working and honest.

For Brijesh Patel, this was the dunking in ice-cold water after domestic cricket's lukewarmness that has shocked so many Indian batsmen. Patel ended his career averaging five runs more per innings than Karnataka teammate Viswanath in first class cricket, but twelve fewer in Tests.

The middle overs

It's pretty strange to find myself thinking about 50-overs cricket again, and how I used to like it, and watch every ball.

It happened back in May, or whenever it was that the IPL happened.

Idly, I flicked a button on the remote, and suddenly, Nathan Hauritz was bowling to a Pakistan batsman, possibly Misbah Ul Haq. Everyone was still in coloured clothing, but in the background, Geoffrey Boycott and Rameez Raja spoke of technique.

It was something about the need to play straight or about how the introduction of Hauritz and Michael Clarke had forced the batsmen into playing differently - nothing particularly profound. But it had upon my ears as sweet an effect as Mohammad Rafi or Talat Mahmood, after weeks of deadening chatter of DLFers and Citi moments of success.

But not just that. Here in the UAE, the birthplace of cricket as packaged entertainment, the two batsmen struggled to time the ball, but instead of the desperate measures 20 overs would have forced them into, they waited the spell out, played with soft hands, took singles. In short, this was how the middle overs used to be a decade ago.

If Twenty20 has done one thing, it's to vilify the middle overs. Let's take that out of one day cricket. Let's play Forty40 instead, or even Twentyfive25Twentyfive25.

In the late 90s when one day cricket had me in its spell, I loved the middle overs. I loved watching Azharuddin and Jadeja and Ranatunga and de Silva stroke the ball to the sweeper and walk singles. I loved watching Chris Harris and Sachin Tendulkar hop, skip, jump and deliver wobbly mischief to slightly unsure batsmen.

Nowadays, middle order batsmen don't play like that anymore, and medium pacers, both part-time and specialist, seem to bowl with far less imagination. The reasons for this obviously include pitches, meatier bats, shorter boundaries and so forth, but also, and I think equally significantly, the changed mindsets and techniques of this decade. 

Yuvraj Singh, for instance, must have grown up playing a lot more one day cricket than Ajay Jadeja and it definitely had a big impact on how his game developed - both excelled in ODIs in their respective eras as middle order batsmen and finishers, but batted very differently. Jadeja hit quite a few sixes in his time, but his game revolved more around his dextrous hands than his ability to hit cleanly through the line. Jadeja never pulled good-length balls with the dismissive arrogance of Yuvraj, but his soft hands and manipulative wrists ensured he'd never look clueless against spin on slow wickets. Jadeja ended his ODI career with a strike-rate of 70 - perfectly good in his day, tedious now.

One of the best one day matches I saw occurred at the time of the divide - the older generation was nearly gone, and the newer guys had begun to establish themselves. More starkly, it showcased the Subcontinent-Rest of the World divide, which, unlike today, still existed. 

This was the semifinal of the 2002 Champions Trophy between India and South Africa at Colombo's Premadasa Stadium. Herschelle Gibbs propelled South Africa towards its moderate target with ease, until cramps forced him off the field. Then, needing a run a ball for the last twelve overs or so, the middle order congealed, showing complete inability to manoeuvre Harbhajan and Sehwag's mixture of flighty off breaks and low, full darts - something Azharuddin or Ranatunga would have done with ease. In the end, with four wickets in hand, South Africa finished ten runs short.

Two days later at the same venue, subcontinental spin undid stiff-wristed Southern Hemisphere batsmen again - Aravinda de Silva's floated offerings completely bemused Australia. That too after Hayden and Gilchrist had pummeled the seamers for the first six overs. After that, the Aussies simply refused to set their sights lower and play old-fashioned middle-overs cricket.

The final, unfortunately, was washed out, denying the tournament - one of the best one day tournaments in recent memory - a proper finish. Strangely, they re-played the final, instead of continuing it on the reserve day. Sri Lanka therefore batted twice, scoring 220-odd and 240-odd, and India managed two barely-begun innings before the rains came. Surely, if either final was completed, we would have witnessed a proper low-scoring thriller.

Bottom-handedness

This morning, I was watching the highlights of AB de Villiers's double hundred in the Ahmedabad Test against India last year, and I realised that I've never really liked watching him play. To my eyes, that knock contained not a single memorable shot.
There were a lot of great shots, don't get me wrong, remarkable in their bat-speed - his bat traced an arc that went beyond a full circle when he cover-drove Irfan Pathan, and a slog-sweep off Harbhajan Singh, which sailed well over the roof of the stadium, sent him tumbling onto his back in his follow-through.
But they made little impression on me. Watching his hundred at Perth was much the same - I instead became a Hashim Amla fan after his 53 in that same run chase.
Maybe it's because de Villiers's style isn't idiosyncratic enough. He's one of those gifted athletes to whom hitting the ball has come too easy.
Adam Gilchrist is similar - during that century in the 2007 World Cup final, I was struck by how every single shot he played was the result of exactly the same bat-swing, only directed from different hitting zones to different parts of the ground. At five, facing a tennis ball thrown by his dad, he might have swung his junior-size bat the same way, and middled everything.
Free your arms and swing through the line - it's possibly the cleanest, most efficient way to hit a ball, and de Villiers and Gilchrist discovered this almost organically - I conjecture - early in their lives. Ally this to their natural hand-eye co-ordination, and you get two guys who can strike a cricket ball squeaky-clean and score quickly nearly always, with lots of fours and sixes. They leave me cold, sadly.
It's the opposite with some batsmen who are in the mainstream considered ungainly, or even, as JRod would say, Probots. I love watching Paul Collingwood and Simon Katich bat, for instance - there's a structure to what these guys do, a way they approach an innings that you can take something out of. For instance, I recovered from a terrible slump in batting form in underarm Tests by restricting my backlift and follow-through like Collingwood.
But it isn't just that - I genuinely find them attractive to watch, right from the way they shuffle across their creases, to how crisply they clip the ball off their legs with minimal backlift and follow-through.
But this isn't a celebration of hard-earned batting techniques. I only observe how one style of batting doesn't press the right buttons for me. I'm as thrilled by VVS Laxman or Mohammad Yousuf or Sanath Jayasuriya as anyone else.
Having written all this, I detect a pattern - hell, I love watching bottom-handed players, or players executing the great bottom-hand-dominant shots - Gordon Greenidge's square cut, or Rahul Dravid piercing the midwicket-mid-on gap. Batsmen like Gilchrist and de Villiers have taken the celebration of the unencumbered top-hand-controlled bat-swing to its extreme, and the resultant style doesn't warm my heart, much as I try.
It perturbs me when coaches tell you that your top hand is the only one that matters, and even advocate that naturally right-handed batsmen become left-handers early in life - try telling that to Vijay Hazare, whose hands, according to Raj Singh Dungarpur, "moved up and down the handle like a flute player."

Holistic skin care

Yesterday, at an intersection in Kodambakkam, a scooter waited alongside me for the signal to turn green. On it were a man and two boys - his sons, I presumed, returning from cricket coaching. One of the boys must have been in the under-12 group at his academy, and the other, squashed between his brother and father, in the under-10s.
What caught my eye were their feet, shod in dusty white with three red stripes on each side. It's a sight I see quite often while riding to or back from work.
In the days I attended cricket coaching, Adidas shoes weren't entirely absent, but they weren't ubiquitous, certainly not among the under-10s and 12s. A lot of them carried expensive bats in their kitbags, but maybe the need for pitch-cred didn't extend to the shoes you wore.
In any case, back then, we had Ponds.
Yes, the Ponds of sunscreens, talcum powders, anti-ageing creams and aloe-vera body lotions in those days manufactured cricket shoes with prolifically, protuberantly pimpled soles and uncomfortably stiff uppers. Or possibly another company with the same name, but in any case the shoes were a common sight on cricket fields in Chennai back then. And back then wasn't too long ago - my first (and last) pair of Ponds shoes was purchased as recently as the academic year 2000-01, when I was a ninth standard kid.
I wonder what happened to Ponds, the shoemakers.