The Sri Lankan bowling unit showed in one session that it is better equipped in these conditions than its opposition

Sidharth Monga in Galle20-Jul-2010Sri Lanka have done their best to keep this match, which has lost close to 114 overs of play in three days, alive. Even when India were threatening to come back to level terms in the first session, the hosts maintained a run-rate of four. Rangana Herath and Lasith Malinga provided some unexpected entertainment with the bat and, more importantly, ruled out India’s victory. Then they made an aggressive declaration, leaving Herath unbeaten 20 short of a maiden Test century. It was later that they did the most telling damage.The Sri Lankan bowling unit showed in one session that it is better equipped in these conditions than its opposition. It was a gripping session of play post tea, also facilitated by a poor attempt at a second run by Rahul Dravid.Lasith Malinga came roaring back into Test cricket, attacking the stumps, getting swing, bowling full, removing Gautam Gambhir with the second ball of the innings and obsessively chasing the toes and ribs of Virender Sehwag. Muttiah Muralitharan, who would have found it tough to not get emotional with the grand reception he got when he walked on to the field, put behind him the lean run of form and performed like a champion. If there was any fear that his farewell Test might be a distraction, it was squashed when he got Sachin Tendulkar’s wicket.The final 42 minutes of the day, after Dravid and Tendulkar were dismissed within 33 runs of each other, and India were still 320 short of saving the follow-on, brought drama with almost every delivery. Only 8.4 overs were bowled, but Malinga’s long run-up was full of promise.Virender Sehwag, already 67 off 73 including a majestic six off Murali, was made to dig out yorkers just to save his toes, forget his wicket. He was made to get the bat up in time to protect his ribs, but also keep the ball down, lest it flew to the accurately placed leg gully or short leg. Even when he managed to expertly bisect the keeper and the leg gully, he got just the single to the fine leg placed for the top edge. The one yorker Malinga missed, bowling a low full toss, Sehwag crashed it through the covers.Against Murali he fared better, reading the variations well, despite claiming to the contrary in his column. He even cut from in front of the stumps. In perhaps the most watchful 42 minutes of his batting since Adelaide, Sehwag scored 18 runs off 25 balls, at a mere mortal’s pace.Murali troubled VVS Laxman much more, who didn’t read the doosra at all. On one occasion Laxman left alone one that pitched within the stumps, expecting it to turn down leg, and then saw it bounce over his off and middle stump. Another doosra he played at, and was beaten by what was almost a legbreak. He was lucky it missed the off stump. Bowling with four men around the bat, he kept pitching it on around the same spot, turning it either way.Just as the clock approached the scheduled close of play at 5.45 pm, the sun peeped out of the clouds and shone as brightly as it had through the last week to heighten the drama. The play went deep into the evening, Yuvraj Singh must have waited anxiously, the Sri Lankans tried their darnedest to pick one more wicket before stumps, but India just about hung on. The series was alive, there was tension around. It can do with more of it.Rangana Herath later said Sri Lanka can force a result even if India avoid a follow-on. “They [Sehwag and Laxman] batted very well,” he said. “But at the same time, the bowlers were bowling really well, so if either of them had had done one mistake, it would have cost them their wicket. We expect to do the same thing tomorrow.” Amen to that.

To a country starved of self-respect, Gavaskar was a godsend

Harsha Bhogle19-Sep-2010More than his 34 centuries and 10,000 runs, more than his 96 in Bangalore or his 221 at The Oval, even more than the 774 runs on debut with which he strode into our impressionable minds, Sunil Gavaskar’s greatest contribution was to instill pride in a generation brought up on low self-esteem.Till he came along, with a boyish mop of hair and a defiant attitude beneath, Indians had been told that they could not play fast bowling. India’s batsmen, in spite of a legacy of Vijay Merchant, Vijay Hazare, Vinoo Mankad and Polly Umrigar, were the subject of much leg-pulling, especially in England, and young minds in the late sixties and early seventies were convinced by the gullible local media into thinking that anything British was better than everything Indian. In such an atmosphere, Gavaskar started to score runs and told us that an Indian could be the best in his profession. Ten years later, Kapil Dev showed that an Indian could bowl fast. That is why those two are great landmarks in the evolution of Indian cricket.Gavaskar didn’t just stand for pride, he stood for hope too. As long as he was in, India could fight, and the words “Gavaskar out?” were uttered in fear every time the commentator’s voice rose amid the crackle on the radio. He was the head and shoulders of India’s batting, and unless Gundappa Viswanath produced a piece of artistry, he was often the only symbol of resistance. That is central to any understanding of the way he batted. him, it was .Gavaskar’s batting style, based on defence, constructed around the best defensive technique in India’s cricket history, was a product of his times. If you were a wage-earner in the seventies, you saved every penny you could, you always put aside something for a rainy day. If you had a job you hung on to it for life. Safety and caution were the defining factors of India’s middle class, and it was from such a background that Gavaskar emerged.He gave the first hour to the bowlers and fought to get the next four-and-a-half. He hit the ball along the ground and he built his innings on ones and twos, not fours. That would be extravagant and there would be stinging words if he got out in search of a boundary. It wasn’t done. To a generation experiencing the benefits of liberalisation, used to seeing a Sachin Tendulkar symbolising a “spending regime”, these might seem strange words. But when Gavaskar was 103 not out at the end of the first day of a Test match, it wasn’t considered boring, it was invaluable. Gavaskar was still there and there was hope. If he was an investor, he would put his money in secure Government of India bonds, where a Tendulkar might play the equity markets.His style was built around an uncanny feel for the off stump. Anything outside was left alone with the patience of a sage, and when the bowler was compelled to move his line closer to the body, he was whipped through the on, or straight-driven in style. That straight drive was a hallmark, and even if the cult commercial of the era talked about Gavaskar perfecting his square drive, it was the straight drive everyone waited for.His powers of concentration were legendary. Mohinder Amarnath once told me that he thought his partner was in a trance. In a rare interview Gavaskar admitted that he never kept the ball out of sight, following it all the way from the slips to mid-off to the bowler’s hand. And he swears it is true that he did not know what his score was when he was batting, for the mind was only focused on the ball, on the next ball. When Javed Miandad apologised for sledging him during the legendary 96 in Bangalore, he smiled back saying he had no idea what was being said. He hadn’t heard it.That 96, his last Test innings, was a masterpiece played on a mass of rubble impersonating a pitch. The spinners were making the ball turn at right angles and jump past the nose. “I thought I would get 10,” he later said, and much like Tendulkar’s heroic 136 in Chennai 12 years later, the exit of the best batsman was the announcement of the end of the innings. Bishan Bedi, once a great friend of Gavaskar’s and then, sadly, a bitter antagonist, admitted once that had Gavaskar been opening the batting in Barbados in 1997, India would have won. (They were bowled out for 81 chasing 120).

Gavaskar’s batting, constructed around the best defensive technique in India’s cricket history, was a product of his times. If you were a wage-earner in the seventies, you always put aside something for a rainy day. Safety and caution were the defining factors of India’s middle class, and it was from such a background that Gavaskar emerged

Three times when Gavaskar was at the top of the order, India scored more than 400 runs in the fourth innings, and to my mind that will remain his most staggering batting contribution. The win in Port-of-Spain in 1976, where, led by an immaculate century from him, India made 406 for 4, is still India’s finest moment in a Test match. He made a shaky middle order look better than it was, in much the manner today’s openers make a good middle order look worse than it is.Don’t forget either that through the mid-seventies and eighties the standard of bowling in world cricket was awesome. There will probably never be a greater collection of fast bowlers in Test cricket. West Indies could pick any of seven; Australia had Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson, Rodney Hogg and Len Pascoe; England had Bob Willis and Ian Botham; New Zealand had Richard Hadlee; and Pakistan had Imran Khan and Sarfraz Nawaz. Opening the batting wasn’t the cleverest profession and maybe that is why nobody really stayed long enough with Gavaskar.He played many innings to remember, including a half-century in 1971 that he rates among his best. I have one, though, that occupies a very special place in my mind. Not the 221, not the 96, not the 101 at Old Trafford in 1974, not the 188 in the Bicentennial Test at Lord’s (even though that should be compulsory viewing for anyone who wants to learn how to bat), not even the 236 in Madras. It is the century in Delhi in 1983 against a genuinely great West Indian fast bowling attack, when he pulled out the hook shot for only a day and got to the hundred from a mere 94 balls. That day was magic. There was no self-denial that day, the bowlers weren’t given the first hour and it wasn’t a middle-class man saving for his family.He loved his numbers, and in course of time, like everyone else, he will be remembered by those. But they won’t tell you that Gavaskar made you proud to be Indian.

Fifteen years after the last World Cup in Asia, the tournament returns to the region, but where previously a shared culture provided some of the bonds, now money talks

Sharda Ugra19-Feb-2011Once upon a time there was a World Cup in the neighbourhood. Actually “once upon” was only 15 years ago, when there was a neighbourhood, of the kind that is unrecognisable today.The World Cup turns up in the sport’s most populous, tempestuous, and now richest, region, as South Asia’s mild winter begins to depart. It returns to a continent that, for the most part, may look to the outsider as it did in 1996. It continues to pulse with strife and whirl around with the certainty of the unforseeable. What is actually coming back to Asia is a very different game, which will take place in an environment transformed.Between 1996 and 2011 cricket has gone through its own climate change – one that has spread through the game, the players, their support cast, and been absorbed by its very ecosystem. A climate change is first noticed when, after a sizeable gap in time, we realise suddenly that the weather feels odd around us, that the seasons are neither when they used to be nor what they used to be. The World Cup is still a 50-overs-a-side competition, it is coloured clothes and white balls and black sightscreens, but something at an inherent level has shifted. The 2011 World Cup could be the event that demonstrates that shift.Four countries, four stories

In the last 15 years the subcontinent’s cricket has, mostly walked confidently. The Sri Lankans will always look at the 1996 Cup as the year that marked the time they could stand tall in the short game. In the next three Cups they made a semi-final and a final, a record better than any of their neighbours. Sri Lanka are also ahead of them in terms of current win-loss record and in performances at big events like the Champions Trophy and the World Cup. The country has put out two new venues for the World Cup, one of which is Pallekelle. The second, thanks to its president, intends to be a whole new port town and international charter-flight destination, built off a rural stretch of seaside, Hambantota. Sri Lanka has moved ahead from 1996.Bangladesh’s entry into the World Cup was only as recently as 1999, and in their third attempt, in 2007, they beat India and South Africa. In July 2009 there was an away series win against West Indies, and in 2010 they recorded their first-ever win over England and beat New Zealand 4-0 at home. Whatever else it may turn out to be, Bangladesh’s first World Cup at home will be a coming-out party of a cricketing country that now believes.It is, of course, India that has grown the quickest from 1996. Its cricket team in this time shook off match-fixing and took giant strides. It upset the old order and entertained audiences. At another level, however, the nation that first cleared its throat and then demanded to be heard by the Anglocentric powers, has now turned into the game’s loudest bully, ready to flex its muscle and flaunt its wealth. India now remodels and control cricket’s economy, and in the new order it chooses to play autocrat, not leader. On the balance sheet they would call that a 15-year profit.Of the four countries it is Pakistan that can look at the interlude between World Cups with a heart turned to stone. In this period its cricket has in turns been vandalised, scandalised and traumatised. Every misfortune that could be brought or struck upon has been. Its team has oscillated between being a wonderment and a wreck, its future requiring both plan and prayer. In 2003 they were called the Brazil of cricket, but now even the witty lines about the “volatile Asians” have dried up. Even as Pakistan’s talent supply continues to surface, its fabric wears out year after year. It is why the event that ended in Lahore the last time will begin for Pakistan in Sri Lanka.Talk about subcontinental drift.1996: community and sharing

Anyone over the age of 20 in South Asia should remember 1996, because it was the neighbourhood’s event. Called the Wills World Cup, it travelled everywhere, uncaring about the fatigue and dread of teams or TV crews. To 26 cities in three countries. Patna and Peshawar, Kandy and Kanpur.To the scorn of the sport’s upper classes and the dismay of the pundits, it was the first cricket World Cup with double-digit participation: 12 nations, not eight or nine as had been let in until then.A special hotline was set up between two offices in Karachi and Calcutta, to ensure a direct hook-up between argumentative neighbours India and Pakistan. It may have been all the better to have an argument with but actually it meant to bypass unpredictable telecommunication lines so neither middlemen nor pigeon post could become alternative means of communication.

Between 1996 and 2011 cricket has gone through its own climate change – one that has spread through the game, the players, their support cast, and been absorbed by its very ecosystem

Three weeks before the tournament began, when an LTTE attack on the Colombo business district drove away Australians and West Indians, and threatened to sink Sri Lanka’s first-ever World Cup, the neighbourhood stood united. Two days before the tournament, a combined team of Indians and Pakistanis travelled to Colombo as the Asian XI. They played a solidarity match against Sri Lanka at the Premadasa Stadium. Since it was too late for a new uniform for the two-nation Asian XI (and neither would want to wear each other’s colours), a simple solution was found: the players wore white. The sightscreen, painted black for the ODI against Australia that would never happen, was given a rushed early-morning whitewash. Sure, everything was patched together in a hurry – the symbolism, the teams, the game – but it was done. On a working day 10,000 turned up to watch.Fifteen years ago the neighbourhood pulled together instinctively. Today it doesn’t look the same. It certainly doesn’t act the same. Linkages once made of a shared locality, a similar, sometimes shared, culture, are now made mostly by international bank transfers. Between then and now the game has been transformed technically, statistically, economically and politically. The equations between nations have also been altered, the power structures completely restructured.Sure, the 1996 World Cup was far from innocent amateurism and pristine organisation. Its flaws went deep, well beyond its comically tacky opening ceremony, where the laser show bombed as a Hooghly breeze blew some screens off their moorings, and ushers and performers swanned around in civvies because their costumes were stuck in traffic. Deals done around the Cup led to court cases and a bitter falling out between Jagmohan Dalmiya and IS Bindra, once allies who had changed the finances of Indian cricket.Yet to its hosts the 1996 World Cup meant something distinct. It was about community and a sharing – of history, status and a thirst for validation. At that time Asia was a cheeky arriviste in cricket, pushing at the gates. The Grace Gates, if you like, considering the ICC was still headquartered in London. Led by the Indians, Asia banded together and worked in a pack.
In , a carefully detailed and riotously vibrant account of the 1996 World Cup, Mike Marqusee draws out the region’s common thread. The Cup, he writes, was “a global television spectacle, which all three nations hoped would boost their standing in the eyes of the world… especially in the eyes of financiers and investors… all three were opening their economies… building consumer sub-cultures in the midst of mass poverty… all three were racked with ethnic intolerance and in all three the question of national identity was hotly contested”.Yes, the 2011 event will be welcomed by Asia with all its enthusiasm and energy. It has a lovely logo, a goofily named mascot (Stumpy? Distant cousin of Dumpy / Grumpy?), it has a new co-host nation. Between the two events, 2011 could well boast that it is (to steal a pop album title) .Like with most advertising the full truth is in the small print. Marqusee’s “all three” of 1996 now stand separated. In the scheme of things, the fourth host of the 2011 World Cup, Bangladesh, is now treated by its co-host and closest cricketing neighbour as a fringe player on the field and in the boardroom. The only country never to have hosted Bangladesh in a Test series is India. Other than ICC events, the last time the Indians invited them to anything was a 1998 tri-nation series. Should Bangladesh need some solidarity today, it is unlikely a joint India-Pakistani-Sri Lankan squad would be jetted off to provide solace. Even if the romantic idea arose, the teams’ support staff would not stand for it, two days before the opening game.
The “three hosts” of 2011 are, of course, an incomplete entity. As much as the idea might anger those slaving over the final logistics, the event is covered by a lopsided atlas, which has a missing part. Independent of the reasons that have led us down this path, cricket in the here and now, without Pakistan as one of the subcontinent’s hosts is somewhat bereft.Ehsan Mani, one of those involved in the PILCOM (Pakistan India Lanka Committee) for the 1996 World Cup, says he feels a “sadness” that Pakistan is not a part of what he calls a “festival of cricket”. Mani was the ICC chief who had to calm the angry bid rivals, Australia-New Zealand, in March 2006 when the Asians were late in submitting their bid compliance documents for the 2011 Cup, asking for more time. Eventually the ICC granted the extension. It was the promise of India and Pakistan’s participation in South Africa’s 2007 World Twenty20 event that helped them win the 2011 bid with a 7-3 vote.Mani says, “Asia will only remain remain strong if they stay together in the long term.” In the short term, the events of Lahore on March 3, 2009 have scattered the subcontinent. “First there was the failure of the Pakistan board to stick to the protocol and then to try to blame someone else,” Mani says. “We live in a dangerous world. What changed after Lahore was the public perception about cricket tours in Pakistan… ” In just over a month Pakistan lost more than just the rights to stage the World Cup, it lost its home matches, its moorings. The spot-fixing controversy has only made it more of a pariah, its team now loaded with the double burden of displaying ability and proving intergrity every time it plays.India is now the big brother who looms over the game•Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty ImagesMoney talks, money grows

The biggest tectonic shift in the World Cup has been to do with finances, brought by their move eastward. Asia’s last two World Cups worked on contradictory cash registers. The 1996 Cup, officially titled the Wills World Cup after a cigarette brand (like its 1992 Benson & Hedges predecessor) was the last time any sponsor would earn the title rights to cricket’s premier tournament. Title sponsors ITC paid approxmiately US$13m (about Rs 56 crores) and the television sponsorship went for over $10m (around Rs 45 crores). At the time those figures were the great leap forward for the finances on offer in the game – or rather, on offer when India was in the mix.Nineteen ninety-six was the last “sponsor’s World Cup” – every event till then and including 1996 had offered dissimilar winner’s trophies and been conducted with varying marketing plans, financial ambitions, and a share of the profits to the ICC. The 1999 event was run by the ECB and profits were shared with the ICC based on a formula worked out in what then came to be called the “Mani Paper”.At one time a host nation’s four-yearly pot of gold, the event was fully owned by the ICC in 2003, even though the now well-recognised 11kg, silver-gold trophy was instituted after 1996. The Cup is now the ruling body’s biggest money-spinning event. Its first “property”, however, was the 1999 ICC Knock-Out, now known as the Champions Trophy.Following the 1999 World Cup, the ICC sold a package of global rights for the World Cup and the Champions Trophy to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp-owned Global Cricket Corporation for $550m for a seven-year period until 2007. The latest bundle of rights for ICC events were won by ESPNStar Sports for $1.1b, with sponsorship earnings rising to $400m from the $50m earned by the ICC in 1996.Every World Cup will now look pretty similar in terms of signage and merchandising, the complicated business of “ambush marketing” breathing down every host’s neck. The ICC says its millions are now used to develop the game outside the 10 Test-playing nations. From under 50 in 1996, the ICC has a total of 105 member nations. Yet the ICC intends to have the 2015 World Cup feature only 10 nations. Mani is not amused: “If you don’t support countries that are struggling, they will go backwards. At one time two-three countries are always struggling, financially, in terms of resources in regard to the game. You can’t run a viable international world sport with only three or four countries playing it.”Like 1996, maybe 2011 will also carry with it a message about Asia as well as a message to the neighbourhood. That the after-effects of climate change are felt by everyone, even gated communities.

South Africa’s failure to adapt their approach to the unexpected threat posed by India’s bowlers led to their collapse in the first innings

Firdose Moonda at Kingsmead27-Dec-2010When South Africa took to the field for the second time in two days, there was something markedly different about them. For the first nine overs, they walked around like the zombies out of the movie. They appeared shell-shocked, well and truly bewildered that on day two they found themselves bowling again.Even though South Africa had been saying all the right things about expecting India to put up a fight, the knockout punch that the Indian attack dealt them came as a complete surprise. Although South Africa insisted that they respected India and understood the quality of their opposition, they didn’t expect that quality to unleash itself in the way it did – through the Indian bowlers.Graeme Smith, after the first Test in Centurion, stopped just short of saying that he thought India would not be able to take 20 wickets against South Africa. He was asked if he thought the Indian attack was capable of bowling South Africa out twice. This was his answer: “I’d love to say no, but no one wants to touch the money.”Everything about Smith’s expression and body language as he spoke showed he didn’t believe that India’s bowlers could be much of a threat. Today, they didn’t even have to take 20 wickets, it was the ten they skittled for 131 runs that shook South Africa’s usually solid line-up to its core and exposed one of the team’s biggest weaknesses: the inability to regroup once their plans have been bent out of shape by something that is not in their control.Matters became tense when Smith dutifully put on his bunny ears and fell to Zaheer Khan and the anxiety levels rose when Alviro Petersen was dismissed. But it was when bad luck struck and Jacques Kallis was run out at the non-strikers end by Ishant Sharma that plans started disintegrating. Eight balls later de Villiers fell victim to a peach of a delivery from Sreesanth, a ball he could do nothing about, but it was a sign to South Africa to start taking the Indian threat more seriously.They didn’t seem to do that and when Harbhajan Singh came on to bowl, any strategy South Africa may have had rolled away from them like a Turkish carpet. South Africa targeted Singh successfully in the first Test. Smith even had a little dig at him in the post-match press conference. The South Africa captain was smug in his statement that Paul Harris had had more of an impact than Harbhajan, and performed better throughout the game. His statement may have been accurate, but the manner in which he delivered his observation suggested disdain for Harbhajan.South Africa may have thought that the Turbanator would be ineffective on this tour but he proved them wrong in emphatic fashion. Hashim Amla, who is traditionally strong on the leg side, and had faced Harbhajan many times before, played the sweep shot to a delivery that held its line and went straight on. He was given out lbw and initially it looked as though he was unlucky but replays showed that the ball would have gone on to hit middle and leg stump.Harbhajan’s next two wickets came from outrageous catches. First, Rahul Dravid took his 200th catch with an impeccably timed dive to his left at slip to dismiss Dale Steyn and then Cheteshwar Pujara anticipated well at short leg to send Harris on his way. Harbhajan’s wizardry had not been completely exhausted and he took a stunner of a catch himself on the fine-leg boundary to hand Ishant Sharma a wicket. It was those improbable chances that India latched onto that would have stunned South Africa, who were not expecting such a committed display from the visitors.It may be easier for South Africa to blame it on their Durban jinx. Kingsmead has been a particularly problematic venue, where South Africa have been bowled out in the 130s in three consecutive seasons. In the 2009-10 edition, they were bundled out for 133 in the second innings against England to lose by an innings and 98 runs. Graeme Swann was the chief destroyer then, taking 5 for 54 in that innings and nine wickets in the match. The season before, South Africa were all out for 138 against Australia. Mitchell Johnson did the bulk of the damage as he quite literally punctured South Africa’s plans by breaking Smith’s hand and smacking Kallis on the jaw, sending them both to hospital in the space of 16 overs.Durban is becoming the hoodoo venue for the hosts but they can’t blame it for the tailspin they find themselves in after their clinical approach failed. In Kolkata earlier this year, South Africa went from 218 for 2 to 296 all out after an attack from Khan and Harbhajan. It’s not just in Durban where the batting struggles to adjust when the need arises. What Kolkata tells us is that South Africa need to have a more dynamic approach so that they can improvise when things aren’t going according to plan.

Smart cricket is not a feature of this Australian team, which provides patches of promise followed by hours of misery

Peter English at the SCG06-Jan-2011Australia’s favourite word of the series has been “disappointing”. A month ago, after the Adelaide defeat, it was appropriate for summing up the mood, but with every bad day since it has barely covered the magnitude of the slide. Apart from a handful of highlights in Perth, the Australians have been waiting to hit rock bottom. The pebble hasn’t landed yet.Each morning the home supporters have headed to the various grounds hoping for better and seen much worse. In Brisbane England were 1 for 517 and Australia were 3 for 2 in Adelaide. At the WACA they slipped to 5 for 69 and at the MCG they were all out for 98 on the opening day. Today, when they had promised to fight hard early, they allowed England to score 644, their highest total in Australia.Watching the bowling over the first half of the day was as soul-sapping for the home supporters as seeing the batting in the afternoon. England requested the extra half an hour in an effort to finish the contest in four days, but they will have to wait until tomorrow to sign off the series. Australia held on to be 7 for 213, heading for a record third innings loss for the series.One of the many problems with this team is there are patches of promise followed by hours of misery. England were 5 for 226 when Paul Collingwood was dismissed on the third day, but Australia let them recover and then dominate to the point where the efforts of the home bowlers were treated as casually as throw-downs. Graeme Swann, the No.10, was the main aggressor when Mitchell Johnson was thrashed for 35 runs in two overs. Just a fortnight ago Johnson was a world-beater, but he has been battered once again.Noble draws are not a concept Australia really understands, so Shane Watson came out in a boundary-hungry mood, pulling his first delivery for four and speeding to 38 at almost a run-a-ball. Such is the team’s state that Watson is its second-most valuable player behind Michael Hussey. The side will take every start he gets, while praying that one day he can start to add to his two Test centuries. Blaming him is not fair when he is one of the few consistent ones.Watson is a much-improved cricketer but talk of him being a captaincy contender cannot be taken seriously as long as he continues to make such basic errors. In Melbourne he ran out Phillip Hughes and this time Watson’s daydream cost him his wicket. After dawdling over a single, he did not bother to look at Hughes when he came back for a second until he realised they were both at the same end.Smart cricket is not a feature of this team. Bowlers let the pressure off with legside deliveries or short ones outside off, and the changing fields make it harder for struggling fast bowlers to find their rhythm. Batsmen insist on following balls angling away even though they know it increases the risk of an edge. Hughes, Usman Khawaja and Michael Clarke all nicked ones that were leaving them today.For a brief period, if you squinted really hard, it was possible to glimpse the future when Clarke and Khawaja were putting on 65. The captain was confident, successfully playing his shots despite his run drought, and Khawaja was graceful and assured. Saving the game would have still required a miracle, but watching them was fun and, most importantly, a distraction from the overall direction of the match and the series.More disappointment came when the duo’s starts were not converted. A century was needed but Clarke delivered 41 and Khawaja 21. Khawaja is new and has been encouraging in his first two innings, while Clarke repeats his flashy mistakes. Clarke stubbed the bat angrily into the ground after nicking James Anderson. England’s bowlers have been excellent throughout this series, but Clarke used to be so much better than them. He has a lot to consider before the next Test campaign against Sri Lanka in August, including a switch back to No.5.Hussey has been Australia’s man for a crisis but after holding them together for the first three Tests he has lost power. He was disappointed to cut Tim Bresnan to gully. Brad Haddin, with another miss at No.6, felt the same when caught behind playing an ugly pull to Chris Tremlett. Johnson was very disappointed when he was bowled first ball.So were the Australian spectators who had already started to leave, searching for more suitable words to describe the performances throughout an Ashes-losing summer. Dreadful, awful and woeful don’t convey the depths to which Australia have fallen. Thankfully it’s nearly over.

England did enough to show that their game-brains are still in place. After the celebrations that followed the Melbourne win, they showed no visible signs of any hangover

Andrew Miller at the SCG03-Jan-2011Without ever quite matching the penetrative excellence of their Boxing Day work at Melbourne, England’s cricketers stole the ascendancy on the first day at Sydney, thanks to their determination to give their opponents nothing. In conditions that weren’t quite as helpful as the grey weather might have suggested, they ploughed a disciplined furrow, sometimes inching a touch too wide to be truly in the hunt for wickets, but rarely if ever did they allow Australia’s batsmen to slip the leash. Four wickets in 59 overs, or the equivalent of one an hour, was a perfectly acceptable return against a run-rate that barely nudged past two-and-a-quarter an over.There was a time, not so long ago, when no Test line-up would feel cornered by such slow scoring – in fact, on this very ground 24 years ago, when Australia beat England to ease the pain of their last home Ashes defeat, their net run-rate for the match was almost identical to today’s figure, with Dean Jones digging in for nine hours in the first innings to set up the game with an unbeaten 184. Times have moved on, however, and the twitchiness of Australia’s top order was palpable today, as they dug in for the hard yards, only to glance up at the scoreboard, and realise they were travelling without moving.”We bowled well, we put them under a lot of pressure in the first session, and I think it’s definitely our day,” said Tim Bresnan, who was the most successful member of England’s attack for the second innings running. “We bowled really well in the first session with the new ball, we made them play in a way they are probably not used to playing, and so we’re happy with that. A lot went past the bat and we got inside-edges onto pads and stuff like that, so although they played really well, we were unlucky not to have them more down.”Such confidence in Australia’s fallibility stems from the fact that they have been bowled out on the opening day of each of the last three Tests – even during their third-Test defeat at Perth where hindsight demonstrated that 268 was significantly better than par. The loss of control in that particular innings, however, had been the clincher, with Australia clattering along at a tempo of 3.52 an over. The runaway train had enough of a head of steam to make an impact before it ran out of track.England learned their lessons from that match with impressive speed and selectorial decisiveness, as they jettisoned Steven Finn for conceding five an over, and brought in the thrifty Bresnan for the MCG, where his ability to strangle the run-rate was critical in dismissing Australia for 98 on the first day. It’s been significantly tougher to break down Australia’s resistance in this game, but against a line-up containing such natural ball-strikers as Shane Watson, Philip Hughes and the next man in, Steve Smith, England believe that patience will pay off in the end.At least in Usman Khawaja, Australia showcased a debutant who looks to have the technique and the temperament to thrive in the face of such a parsimonious attack. His dismissal on the stroke of the day’s final rain break was an anticlimactic end to one of the most promising debuts of Australia’s recent history, but a forgivable one given the pressure of the occasion. Hughes and Watson had fewer excuses, however. Both men battled admirably in a tough morning session, with Watson waiting an unheard-of 89 deliveries to register his first boundary. And yet, both men gave their positions away meekly, fencing to the cordon when another dot-ball was there to be accumulated.Bresnan, for his part, did not believe it was a coincidence. “We bowled well and we got our rewards, so why shouldn’t it be like that,” he said. “They played really, really well this morning – especially with it moving as it was – but I think [Hughes] could have nicked any one of those, he might have nicked one first- or second-ball after lunch anyway, so it certainly didn’t change our thought processes or how we went about our work. The first session, we forced them to play in their shells a little bit, [while] in the Khawaja-Watson partnership, they played a few more shots – which helped us pick up a few wickets.”Australia’s glory years, which were effectively brought to a close in a triumphant triple-retirement on this very ground four years ago, were built on two key principles. Their bowlers, led by Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, gave their opponents nothing; their batsmen, led by Matthew Hayden and Ricky Ponting, took what little remained and more besides by belting along at close to 4 an over. It’s an approach that has become embedded in the Australian psyche, but needs to be unlearnt in a hurry, because the time has come to go back to batting for time.With the exception of Michael Hussey, who is the last man standing again, none of Australia’s established line-up have shown the ability to bed in for the long haul, although Khawaja does look capable of bearing some of the load in the middle order, which in turn may take some of the pressure off Michael Clarke and – if and when he returns from finger surgery – Ricky Ponting. “I had a ball out there, I was having so much fun,” said Khawaja at the end of his debut innings, which is not a bad mindset to take.But in the end, England did enough to show that their game-brains are still in place. It helped that the weather played into their hands once again, with less scorch and more squelch creating a home from home for the bowlers, particularly Bresnan who learned his game up at Headingley. But after the celebrations that followed the Melbourne win, they showed no visible signs of any hangover.”I think these were very English conditions we got today,” said Bresnan. “We were definitely pleased with the first use of that pitch. I think we were going to bowl first anyway, the way it looked and the overhead conditions, because it’s only going to get better. That’s how we see it. But it’s always good to get the first punch in, and I think we certainly did get the first punch in. It’s definitely our day.”

The Railways ditched and the queues were long, but Kent and Surrey’s fans enjoyed the cricket and dealt with all the inconveniences with humour

Stuart Croll27-Jun-2011Choice of game
A progressive and wise move by Kent CC to play this derby in Beckenham as there can’t be a better ground closer to the border of both counties. What the board of Kent CC could not have envisaged when making their decision was that the South Eastern Railways would decide today was the day to close the line to Beckenham for engineering works. But despite this inconvenience a healthy crowd was in attendance.Key performer
How I wished the key performer would be Robert Key. Alas the cricket-comedy gods did not want to play along so the Kent captain contributed just one run. The dismissal of Key and fellow opener Joe Denly brought together Azhar Mahmood and Martin van Jaarsveld whose big-hitting and astute running set up Kent’s victory. van Jaarsveld edges it as key performer, thanks to his higher score.One thing I’d change
The queues. There were lengthy queues to enter the ground, queues at the bar and queues for the toilets – yes even the gents toilets. Now the British love to queue but these queues were at times so lengthy there were times when we thought we had been transported to Glastonbury rather than watching the cricket.Interplay I enjoyed
After the opening four overs of the chase, Kent were struggling with two wickets down. One fan was so annoyed he shouted: “Come on, Kent, this is like watching Geoffrey Boycott.” Another fan replied: “Oi, this is Kent, show some respect. It’s like watching Chris Tavare.” Much hilarity ensued, and by the time it had subsided, Kent were ahead of the run-rate.Wow moment
The heatwave. With so many Twenty20 games falling foul of the weather, this season it was just great to enjoy a game knowing it would reach its natural conclusion.The “you-can’t-be-serious” moment
Considering it is the middle of Wimbledon fortnight, the John McEnroe moment was when, in between overs, the PA announcer broadcast congratulations to a couple from South Carolina who were spending their honeymoon at the cricket. The entire crowd was aghast wondering why this couple would rather spend their honeymoon in Beckenham watching Twenty20 cricket than holidaying in Hawaii, Mauritius, Las Vegas or any other place on the planet.Shot of the day
A six from Mahmood was so huge it would have disrupted the train-service into Beckenham Junction had they been running today.Player watch
Despite being on the losing side, Tom Maynard again showed his class in this form of the game. Surrey have lost a few players to England this summer, and many are predicting Jason Roy to be next, but Maynard continues to impress and may just overtake the youngster in England’s plans.Crowd meter
There was good-natured fun between both sets of fans, which, considering the queues and the heatwave, was better than should have been expected. As one wag in the public bar said: “Remember today – this is our summer.”Marks out of 10
Kent won quite easily, but for a while this was a close-fought encounter. Also, it was played in front of a big crowd under lovely sunshine – so eight out of ten.Overall
On the plus side, it was a good Twenty20 game with plenty of sixes. Also, Kent CC should be congratulated for moving the game from Canterbury to Beckenham. It’s such a shame that National Rail closed the line in and out of Beckenham Junction on the very day the game was arranged. Is it too much to ask for a bit of common sense to be shown? That aside, an enjoyable day out, and a good game.

New Zealand are not a team of superstars, they’re a team of working-class heroes, like Nathan McCullum, who have built a reputation of being scrappers and in the scrap of their lives sent South Africa out of the tournament

Firdose Moonda in Colombo27-Mar-2011Two starry-eyed teenage girls sauntered up to Nathan McCullum to ask him for his autograph. They handed him a pen and some paper and just as he was about to make his mark, they pulled it away. One of them had realised that they didn’t want his signature anymore, because the man whose scrawl they did want, younger brother Brendon, was seated a little further away. “Sorry,” they said sheepishly to Nathan, who grinned knowingly. “It’s ok,” he replied.It’s no secret that Brendon is the rock star, not just of his family, but of the team. He’s the one who all the girls want to see and all the boys want to be. Almost everyone else is just another New Zealand cricketer. But it’s this bunch of AN Others who have made it as the only non-subcontinental team in the World Cup semi-finals. They are not a team of superstars, they’re a team of working-class heroes, who’ve built a reputation of being scrappers and in the scrap of their lives sent South Africa out of the tournament.McCullum senior was very much a part of that victory, getting the wicket of Hashim Amla thanks to a bit of luck and then playing an integral part in South Africa’s collapse, by bowling JP Duminy. He showed just how well he could play his role as a spinner with Daniel Vettori at the other end, someone he has been without in the last two matches, against Canada and Sri Lanka.It’s the presence of these senior players that Nathan thinks has made the difference at the business end of the World Cup. “We have to admire the way that the leaders in the team have been standing up in this competition,” he said in Colombo. “Ross Taylor, Brendon McCullum, Daniel Vettori and Jacob Oram – they are the four biggest guys in this team and they’ve been leading from the front so it makes it a lot easier for guys like myself and Tim Southee and everyone else to come in and try and keep up to their standards.”Oram led the charge against South Africa, with a performance as big as he is himself, snatching the catch of Jacques Kallis that turned the game on its head and taking four wickets. As one of the elder statesmen of the side, Oram’s inspired showing has fuelled New Zealand’s belief, that anything is possible, especially in the knockout stage of the competition. “The guys showed a bit of Kiwi fight and really believed we could win from any position,” Nathan said. “The difference between that and other games is that no matter what the situation we thought we could win and as soon as we took one or two quick wickets it was more apparent that there was an opportunity and we sort of drilled it home.”The win represented more than just a ticket to the semi-finals for New Zealand. They have been through a tough period. Apart from three wins against Pakistan, one in this World Cup, New Zealand had not beaten a top level side in 12 months, apart from beating India in August 2010.Their preparations for the World Cup, while well thought out, with them spending large chunks of the last nine months in the subcontinent and only playing against sub-continent sides in that time, had been demoralising. They didn’t make it to the final of a tri-series in Sri Lanka, which included India, lost 4-0 to Bangladesh, 5-0 to India and 3-2 to Pakistan at home. “It was tough at times touring and not winning but I think we have learnt along the way,” Nathan said. “We’ve made a lot of inroads in our performance and if we can just keep trying to improve and put our plans in place then hopefully we can go forward in this tournament.”To go further they will have to topple giants again – giants that have not looked like being toppled. Sri Lanka are in menacing form, coming through the quarter-final with a 10-wicket triumph over England and are, without doubt, the favourites. Nathan has identified one area where New Zealand can look to make a mark. “The big thing for us is taking wickets at the top. Their middle order is a little fragile at the moment, they haven’t had a lot of batting. It’s been almost two weeks since they’ve had a bat, we’re hoping to get a few wickets early and then get into their longish tail.”The Sri Lankan middle order last batted in a match nine days ago against New Zealand. Only Mahela Jayawardene and Angelo Mathews got into double figures. Against Zimbabwe, 17 days ago, only Kumar Sangakkara did. Their middle-order woes are similar to South Africa’s and after the performance New Zealand put in to cripple South Africa, Sri Lanka will do well to be wary of an attack that thrives on patience and pressure-building.There’s also something else they now base their game on, which Nathan said is renewed passion, the feeling that has turned the whole team into rock stars, even if it’s only to themselves. “The passion and the pride and the emotion of how we finished it [the game against South Africa] off and every wicket meant so much. If we can keep working on that pride and that emotion then I think everything that we do will be from the heart. If we can keep fighting and keep working our butts off then hopefully things will come our way.”

History suggests it is impossible to do both, mind sore hands and fields for a long period. Rashid Latif and Adam Gilchrist, two adept multi-taskers in their time, weigh in

Sidharth Monga10-Nov-2011″High and bullet-like to his left,” described it.Pakistan were favourites to win the Lord’s ODI when they had reduced England’s chase of 230 to 154 for 6 in the 36th over. Shoaib Akhtar was in rhythm that June afternoon in 2003, bowling fast; “extra-fast”, as observed. Then the edge, high and bullet-like, to the left of Rashid Latif, was dropped, and the beneficiary, Marcus Trescothick, saw England home.Latif remembers the drop clearly. It was the last of the 25 ODIs he captained Pakistan in, to go with six Tests. “We were winning that match,” Latif says. “Shoaib Akhtar was very quick that day. Still, I was surprised I dropped that catch. It wasn’t a difficult chance, and there were very few catches I dropped.”I kept thinking about it till I went back to the mark next ball. Then I realised I hadn’t stood there when I dropped the catch. I had been closer to the stumps than usual. I had been setting the field and had walked towards the stumps. I was so involved in doing that that I ended up standing too far in front for the next delivery. Trescothick nicked, I couldn’t judge it, it hit the hand, and fell out.”This may be a rare case but it’s definitely the sort of thing selectors have in mind when they try to keep wicketkeepers away from captaincy. The numbers are instructive. MS Dhoni’s 32 Tests as a keeper-captain are well ahead of next man Gerry Alexander’s 18. Only nine wicketkeepers have managed to captain their sides in 10 Tests. The ICC may have selected him as keeper-captain of their Test team of the year, but Kumar Sangakkara never kept wickets when captaining Sri Lanka, even if it meant handing over the gloves to the lesser-adept Tillakaratne Dilshan. Latif’s example might sound a bit extreme but he uses it because, well, it exists. The less conspicuous issues are greater in number.A wicketkeeper’s stock work, especially in Tests, usually starts when everybody else begins to switch off. Every ball is an event that builds up slowly. The bowler runs in, the fielders take steps forward, the batsman concentrates on the ball in the bowler’s hand, the non-striker and the umpire become alert, even the worst commentators shut up. The ball is pitched outside off, the batsman shoulders arms, and switches off. The fielders relax, the bowler starts thinking of the next delivery, the umpire and the non-striker relax; the commentators think of a joke, a statistic, an observation. According to stories told affectionately by Pakistani cricketers, Inzamam-ul-Haq could even doze off. The captain starts thinking where the game is going, whether he needs a bowling or a fielding change.

“Cricket is a game of concentration. Wicketkeeping more so. Calculation is the captain’s job. What fields are required, how to use a bowler. You get lost in the match. You forget your own performance”Rashid Latif

If the keeper is the captain, the moment represents, to loosely use a term in vogue, a conflict of interest. A keeper’s job is to stay blank, concentrate on the ball, rise from his squat as it passes the stumps, and collect it sweetly, in the middle-third of the palm. The margin of error is miniscule. If the timing is even slightly off, it can hurt the fingers. You can’t afford to have your mind elsewhere then. Especially in places like England, where the ball swings late, or when the bounce is variable. The hands get sore if collections are even slightly off; the fingers get bruised. And it takes only the odd unclean collection to start a chain.Paul Nixon recently observed of Dhoni: “I have been watching and studying the way he is keeping. From what I have seen, I think he has sore hands. He normally catches the ball strong and aggressively. I have seen him keeping the ball in an exaggerated manner. You do that as a keeper when your hands are sore.”There is a vicious cycle here. The hands become sore, so you are not relaxed while collecting, and thus you leave yourself open to further soreness and bruises. And they can pile up. Some might say Dhoni’s disfigured hands – at the best of times he can’t get his middle finger into an inner glove comfortably – are par for the course for a wicketkeeper, but it is possible that captaincy has played more than a significant role in it.Even without the extra responsibility of captaincy, the wicketkeeper is arguably the most important man on the field, batsmen and umpires included.”He actually runs the game,” says Latif. “I can’t talk about others, but from my experiences, your performance suffers when you are the captain too. Cricket is a game of concentration. Wicketkeeping more so. Calculation is the captain’s job. What fields are required, how to use a bowler. You get lost in the match. You forget your own performance. All you are thinking is who should bowl the next over, does my strike bowler need rest, are my fields too defensive, are my fields conceding too many easy boundaries…”Adam Gilchrist, who captained Australia to their series win in India in 2004-05, agrees about the demands of the jobs, but looks at it differently. “It all depends on the personality of the wicketkeeper,” he says. “Lots of concentration required, but it’s a part of the challenge, a part of satisfaction from the job. You work on your fitness, you work on your skill, and that fitness training allows you to maintain a better concentration.””You can effectively run the game through eye contact”•AFPGilchrist was the original deputy to Steve Waugh. When an injury forced Waugh out of a Test in 2000-01, a nervous Gilchrist, as said, captained Australia to a win over West Indies in Adelaide. When it came to replacing Waugh full time, though, the captaincy went to Ricky Ponting. Here comes into the picture the other, modern expectation from a keeper, the batting, which makes the job even more difficult.”I think Ricky was the right man for the job, and I am not sure that I needed to be doing it full time because of the amount that was on offer,” Gilchrist says. “The batting and keeping – for me, personally, I don’t think I needed to be doing all that full time. We had a man qualified to take the reins, and I loved supporting him.” Whether Gilchrist would have taken the challenge for his satisfaction had he not also been a specialist batsman seems a pointless question now.Latif isn’t in direct disagreement with Gilchrist. They concur on the unique advantage a wicketkeeper brings as a captain.”I always found it a terrific spot to view a match from,” Gilchrist says. “It gives you proper insight into how the bowlers are going, field positions and angles.” Apart from that, the keeper knows exactly what the ball is doing. He knows what the batsman is trying to do. From how hard the ball thuds into his gloves, he can tell if the bowler is tiring.Latif goes a step further and says a keeper as captain can do better in terms of strategy than just performing his perceived orthodox role of passing privileged information to the captain – preferably a batsman – and advising him. “The whole game is being played out in front of your eyes,” he says. “If somebody else is the captain, you have or send the message across through someone. If you are yourself the captain, you need not go anywhere. You can effectively run the game through eye contact. If you can make it work, it works beautifully.”Wasim Akram, an advocate of bowler-captains, thinks only wicketkeepers can match bowlers when it comes to captaincy. As an aside, Pakistan need to be thanked for consistently challenging conventional ideas about captaincy. Which other team can claim to have had five unconventional captains in a decade – two bowlers, two wicketkeepers and an allrounder – and also to have won the World Cup, the Asian Test Championship, and stayed a formidable team during the period?Latif found a method to keep himself fresh. “Initially I spread around the responsibility,” he says. “I said, Younis Khan will command the fielding and I will just relax and look after bowling changes. Then I wouldn’t get involved in their work. Because the match is developing at the same time.”

The success story

If Latif had fielding captains who could share his burden, Dhoni has a bowling captain in Zaheer Khan. Moreover, as a captain Dhoni keeps things simple. He seems comfortable letting go. He doesn’t stress himself too much with selection issues, and only truly switches on as captain after crossing the white line. The coaches he has worked with say the division of work is clear: it’s their job to provide the best-prepared team, and his job to take over on the field.

“There are many batsmen or bowlers who prefer to concentrate on their own cricket. It’s the same with keeper-batsmen. It shouldn’t be a pigeon-hole”Adam Gilchrist

Then again, Dhoni’s India play much more cricket than Latif’s Pakistan did, or Australia did when Gilchrist played. On his days off, Dhoni captains his IPL franchise. Although strong and fit, he doesn’t have a traditional wicketkeeper’s body. It is tough to be extremely supple behind the wicket when you’re as big as Dhoni is. Even with all the workload and captaincy pressure he remains the best keeper in the country, which has to be hard work. He has an understandably homemade technique with the gloves too. If the no-follow-through stumping is pure flash, for some reason he fails to dive for the catches between him and first slip more often than other keepers do.In England when everything caught up – the stress of captaining a failing unit, the absence of the bowling captain, the fatigue, the late swing – Dhoni seemed every bit a keeper who could do with a little less work. And the inevitable question arose: to keep or to lead?”I don’t think we should brand every wicketkeeper [as] being unable to do it,” Gilchrist says. “It’s the same as some batsmen not being able to handle captaincy. There are many batsmen or many bowlers who prefer to concentrate on their own cricket. It’s the same with keeper-batsmen. It shouldn’t be a pigeon-hole.” Then again, if a batsman or a bowler loses form on account of captaincy, there are five other batsmen and four other bowlers. The wicketkeeper is all alone.Latif empathises with Dhoni. “I am a huge fan of Dhoni the captain,” he says. “As a wicketkeeper he is not outstanding, has never been outstanding in the way that somebody like [Nayan] Mongia was. But Dhoni is a good leader, and solid behind the stumps, if you take out the England tour. It’s possible he took all the pressure on himself. As a wicketkeeper, we just need to let him be for a while.”Dilip Vengsarkar, chairman of the selection committee that made Dhoni India’s captain, says they didn’t need to give special consideration to his being a wicketkeeper. “Actually when you are the captain, you are so involved in the game, you don’t think about the workload,” he says. “You are engrossed in thinking about the next move, the next bowling change, the next batsman, the field placement. As a captain it can actually take the pressure off your keeping.”Dhoni’s keeping and captaincy workload is greater than those of wicketkeeper-captains in the past•AFPGilchrist agrees. He digs into personal experience of leading Australia in India in 2004. “If anything, captaining helped me in that series,” he says. “By being able to remain focused on other things than just my own form. By having other things, it allowed my personal game to relax and enjoy it.”Both also agree that Dhoni is the only man who has come close to being a durable keeper-captain at the top level. Vengsarkar, though, would love to see him rested some time soon. “I admire his courage,” he says. “He is a person who is playing each and every game; the only person in the team who is playing non-stop cricket. He can easily ask for rest, but he says this is his team.”If you are playing non-stop cricket at the highest level, it takes its toll. That’s what happened in England.”Four years ago Vengsarkar saw in the “way he approached the game” that Dhoni was the man. The man who would start as limited-overs captain and would gradually take over in Tests, because the next big assignment was in Australia, a tough tour for captains. As India prepare to go to Australia again, it’s Dhoni’s keeping that will be watched more closely than his captaincy. If he comes back well as a keeper and expectedly goes on to become India’s most successful captain, future selection committees will have a success story to refer to when they are apprehensive about handing their side’s reins to a wicketkeeper.

Australia’s bowling, so unthreatening during the Ashes last summer, appears to be rediscovering its elements of mystery, danger and excitement with a trio of bewitching debuts in the space of six Test matches.

Daniel Brettig at the Gabba04-Dec-2011First Nathan Lyon, then Pat Cummins, and now James Pattinson. Australia’s bowling, so unthreatening during the Ashes last summer, appears to be rediscovering its elements of mystery, danger and excitement with a trio of bewitching debuts in the space of six Test matches.Pattinson’s blink-or-you’ll-miss-it destruction of a fading New Zealand on the fourth morning of the first Test in Brisbane was as thrilling for Australia as Lyon’s five against Sri Lanka in Galle, and Cummins’ wickets and winning runs to stun South Africa in Johannesburg.The fascinating thing about Pattinson’s spell, which began with the wicket of Brendon McCullum on the third evening and peaked with three wickets in four balls – Jesse Ryder retained his off stump by a centimetre or two on the hat-trick ball – in his first over on the fourth, is that it had been a relatively long time coming. Unlike Lyon and Cummins, each introduced to the Test team on the strength of their promise within 12 months of a first-class debut, 21-year-old Pattinson had been building up to his baggy green cap for some time. He first toured with Australia to India in late 2010, and has whirred down over upon over in the nets across four overseas trips with the national team. On that first trip Pattinson left a distinct impression with all the batsmen who faced him, and only a back complaint prevented him from edging closer to the Test XI in the summer that followed.Such growing pains are considered inevitable among those who have known the challenge of bowling swiftly for their country, and Pattinson returned stronger still. His innate speed and bounce have been augmented by the development of a powerful physique, a torso convex where once it was concave. The time in the wings has also allowed Pattinson to adapt from the “dry”, short of length bowling desired by his state, Victoria, to the fuller and more swinging approach favoured by Australia’s bowling coach Craig McDermott. Possessing quite pronounced natural curve away from the bat, Pattinson has developed the ability and the inclination to pitch the ball further up, something he was richly rewarded for at the Gabba.McDermott’s role in this is not to be underestimated, for he has spent as much time with Pattinson as any other member of the Australian attack in recent months. As the reserve bowler in Sri Lanka, Pattinson spent an awful lot of time delivering to McDermott’s baseball mitt rather than Brad Haddin’s gloves, and had to deal with the frustrations of a non-playing tourist. In this case, McDermott’s empathy, having lived every experience of a young fast bowler both in and out of the Australian team, has proved invaluable. After spending so much time with Pattinson, there was even a hint of disappointment in McDermott when Cummins was chosen first.”I think it’s been very helpful, particularly with young guys like James Pattinson,” McDermott said in South Africa. “Throughout the Sri Lanka tour he trained his backside off day in, day out and didn’t really play much cricket. He’s come to South Africa and bowled very well in the T20s and was unlucky to not stay on for the Tests.”Much as Pattinson had to wait a little longer for his Test debut, he also had to wait until the second innings to find his best rhythm. Handed the new ball by Michael Clarke on the first morning, Pattinson was understandably nervous, and his palms grew clammier with each brazen stroke by McCullum. Importantly, few of the runs Pattinson leaked were to deliveries fired halfway down the pitch, instead they were full, swinging and loaded with risk for any batsman choosing to chase them. A better second spell would account for the captain Ross Taylor, who dragged onto his stumps in reckless fashion in the same over the bowler had muddled him by moving the ball into him and also away.Having claimed a first wicket and batted capably in Australia’s 427, Pattinson emerged for the second innings with a clearer head. Granted a brief burst at New Zealand’s openers, he added direction and venom to the swing of the first innings, and capped a quartet of overs for one run by drawing McCullum into an edge to second slip. Swift, seaming and indeterminate of length, it would have been difficult to bowl a better delivery to a top order batsman late in the day.When play resumed this morning Pattinson found it was equally useful when those same batsmen were starting again. Variety accounted for Martin Guptill, squeezing a rib-bound rocket to short leg, before Kane Williamson, Taylor and the nightwatchman Doug Bracewell fenced dimly at the away swing and offered catches to the cordon. Late arrivals to the ground blinked at a scoreboard reading 5-28, Pattinson 5-7, and the match decided.Lyon, now a comparative veteran of six Tests, claimed a hopelessly befuddled Jesse Ryder as the next wicket on his way to another exceptionally tidy match analysis of 7-88. With Cummins soon to return from the inconvenience of a bruised heel, Australia’s bowling ensemble is starting to look as rich in 2011-12 as it seemed poor only a season ago. Clarke now has high speed, late swing, and beguiling spin to call on. He is becoming spoiled for choice, where at times his predecessor Ricky Ponting struggled to know who to throw the ball to.