Second Test ends in dull draw

I'm not saying I was a fly on the wall of the Indian dressing room this morning, or that I then buzzed over to the England camp for a bit of a listen.

Extrapolating from the way the fifth day went, though, if I had been that mythical fly, this is what I probably would have heard:

Indian think tank: Yes I know we spoke -- alright, I spoke -- about white-washing England 3-0 and all that, but you have to understand that all that is merely playing to the galleries, and unless we play to the galleries there won't be any spectators in those galleries and without spectators turning up, our sponsors are going to get pretty pissed off. So, as long as we all are in agreement that the "whitewash" business was strictly for public consumption, let's move on. Simple gameplan for the day -- we go out there and we do what we didn't do in the first innings, which is, concentrate the hell out of things, remember Mahatma Gandhi, be non-violent towards the ball. After all, all it takes is a mishit when trying to tap a full toss back to the bowler for a wicket to fall and we all know what happens to our team -- one wicket falls and it's like that nursery rhyme, assha, busha, all fall down! So guys, caution at all times, no rushes of the blood. In fact, no rush, period! You go out there and you practise for Bangalore, got that?"

England think tank: Yes, I know they've been saying we should have gone for the bowling after lunch yesterday, piled up runs quicker and then gone at the Indians hard but what do they know? This is the team that beat Australia and as long as we can go home without having lost all three Tests, that is a fair result. True we did come back from 1-0 down in Pakistan this time last year, but Andy Caddick is off rocking his baby and Goughie is spending quality time with his family and Alec is, well, being Alec. Different ball game, chaps, last thing we need is for Tendulkar to go ballistic and maybe fire up Laxman and Sehwag as well, so we go out there and sit on the splice. Giles, you've got a big role to play, lots of bowling to do and this morning I saw this spot about a foot and a half outside leg stump that looked like a nice spot to land them on. Let's go out there and defend like heck, guys -- remember the Alamo, remember Dunkirk, remember whatever the heck you want but don't forget, we need a draw here."

In the event, two teams who were both scared of trying to win settled for a draw. And a crowd that had come -- their coming to the ground being a classic example of the triumph of hope over experience -- to cheer good cricket ended up getting their jollies booing everyone in sight.

A certain circumspection was expected in the first hour of play, with Hoggard and Flintoff working up a fair head of steam. The spinners then came on and initially, both Dasgupta and Das played a few fluent shots, the former preferring the cover-drive while the latter opted to rock back and square drive or cut.

Das got to 1000 runs in Test cricket in his 15^th Test, he got his 50 off the last ball before lunch (112 balls, 7 fours, Dasgupta batting 42/116) and India went in to lunch on 92/0, with 282 still to get and all ten wickets in hand.

Nice platform, right? Right -- so both batsmen stood rock solid on that platform, and played out ten overs after lunch for 11 runs. And at that, they were just warming to the task.

At the other end, Ashley Giles took to bowling so far outside leg stump that wicket-keeper Foster, who had started out by standing just in line with leg stump, was soon in a leg slip position.

It was now a question of who would get bored first -- and as it turned out, that was Hussain. Who got his bowler to go back to around the wicket, with four men in close positions on the off side -- slip, gully and two silly points! Interestingly, as soon as Giles tried the new line, he began making the ball 'go', finding the edge time and again and making you wonder what the idea till then was.

The wicket finally fell in the 55th over (48th of the day), when Das tucked Dawson around to fine leg and looked for a second. Giles, the fielder running in off the line, produced a flat, hard throw to the keeper to catch the batsman off his ground (58 off 159, India 119/1) and we were treated to the spectacle of an Indian crowd actually cheering an Indian batsman's fall.

That might seem a bit harsh on Das, who did bat with a lot of composure. 100+ opening partnerships are not so common in Indian cricket that one such as this should pass unremarked and unapplauded -- but against that, there was the tedium of the batting post-lunch, calculated to put even the most mild-mannered crowd's back up.

Those cheers turned into boos when Rahul Dravid walked out at one drop -- public expectation obviously was that India would send out its strokeplayers, Laxman, Tendulkar and Sehwag, to have a bit of a bat. The ask at that point was 258 runs in just around 260 deliveries -- a good opportunity to use one-day skills to mount a chase, while holding back Dravid to hold things up in the unlikely event the England bowlers, on this deck, skittled out three or four quick wickets.

India -- or more accurately, the team -- had however made up its mind that it would be a draw, come hell, high water, or ordinary bowling on an unresponsive track.

Dasgupta, shortly after the departure of his partner, perished pushing Dawson to silly point and again, the crowd went into an orgy of celebration. Again, there was a tinge of unfairness about the collective joy on display -- after years of mourning the fact that every team bar India has a keeper who can bat, we seem to have finally found one who can bat like a seasoned pro (60 off 190, India 124/2 in the 61st over).

By then, however, Dravid and Dasgupta had managed to use up 35 deliveries while adding 5 runs. The ask at the fall of the second wicket -- not that there was any relevance any longer, since no one was even remotely interested in trying -- was 250 off 216 deliveries.

Tendulkar walked out, and the crowd finally got something to cheer about -- but not for long, as both Dravid and Tendulkar settled down to practise their defence against all comers. It would have become interesting had the umpire given Tendulkar out padding up, without offering a shot, to a ball close enough to off to put the LBW up as an option, and a shaky Ganguly had been forced to come out -- but by then, umpires too had gone into a light slumber.

At tea, India were 140/2. Tendulkar 8/39, Dravid 10/48, 248 still to get, more accurately, 24 more overs to practise against. The session produced 48 runs in 35 overs, and if that sounds dull, then the actual play on view was even duller.

There was a bit of a bustle when in the 79th over, Tendulkar -- who seemed rather fretful at having to pat half-volleys defensively back to the bowler (makes me wonder just who hatched this defend-till-death gameplan and laid it down as the day's diktat?) woke up to smack Dawson off the back foot through point for four, then leant forward onto his other foot and caressed him through extra cover for another one. But then, there is an odd oasis even in the dry as dust Sahara desert. Shortly after, the insistence on defending at deliveries that at other times he would have rocked back and smashed saw him grope well forward at a Dawson off break and give the bat pad at short square. (44 runs in 156 balls the partnership, 168/3 the score).

Another thought occurs: If the idea all along was to play out the day, wouldn't it have made much more cricketing sense for Saurav Ganguly to have come out at the fall of the first wicket, rather than when he actually did, with ten overs to go in play? No player in this side -- in fact, very few players in international cricket at the moment -- need practise as much as the Indian captain does. And by the same token, Virender Sehwag at number four, for the same reason -- a chance for the batsman to get a decent outing, shake off the rust of the two 'bans' one official one not?

And now that we're on a roll with "thought occured"s, one final one: Just a month ago, we witnessed New Zealand and Australia, twice in three Tests, brush aside the rain and conjure wildly exciting Test matches. Here, in front of larger crowds and with the sun blazing down throughout, two teams got together to fashion one of the dullest draws in recent cricket history.

Speaks volumes, doesn't it, for the patience of the Indian cricket spectator?

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