NEWS
MATCH REPORTS
STAT SHEET
HOT LINKS
OTHER SPORTS
SLIDE SHOW
BOOKS & THINGS
PEOPLE
DEAR REDIFF

Move over, King Viv, Anwar is here

Harsha Bhogle

It is tempting, when you see a world record, to believe that you have seen a limit to human enterprise.

Thankfully, records are broken for in doing so, man reminds man that there are newer horizons to reach and to conquer.

Saeed Anwar’s record may still be broken and that will be a moment of joy, simply because it will mean that we will have seen another innings as astonishing as this one.

The mention of Saeed Anwar doesn’t yet evoke the same degree of awe, or fear, as did the name of his predecessor in the one-day honours list. They are very different individuals. Viv Richards, by all accounts including those of several bowlers, was the only batsman who evoked fear in a bowler’s mind. He could be brutal and subtlety wasn’t something you would ever define him by. Saeed Anwar cannot be Viv Richards because, among other reasons, he isn’t built like him. When was the last time a flyweight was considered the best boxer in the world?

Yet, Saeed Anwar is up there today - and he is there because he has a remarkable ability that negates the need to be physically strong. He works on the premise that it doesn’t matter what speed a ball crosses a boundary line by. To get there is what is important, and bowlers all over the world will agree that he gets there a little too often for comfort.

That innings of 194 displayed all those wonderful qualities we have associated Anwar with. The first two on that list are timing and placement. It’s incredible how often we take those two words for granted, especially placement. You would imagine it was bread and butter stuff for a professional cricketer; like the ability to be precise is for a surgeon, for example. Yet, the best surgeons in the world are more precise than the others. Similarly, the best batsmen time the ball better and place it better than anyone else. It allows them to score more runs with fewer shots. And on today’s evidence, there are very few batsman in the world who can do it better than Saeed Anwar.

I thought his ability to find the gaps, as seen in that innings, was reminiscent of Brian Lara at his very best. He almost seemed to have a mental map of the field for every ball and therefore, knew where the gaps were. If somebody could map the number of shots that did not produce runs, it would produce a true index of this great skill. If you did that with Saeed Anwar’s innings, I suspect you would find very very few shots that were intercepted.

Sunil Gavaskar said in his column that the key to Saeed Anwar’s batting lies in its simplicity. It is interesting that all the masters of the game seem to talk about the need to be simple. If you cast your eye back at that great innings, you would realise that there was nothing complicated about it. He wasn’t playing difficult shots; he wasn’t even playing shots that had low percentages attached to them.

Not all players can manage that. A large majority of cricketers can be stifled by field placements and have to resort to difficult shots to get by. If you can retain your simplicity, keep playing standard cricket shots and still beat the field repeatedly, you have a very rare talent. Saeed Anwar showed that in Chennai.

There was one other factor that allowed this innings to go beyond becoming just another statistical entry. I believe it was crucial to the fact that it will now be counted among the great one-day innings. And it was his desire to keep going against very arduous conditions. Remember, this was a 4 pm start and, apart from being extremely hot and humid, the match was being played inside a concrete crucible. It can sometimes give the feeling that the heat is locked within and as the day, in this case the evening, wears on, it is like you are being put through a wringer; like someone is holding your head and someone else your legs and that they are squeezing the water out of you. Clearly, that was happening to Saeed Anwar and that was the reason he asked for a runner; curiously, an act that is being held against him.

I think the fact that he needed a runner, and very few batsmen enjoy having a runner alongside, was indicative of the physical turmoil he was under. Remember too that he is still recovering from a viral infection that has seen him either miss or return early from three tours. The fact that he didn’t start at peak fitness and that he wasn’t match-fit are factors that are easily submerged under the effects of hysteria and emotion. The truth is that he overcame physical inabilities rather than took advantage of them. It is something we need to applaud. rather than be suspicious about.

There was one factor though, that was beyond Anwar’s control and which helped him tackle the opposition. It wasn’t something he would complain too much about but, I suspect, something he would readily acknowledge. The Indian bowlers, without exception, looked tired, insipid and worst of all, short of ideas.

Mental weakness is often a by-product of physical weakness; when you know that the body is incapable of meeting the demands of the mind, you tend not to place that order, make those demands .

You could see that with Sunil Joshi, with Abey Kuruvilla as soon as he was attacked, with Anil Kumble and, rather spectacularly, with Venkatesh Prasad. You would have to struggle to recall a more accomplished bowler bowling as badly as Prasad did in the Independence Cup. I suspect if he had been given an option to withdraw, he would have vanished from sight before the sentence was complete.

I’m afraid it all boils down to a question of finding replacements, and of preparing twenty cricketers instead of eleven. Come to think of it, you can’t expect to wear the same suit for ten months and expect it to look like it is fresh out of a boutique.

But don’t hold that against Saeed Anwar. The record books, rightly so, will credit Anwar with having smashed a world record. With having extended the frontiers of human achievement by that extra yard. It will not have footnotes excusing the Indian bowlers for being jaded at the very end of a 16-month-long cricketing "year". And that is right, just, fair. Anwar, on the day, was god.

So just stand up and applaud, like the wonderful crowd in Chennai did.