Category: Cricket

HIS captain is embarrassed. Senior cricket writers have poured scorn on him. Past cricketers have called his actions juvenile. Yet Shane Watson, the Australian all-rounder, is out there trying to defend his behaviour on the fourth day of the third Test against the West Indies.

Watson dismissed the West Indies captain, Chris Gayle, and then charged down the wicket to the departing Gayle and jumped up and down in front of him, snarling in a manner that the best wolfhound would find difficult to emulate.

And he justifies this behaviour by saying that Gayle had riled him up on the field, and “given as good as he got.” He even says he’s not embarrassed by the monkey act he performed in front of Gayle.

Which leaves one wondering whether he is really in the here and now, whether he knows that he can’t act like a two-year-old on the field – which is his workplace – and whether he thinks that he is not subject to society’s expected standards of behaviour.

Cricket Australia is partly to blame because it has not seen fit to levy any penalty on Watson after the ICC referee Chris Broad fined him a totally inadequate 15 percent of his match fee.

Broad has form in this regard – it would have been interesting to see what he would have fined a West Indies player who did a Watson. In the same game, Sulieman Benn was involved in an incident with Brad Haddin and Mitchell Johnson for which he earned a two-match suspension; the Australians were fined 25 and 15 percent of their match fees respectively.

You know that the chief of Cricket Australia is holding a post he is clearly not fit to hold when he says that the players should be given credit for good behaviour in several recent series.

I’m not sure why anyone should be given credit for doing the basics of their job but that seems to be part of the culture in the country. Cricketers are paid extremely high wages – Australian cricketers are about the highest paid in the world – in order to do a job. With that job comes an expected standard of behaviour; the ICC has a code of conduct and the Australian authority has one too.

When people do a job for which they have been paid, and paid mighty well too, why do they need to be praised? They have signed up to do something and merely kept to it. If a man signs up to work from 9am to 5pm, should he then expect praise because he arrives punctually for work every day?

THE final Test in the Australia-West Indies series looked like going down to the wire. But it was stopped a couple of metres short by incompetent umpiring.

The West Indies had one wicket left and needed 51 runs on the final morning; they looked like getting real close until Kemar Roach was given out by umpire Billy Bowden of New Zealand, caught behind.

Roach challenged the decision and the replays showed plenty of air between the edge of his bat and the ball as it passed on the way to keeper Brad Haddin. The technology known as Hot Spot, another tool being used by the TV match officials, also showed that the ball had not made contact with Roach’s bat.

Yet Asad Rauf, the TV umpire, informed Bowden that the decision was up to him. As Bowden was not going to overrule himself, he raised his finger again and the match was over. The West Indies had made 14 runs off 21 balls on the final morning when Bowden intervened.

This incident raises the question: when an umpiring decision goes to referral, what is the third umpire trying to do – find proof that the decision is wrong or find proof that the umpire is right? Shortly before Bowden’s intervention, Rauf ruled that a catch claimed in the outfield by Doug Bollinger was not valid as the ball had hit the ground before Bollinger had got it in his grasp.

Rauf, it may be recalled, had given Shivnarine Chanderpaul out on referral in the second Test when an appeal for a catch behind was turned down by umpire Mark Benson. Ricky Ponting opted for a referral and Rauf overruled his colleague’s decision, even though the replays were inconclusive.

Bowden is a showman who always seems to be trying to get the camera to focus on him. He has an expansive way of signalling a boundary, a peculiar way of signalling a six and generally acts the goat on the field. The way he gave Roach out raises questions about his competence when it comes to actual umpiring – he will probably win an Oscar for his gestures.

And as to Rauf, one wonders how he alone can see something which nobody else can spot. Roach clearly had not touched the ball based on the TV camera evidence. Does Rauf think Bowden has some kind of third eye like a Hindu deity? Rauf saw evidence in the Chanderpaul incident too, when even the umpire on the field could not see a thing.

The referral system is a good thing. But if it turns out to be a case of taking potluck, then it will be of no use.

Technology can aid a good umpire to make good decisions. But in the hands of an incompetent, even the best technology is of little use. That is the only conclusion one can draw. As the old Indian saying goes, it is dangerous to put a matchbox in the hands of a monkey.

THE ugly Australian. That’s a term which is pretty common in the cricketing world, simply because one sees a great deal of evidence on the field. Yesterday, there was one more instance of the kind of boorish behaviour that serves to make every decent citizen of this country wince in shame.

Australia does not know how to lose gracefully in sport. Generally, if an Australian team loses, it is because they played badly, not because the opposition played better. And when this explanation is being trotted out, there will be also be a string of excuses offered, reasons as to why Australia could not win.

In cricket, Australia has got pretty used to winning, by fair means or foul. Since they dethroned the West Indies in 1995, Australia has been the leading team in both Test and one-day cricket, even though their record has not been anything like the West Indies during the 15 years that the Caribbean team was the top Test team.

Recently, Australia was toppled from its spot atop the Test cricket ladder and is now ranked third. This is, in part, due to changes in the team, changes brought about by retirements, injuries (there are lots of injuries due to the incessant cricket that is played worldwide) and politics.

But the behaviour of the Australian team is still appalling. One instance – and there were plenty of others, mind you – from the fourth day’s play in the third Test against the West Indies will suffice to illustrate this.

Chris Gayle, the captain of the West Indies, is a laidback person. He doesn’t lose his temper, keeps silent most of the time he is on the field, but can be a dangerously destructive batsman once he gets going.

When the West Indies began the improbable task of trying to score 359 in their second innings to defeat Australia, Gayle’s wicket was a vital one. More so, since he had made a rapid 102 in the first innings. In the previous Test he had shown an entirely unknown facet of his batsmanship by carrying his bat for 165, a long, slow and patient innings which helped the team to draw the game.

For a while, it looked as though Gayle and makeshift opener Travis Dowlin would put on a sizeable opening stand, until the latter fell to an injudicious stroke. This brought in Ramnaresh Sarwan, the other seasoned player in the side. Sarwan made a hundred when the West Indies chased down 418 in 2003 to defeat Australia; this, incidentally, is the highest fourth innings winning score in Test cricket.

Hence, both the wickets of both Gayle and Sarwan were vital for Australia to feel confident about winning. One more factor has been haunting Australia: the last time they played a Test in Perth, it was against South Africa – and the Proteas chased down 414 to beat the home team.

For a while after Dowlin was dismissed it looked as though Gayle was settling down to play a long, patient innings, similar to the one he played in Adelaide. But Shane Watson, one of the players whose abilities are highly over-rated, finally got an inside edge and keeper Brad Haddin grasped the catch.

Watson then ran to Gayle and began to jump up and down in front of him like a monkey. He was screaming out loud as well but Gayle refsued to be drawn into any kind of retaliation. He turned and departed for the pavilion. Watson was calmed down by his teammates.

It was ugly to see a grown man behave in this manner. It would have been surprising to a first-time watcher of the game – but to someone who has been watching for decades, it was just one more indication of the fact that the moniker “ugly Australian” is indeed an apt one.

Both umpires then spoke to Watson and he has been reported for this incident. It remains to be seen whether he will get off lightly as his teammates have or whether he will be hit with an appropriate penalty.

There was a constant stream of chatter on the field, right from the time the West Indies’ second innings began. The Australians have no need to talk, most of them are good cricketers and if they play to their skill-level, they can win. But they seem to think that they have to keep abusing people on the field.

This often has the opposite effect; opposition players get sufficiently worked up to play well above their abilities and things go wrong for Australia.

This habit of sledging is an indication of an inferiority complex: secretly, the Australians are always scared of losing. They have grave doubts about their own abilities and hence resort to verbal abuse to try and wear down the opposition.

This is one more reason why Test cricket is slowly dying, this display of boorish behaviour on the field.

ON A day when the fifth fastest century in Test cricket was scored, there was a sharp reminder of how the white man still rules what is essentially a colonial game.

The West Indies captain, Chris Gayle, put the Australian attack to the sword in the second half of the second day of the third Test to make 102, with a display of clean hitting that hasn’t been seen since Adam Gilchrist made a 57-ball Test hundred against England in 2006-07 at the same ground.

But it was the ugly clash between players that was the standout incident of the day – more so, considering the type of justice that was meted out.

West Indies off-spinner Sulieman Benn, a feisty character, was bowling when Australian wicket-keeper Brad Haddin angrily remonstrated with him for running into Mitchell Johnson while trying to field on his follow-through.

Haddin had no business getting involved in what was an accidental clash between Benn and Johnson.

But he did, and thereafter things hotted up. Benn fielded the next ball as Haddin stroked it down the pitch and made as if to throw down the wickets at his (Haddin’s) end. Haddin pulled away from the wicket and extended a hand to Benn, inviting him to throw the ball. There was no need to do that unless he wanted to aggravate the situation further.

When the over was bowled, Benn began to make some comments to Haddin who was coming up to mid-pitch to have the normal chat with Johnson that batsmen have between overs.

Johnson brushed Benn’s hand as he came up and this led to Benn pushing him away. Yes, Johnson made the first contact.

It was only at this point that umpire Billy Bowden got involved and asked the players to stay apart.

But, strangely, when match referee Chris Broad adjudicated, Benn was charged with a level two offence and Haddin and Johnson with level one offences.

Broad penalised Benn one Test or two one-day games. Haddin was asked to forfeit 25 percent of his match fee and Johnson will lose 10 percent.

Apparently, those who contest the charge get stiffer penalties; Benn contested the charge while the two Australians did not.

Haddin was the agent provocateur; if he had minded his own business, nothing would have happened. Johnson is old enough to look after himself and has been in the team much longer than Haddin; if he was a junior player and at the start of his career, one can understand Haddin’s involvement.

Yet Benn earned a heavier penalty than the two Australians.

Broad has form in this regard – last year when Australia was in India, Gautam Gambhir and Shane Watson collided on the pitch and Gambhir copped the heavier penalty, a one-match ban. Watson forfeited 10 percent of his match fee.

In the same series, India’s Zaheer Khan was fined for a verbal exchange with Matthew Hayden; the latter was widely known as one of the most foul-mouthed players in his time.

A third incident in the same series: Australian captain Ricky Ponting earned not even a rebuke for continuing to appeal long after the umpire had ruled Virender Sehwag not out on a lbw appeal. But he did not earn even a rebuke from Broad.

It’s interesting to recall that when Broad, a former England opener, was given out in the Sydney bicentennial Test in 1988, he knocked all three stumps out of the ground with his bat in anger and was fined £500, the maximum possible fine at the time

It looks as though the ICC takes every chance it gets to penalise the countries that line up behind India when it comes to voting. India is the powerhouse in the cricketing world and the white members of the ICC just hate this – they long for the days when they were making the decisions. This is their one way of getting back at the coloured nations – appoint a match referee who can get a bit of their own back.

WHY are today’s fast bowlers unable to attack a batsman’s body? Why are they unable to bowl a decent yorker? Why do they just keep bowling up-and-down stuff when the wicket is one of the bounciest in the world?

These are some of the questions that came to mind as I watched part of the first day’s play in the third and final Test between Australia and the West Indies at the WACA ground in Perth. The pitch there is one of the fastest in the world and the West Indies have found it a happy hunting ground in the past.

But this time, they do not have the bowlers to take advantage of the bounce that the pitch offers. Only one, the youngster Kemar Roach, was able to use the pitch to some extent. He gave the Australian captain, Ricky Ponting, a good working over and forced him to retire hurt after getting one ball to rise and hit Ponting on his left elbow.

Like all great batsmen, Ponting – and despite the fact that he is in the twilight of his career, the Australian captain is still a class act – has his moments of vulnerability at the start of an innings. Last January, he was given a good working over by the Indian teenager Ishant Sharma and lost the duel. This time, it remains to be seen what he will do when he resumes his innings sometime later in the game.

The rest of the West Indies pacemen were innocuous. They tried to maintain a good line but never threatened. Ravi Rampaul may be a decent tailend batsman but he is no class as a bowler.

The third paceman, Antiguan Gavin Tonge, from the same island that produced the feared Anderson Montomery Everton Roberts, looked to be bowling well within himself and needs to free up his action a bit to generate enough pace. He looks cramped when he bowls though he has the height and physique to be a good fast bowler.

But height and muscle are only half the story. The late Malcolm Marshall was a small-made man but find me a batsman who felt unafraid when the Barbadian with the whippy action was marking out his run-up. The willowy and graceful Michael Holding could hardly be called muscular but batsman called him “Whispering Death.”

Fast bowlers no longer seem to be able to bowl the famous “throat ball” that Colin Croft made his specialty. They seem to be unaware of the “Sandshow crusher” which was a favourite of the great Pakistani fast bowler Waqar Younus who would often knock over all three wickets with one.

When a fast bowler can home in on a batsman’s body and get the ball to bounce awkwardly, it is only a matter of time before the ball is fended off to a close-catcher. And the West Indies were masters of the art of doing exactly this.

On the Australian side, Mitchell Johnson occasionally does get the ball to do unpleasant things but he is erratic and can bowl 20 overs all over the place before he gets one over on target. As a result, batsmen do not have difficulty negotiating his bowling.

Doug Bollinger is good with the old ball though one has to see whether he can use the Perth strip to good effect. The third Australian paceman, Clint McKay, is an unknown quantity.

It is interesting to note that during the West Indies heyday, the 80s, their bowlers were the match-winners more often than the batsmen. The bowlers conceded only around 24 runs per opposition wicket, a figure that went up to something around 26 in the 90s. By 1995, Australia had dethroned them.

In the 2000s, the West Indies bowlers have been getting wickets at the cost of about 50 runs apiece. Their batting figures have stayed relatively stable over these three decades.

Which goes to show that during the good times, the bowlers were the ones who pulled the irons out of the fire. They do not have bowlers of that class anymore – occasionally, someone shines as Jerome Tayor did when they beat England by an innings in Jamaica earlier this year.

But for the most part, the West Indies bowlers cannot take the 20 wickets required to win a Test. And that, one fears, will be the case for some time to come.

WHEN West Indies captain Chris Gayle opted to continue batting into the final day of the second Test at Adelaide – despite having a lead of 296 at the end of day four – he was just following in the footsteps of previous captains from the region.

Gayle could have looked for a bit of history by being the first Windies captain to win a Test in Australia in this decade. Yes, that’s how bad the Windies have become, the last time they won a Test against Australia in Australia was in 1997 at Perth.

Gayle chose to bat into the final morning and did not declare; he left the decision on when to send Australia in be taken out of his own hands by waiting until his team was bowled out.

But coming off such a terrible record – he has captained the West Indies in 16 Tests and won just three – one can’t blame him.

Let’s recall here that Clive Lloyd did something similar in Melbourne in 1984 – and he had won his previous 11 Tests, six against Australia on either side of five against England. The West Indies were then three years into a reign of supremacy that would see them spend 15 years without losing a Test series.

Lloyd batted into the final morning, despite having a lead of 346 overnight. At the end of the fifth day he was left to rue the fact that his bowlers had taken eight Australian wickets and could well have taken the remaining two if only they had an extra half-hour.

That half-hour had been taken up by Lloyd who extended the lead by another 23 runs to set the Australians 370 to win. Australia was 198 for eight at the end of the day. And the West Indies bowling attack was comprised of Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner, Courtney Walsh and Roger Harper, not one to be sneered at.

Lloyd had one bad experience in the 1970s when he set India 404 to win on a spinning pitch in Trinidad and, despite having three spinners – Imtiaz Ali, Raphick Jumadeen and Albert Padmore – in the side, ended up losing to India by six wickets.

And thereafter he was always conservative. He never took a chance but then most of the time he never had to, because he was winning and winning without having to strain even a sinew.

Indeed, the only example of a West Indies captain making a sporting declaration (in this case, calling it suicidal is better) I know of, is the case of Gary Sobers who set England 215 to win in the fourth Test of the 1968 series. England duly won the Test and the series as a result of this victory.

Gayle’s cautiousness means that this time too, the Frank Worrell Trophy will remain with the Australians. The West Indies have never been able to win it back since Australia regained it in 1995, the closest they have come to it being the 2-2 series draw which Brian Lara’s team achieved in the Caribbean in 1999.

Gayle may be able to end the tour in style by leading the West Indies to victory in the final Test at Perth. But he’s missed a chance that will never present itself again – to challenge Australia for the trophy.

TODAY is the fifth and final day of the second cricket Test between Australia and the West Indies and I am watching the final session as I write this. I have been watching, and listening to the game on radio, since I was 10 years old and I will probably be fascinated by it till I die.

The West Indies, surprisingly, have had the better of the exchanges in this game, after losing the first Test in three days.

Test cricket is a slow game and has always been so. Yet it has been made progressively slower over the years by the disgusting tactics adopted by players and the inability or refusal of umpires to reel them in.

Take the ongoing game. The post-lunch session on the final day began two minutes late. When tea-time was reached, the umpires took up position for one more over. The two Australian batsmen started walking off – they were trying to save the match. The umpires said nothing. One over was lost.

There are a hundred similar things that happen during a game – players wasting time during an over, between overs, calling for drinks at any time they feel like, captains talking to bowlers again and again about field settings, and on and on and on.

The teams are required by the playing terms and conditions to bowl 90 overs a day. That works out to 4 minutes for an over – one hell of a lot of time. A fast bowler should have no problem getting through six balls in that time.

Yet no team bowls 90 overs in a day. Play always goes on for the extra half-hour that is allowed if needed but even after 6½ hours, the number of overs bowled is always short of 90.

The paying public have their own lives to lead. They are expected to spend an extra 30 minutes at the game – and that means 2½ hours for the duration of a Test – and yet not get the full value they have paid for.

And the folk who run the game are surprised that the public are losing interet in Test cricket!

The administrators of the game – the International Cricket Conference – are more interested in coming up with gimmicks to retain public interest in the game. They are a bunch who have little interest in the game apart from the money – and it’s a lot of money – that they gain by being involved.

Now that the ICC is headquartered in that dodgiest of places, Dubai, it means that income is tax-free.

The West Indies, the top team in the game during the 1980s and 1990s, has fallen away and become a joke but the ICC has never thought about funding some kind of programme to ensure that the islands that make up the West Indies can run some kind of decent development plan to keep training cricketers.

As a result, many series are played between grossly mismatched teams and the public are expected to turn up and watch. The public come to see good performances but how can players who are turning up for games of all kinds – five-day, 50-over and 20-over – shine every time?

How can players who are not trained properly play the game at the level expected? Mediocrity rules – but there are TV commentators aplenty who hype up even this sad spectacle.

And the public are still expected to turn up, knowing fully well that overworked players will put in half-hearted performances simply because they have been playing too many games.

Even the ICC’s latest gimmick, the introduction of referrals to a TV umpire, so that a team can question two decisions per innings in a Test match, has been such a badly botched exercise that most of the players are already pissed off.

One umpire, Mark Benson, could not take the pressure of the players questioning his decisions and promptly left the ongoing second Test after one day of officiating.

Test cricket has no future and with the ICC in charge it is sure to die off in the next five years.