Taking it in stride

Rearguard action! First time a real incident of that nature got instilled in my head was way back on the 27th of March 1972 on the penultimate day of the third Test between New Zealand and the West Indies at Bridgetown.

West Indies batting first were shot out for 133 and New Zealand had powered their way to 422 in their first innings and had a commanding 289 run lead.

On the fourth day young West Indian batsman Charlie Davis was still at the crease with the score reading a bleak 171 for 5 when legend Garfield Sobers joined him. The duo batted till the end of the fourth day to see the deficit erased 5 for 297. Thereafter they batted on adding 254 runs for the 6th wicket with Davis being run out for 183 and Sobers going on to make a memorable 142. At the end of the game the West Indies finished at 564 for 8. In another significant incident in this game Sobers went on to become the then all time highest run getter in Test cricket finishing with 7568 runs against his name to that of Englishman Colin Cowdery’s accumulation of 7459.

Listening to the Radio on short wave it was one of the finest matches that I followed even at ungodly hours. I feel that is why they say Test cricket is the best among all disciplines of that game derived by the “flannelled fools”.

So many moons later also in the third Test between Sri Lanka and Pakistan glimpses of that great act of 1972 began to flash across my mind.

From the beginning Pakistan were invited to take the first lease of the wicket against a Lankan bowling attack that lacked any venom. However their first innings total of 299 did not look that imposing, but when Sri Lanka crashed to 233, like the Windies who were crushed for 133 in that game the Lankans sensed that things may go wrong.

After crashing on the first two tests the Pakistani batting came to its true form in the second innings of the third Test. Led by knock of 134 by former Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik and beefed up by contributions of 65, 74 and 46 by Misbah-ul-Haq, Kamran Akmal and Umar Gul respectively Pakistan declared at a total of 425 for 9 leaving the Lankans an unenviable task of making 492 runs to win with almost a day and a half to spare.

Taking up the challenge there may have been a lot of impetus put into the case with the approach of the two young openers in Paranavithana and Warnapura. Even on a placid wicket they negotiated the initial pressure and put a blotch on the winning frame of the Pakistani minds.

Matthew at a very tender stage of his career definitely has put a price on his wicket

However the difference between the boys and men came with the arrival of the Lankan skipper Kumar Sangakkara at the crease. From the very first ball he may have had the notion that road was a long and winding one and he had to take charge of it in its true sense.

He took control of one corner of the wicket and decided to stay there. His marathon innings of 130 made in 471 minutes facing 303 balls had a master class in it. He never let the people who flocked there as well as those who were glued to their televisions wherever they were get the impression that Test cricket was a stupid boring affair. Even if he hit only seven fours, one felt that quantum was much more. In short he was in command of the proceedings.

At the other end young Angelo Mathews too grew a little bigger in his boots. Since the day he arrived he has never ceased to intrigue me. It seems that this lad from St. Joseph’s College, possesses the resolve to stay unruffled even at crucial moments and he capped it with his association with his skipper in the latter stages of the game. At a very tender stage of his career he definitely has put a price on his wicket and knows well why he shouldn’t throw it all away.

Coming back to the game I once again had glimpses of the Davis-Sobers association that was enacted so long ago. In that game Sobers as captain took the onus and guided young Davis and on this occasion Sangakkara’s presence at the opposite end may have given the young Mathew’s the courage to do the right thing.

At the same time in that game Sobers became the highest all time run maker up to that point. In this game Sangakkara became the worlds top most batsman in the ICC rankings for the second time.

Do you believe in that notion – “too good to be true!” Well skipper Sangakkara has some reservations about it. He already said living up to the early success can become an arduous task.

A thinking captain may take certain risks that some other captain may not take. In the Test series there were some decisions that he took that made him look a genius. The unprepared Pakistan twice failed against the Sangakkara ploys and thus lost the Test series too. Calling up a spinner on the morning of a match when the opposition is within sight of victory is unconventional. Then throwing the ball also to Rangana Herath in the second inning of the second Test when things were seemingly slipping away was also a touch of genius to the naked eye.

Those ploys paid.

Then in England while failing to deliver and going through the T20 tournament with only a handful of contributors some were of the view that Sangakkara was more stubborn than genius in spite of perambulating into the final.

However one man – Shahid Afridi the man who likes to emulate the legendary Dorian Gray broke the thin ice layer that shielded the Lankans from the rest of the gang and took his team to the T20 World title in spite of a patchy stay in the international arena. Once again Sangakkara and his men are dabbling with the limited overs versions of the game which we have floundered to take almost a permanent seat in the bottom half of the ICC fortune table.