Mahesh Sethuraman
Of great series and sucky DVDs
The India-Australia series in 2001 gave us much joy. Too bad those who put it on disc for posterity weren't up to the task
Mahesh Sethuraman
19-Jul-2013
For the kind of build up this Ashes series witnessed, it was going to take an extraordinarily dramatic first Test to live up to the hype. And we got one - the kind that leaves you with a rare sense of fulfilment.
A match as competitive, tense, and rewarding as the one at Trent Bridge also leaves you wanting more. Thankfully, we live in the Youtube era.
I woke up the next day and it hardly felt like a typical, unenthusiastic Monday morning. If that is not reason to invest in a sport, I don't know what is. On my way to work I searched for the complete highlights of the Test on Youtube but they weren't there yet. Whaaaaa! Why can't they upload the whole damn thing instantaneously? Aren't we in the information age?
Full postThe Karthik-Dhoni dynamic
Every time Dinesh Karthik looked set to cement his spot in the India side, MS Dhoni seemed to emerge as an obstacle. Until now
Mahesh Sethuraman
19-Jun-2013
India had lost the first two matches of the three-match ODI series against England in 2004. The third one was a dead rubber, and India chose to relieve Rahul Dravid of his wicketkeeping duties.
Dravid began playing as a regular wicketkeeper in the West Indies in 2002, in an experiment to lend the team a greater balance and the luxury to play seven batsmen. He kept the gloves in the 2003 World Cup, in which India finished as runners-up, and the decision seemed a worthwhile gamble. Just as they prepared to move on to find a more sustainable solution, a few setbacks forced India to go back to Dravid as keeper to beef up the batting again.
Dinesh Karthik made his debut for India in the NatWest dead rubber in 2004 and scored 1 off 12 balls. India were all out for 204 and had run through the England top order from one end, while Michael Vaughan was rock solid at the other. With Ashley Giles for company, Vaughan resurrected the innings from 62 for 6, before losing his partner at 154.
Full postWhen Tendulkar broke free in the Headingley gloom
When Tendulkar escaped the precise and launched into the sublime
Mahesh Sethuraman
04-Jun-2013
Sachin Tendulkar belongs as much to the Bombay school of batting as he does not. Now whether the Bombay school of batting a myth or a reality is anyone's guess, but we all grew up on narratives about how Bombay batsmen rarely bothered about the means as long as they achieved their end. For them, batting was about scoring runs and not losing their wicket. Apparently other aspects of batting were mere fodder for cricket writers.
For a cricketer hailing from this school of batting and living with the burden of expectations that few athletes can relate to, it's a reflection of his extraordinary confidence that Tendulkar turned out to be the attacking batsman that he is. He was not a rebel but inherited the Bombay legacy without diluting his natural attacking style. To borrow the words of Peter Roebuck, over the years (or should we say decades), Tendulkar provided an unsurpassed blend of the sublime and the precise.
In spite of needing to maintain an immaculate balance between expressing himself, performing a certain role in the team, and living up to the cacophony of expectations, Tendulkar has cherished the odd occasion to let go of the precise and just indulge in the sublime.
Full postThere'll always be takers for easy money
Conflicts of interest, franchises' dubious holdings, disparity in earnings, easy access to players combine to form a potent mix for underhand dealings
Mahesh Sethuraman
22-May-2013
Yes, this is yet another piece on the spot-fixing scandal. There is very little to add to what has already been written, but to write about anything else right now would be to indulge in a denial I am yet to master.
In 2000, despite the widespread belief that match-fixing was prevalent in international cricket, the news of Hansie Cronje's involvement in it and other revelations signalled the death of innocence in the game. I nearly lost faith in the only worthwhile thing I had emotionally invested in till then.
But every time we were lulled back into a state of innocence, cricket and cricketers let us down. Watching the superlative talents of Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif go down the drain was heartbreaking. It was hard not to be cynical after that.
Full postWish I was at the G
Being in the stadium adds a whole other dimension to cricket, and nowhere is this better realised than at the likes of the MCG and Galle
Mahesh Sethuraman
15-May-2013
I was in Bentota, Sri Lanka, recently. Galle is an hour's drive from there. How could I not go the stadium that had hosted one of the greatest Test innings I have seen?
Galle is the anti-MCG. It is a lovely little stadium. But sitting among the remnants of the Galle fort, which overlooks the stadium, can give an MCG-like experience too, a bit like being in the top-most tier at the MCG. If that is not enticing enough, tilt your head to the left and you get a stunning view of the Indian Ocean. The next time I watch a Test in Galle, I am not buying tickets unless they start selling tickets for the fort view.
If watching a match live at a ground is an enriching experience, there's something about visiting a stadium when it's not hosting a game as well. Not just because grounds serve as memorials for all the sporting deeds performed there. A visit to a stadium is not merely an item to be ticked off on a checklist or a subject for a Facebook update. It provides a perspective that is missing in today's homogenised television coverage.
Full postWhat makes the IPL successful?
Is it the marriage between cricket and entertainment? The T20 format? Or just its power to grab a prime chunk of the game's calendar?
Mahesh Sethuraman
06-May-2013
It's the season of cricketainment. I watched Sanju Samson's forward defence serve as a wonderful backdrop for a thrilling dance contest between two sets of cheerleaders, with delightful commentary from Sameer Kochhar.
That's when I had an epiphany. I got what the IPL is about. It's really what the markets want.
If there is a more stupid term than cricketainment, I do not know of it. The IPL was always marketed as cricketainment, and coupled with its commercial success, the reasoning developed that it's the entertainment that gets it the eyeballs.
Full postLife is tough but cricket is harder
Cricket is the most ambiguous of all sports, often messier, more confusing, more contingent and more compelling than life. It may be billed as escapism but, for some, the trauma of a sporting memory is lasting
Mahesh Sethuraman
10-Apr-2013
It is the IPL season and, personally, a break from watching cricket as the cardinal purpose of life. I'll watch every time Sachin Tendulkar bats, most CSK matches, and every other time my Twitter timeline gets too excited to make any coherent sense. A distanced, passive viewing of IPL helps to provide a semblance of balance to my life: for perhaps the first time ever, I won't feel guilty for not caring about cricket matches. Does that take away much of my cricket time for the next two months? Not quite. It gives me the space to devour all the cricket books that I have collected over the years; the time to read my favorite ones again is especially priceless.
So, I was re-reading Gideon Haigh's On Warne a couple of days ago. If ever a cricket book deserves multiple readings, this is it. I was struck by a particular passage on the importance of sport at large, a passage so insightful that you nod along as if someone just answered the question you have feared to ask yourself all along: Why on earth do I take cricket so seriously?
"Sport is not life. Sport is better than life. Life is big, messy, confusing, contingent, compelling us to make decisions on the basis of imperfect information with finite resources, with no certainty about their outcome and no expectation of immediate resolution. Sport is bordered, unambiguous, unadulterated, meritocratic; it offers us simple questions, unqualified answers, straight lines, exact quantifications, winners and losers, heroes and villains. Or so we can pretend, when it is served up to us in the superficial, black-and-white terms in which it is usually consumed in this country."
Tendulkar's revenge
Sachin Tendulkar's 126 in the 2001 Chennai Test against Australia was achieved by reining in his instincts when facing Glen McGrath and helped win India the series - but he remembered the bowler's goading when the ODIs began
Mahesh Sethuraman
02-Apr-2013
I am going to continue from where I had left off in the last piece and complete my trilogy (of sorts) on the 2001 series.
In the final Test at Chennai, India got off to a solid start in response to Australia's first innings score of 391. With the score at 211 for 2, Sachin Tendulkar came out to face Glenn McGrath, who was working up appreciable reverse swing with a slightly older ball, and marked his usual leg stump guard. McGrath had just accounted for SS Das with the first ball of the third day, a sharp incoming delivery. Sensing the context of the match, Tendulkar started off cautiously and played out the McGrath spell.
By the time he came back for his next spell, Tendulkar had just about started opening up and played a majestic cover drive off McGrath. Strangely, McGrath was taken out of the attack after a mini, four-over spell immediately after lunch, in which he took the wicket of Ganguly. Once Tendulkar opened up, he was in scintillating touch. There was a glorious square drive off Jason Gillespie, a conventional sweep for six off Colin Miller and many varieties of paddle sweeps (some of them should be called reverse straight drives) against Shane Warne and Miller.
Full postWhen McGrath mastered the Master
After two consecutive whitewashes, it's worth reflecting on some of the great passages of play between India and Australia - my favourite of which was the four-ball spell by Glenn McGrath to Sachin Tendulkar at Eden Gardens a dozen years ago
Mahesh Sethuraman
26-Mar-2013
After two consecutive whitewashes, it's hard to resist the temptation to go all nostalgic about the great India-Australia contests of the past. I'll partly resist that temptation and pick my favourite passage of play between the two teams instead: the best four-ball spell ever.
If cricket was an individual sport, the Tendulkar-McGrath rivalry in the 2001 series would have ranked right up with the Borg-McEnroe Wimbledon final of 1980, and the 2008 Wimbledon final between Federer and Nadal.
In the first Test in Mumbai, Sachin Tendulkar walked in two balls after Glenn McGrath had finished his spell, and got off to a cracking start with a flurry of stunning boundaries against Jason Gillespie and Damien Fleming. When McGrath came back with his probing line and disconcerting bounce, Tendulkar went through half an hour without scoring a run, played him out and continued his stellar show against the rest. In his next spell, McGrath resumed where he left off earlier, luring Tendulkar to play the drive on the rise, only for him to edge it through to Adam Gilchrist.
When Tendulkar came out to bat in the second innings, there was a distinct change in his stance. From his usual leg stump guard, he had changed to a middle stump guard to counter McGrath's metronomic ability to hit the corridor of uncertainty. By getting himself closer to the line, driving McGrath would be a less risky venture. As if to demonstrate the rationale for the change, Tendulkar opened his account with two delightful, starchy-crisp off-drives against McGrath. He continued to be cautious against McGrath after that but was a lot more decisive throughout this innings than he was in the first ... only to eventually get out in the most bizarre fashion, when a full-blooded pull shot off Mark Waugh ricocheted off Justin Langer's shoulder at short leg for Ricky Ponting to scamper across and complete a spectacular diving catch.
Full postAshes talk undermines Australia effort
A rivalry that used to be hotly contested and for a decade produced some of the finest cricket in the world seems to have been sidelined by the Australians because of an obsession with their Ashes preparation
Mahesh Sethuraman
21-Mar-2013
Australia have been so thoroughly outplayed on this tour of India that one can lay the blame at the feet of anything and get away without much scrutiny. One can accuse them of lacking the will to fight, being spoilt by T20 riches, or the new-age culture of high-performance academies. Some of them may even be true. Just as equally true, if not substantially more, is the stark difference in the skills and experience of the conditions between the two teams.
Having said that, I am still going to pick a subject of my fancy and attribute that as one of the factors for their loss. For an outsider, with no stake in Australia's performance on this tour, I found a couple of areas of their approach and preparation absolutely baffling.
Purely in terms of the quality of rivalry, India-Australia was arguably the finest for a decade in world cricket. The stocks of the Border-Gavaskar trophy were enhanced significantly since Steve Waugh anointed India as the final frontier for his champion team back in 2001. The rivalry has produced magical spells, the pinnacle of batsmanship the game has seen, gripping drama, and some obnoxious controversies over the years.
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