Aussies spooked by fear of loss

The Australian batsmen knew it. Their bowlers knew it. Their coaching staff knew it. Well before they left their own shores, the Australian cricket team knew what was coming in India. And when it did come — spinning tracks, beginning with the first Test in Nagpur — they could do nothing about it. The preparations they made in an away-from-limelight location, Alur near Bengaluru, amounted to nothing. The Australians were ground to dust, bowled out for 91 in their second innings, in just 32.3 overs, to lose by an innings and 132 runs.

The dismemberment of the Australian cricket team in Nagpur was sad. But it was predictable, too. You knew they were spooked by fear. There were chirpings from the Australian camp, though not the players, about the nature of the wickets. This is a bit strange — by now, the likes of former captain Ricky Ponting should have figured out that they’d get spin-friendly wickets in India and stopped the taunts about ‘inputs from players’ to groundsmen. Such talk is unhelpful. They had a bit of bad luck, too. Frontline pacemen Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood were injured. Key all-rounder Cameron Green’s recovery from a finger injury is not complete.

Fear made them lose their head, too. They packed the playing XI with batters, and picked up only four bowlers — two of them pacemen, one a debutant off-spinner. This sort of defensive strategising, unnatural to the Australian philosophy of playing cricket, suggests they are desperate as they chase a win in India. While Todd Murphy did very well on debut, with a bit of luck — Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara would be kicking themselves for gifting him their wickets — their bowling attack definitely lacked bite. They could not hurt India. Their pace was irrelevant, but Murphy’s wickets gave them a chance — yet, India recovered well from 168/5 to get to 400. It was when the Indian tailenders were scoring match-defining runs that Australia’s blunder of not picking up a fifth specialist bowler was brutally exposed.

The axing of Travis Head, the world’s No. 4 ranked Test batsman, who had amassed 525 runs at an average of 87.50 against West Indies and South Africa in the home summer, had caused some criticism. But, taking his skill and record into account, it made perfect sense. Head averages a poor 21.30 in Tests in Asia, and his recent scores in the continent make for poor reading — 14, 36, 8, 23, 26, 11*, 6, 12 and 5. He had fallen to spinners five times in his last six dismissals in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It made sense to drop him. Then again, who could be expected to score runs in India if a premier in-form batter can’t be trusted to?

If you love sport, and you’ve been conditioned to love your team, what would your ideal game be? It has to be victory, sure, but would you prefer a one-sided win or a narrow win? You’d want a thrilling contest, won’t you? A game that goes to the final ball, and then your team wins with a four or a wicket! Or, in case you’ve risen above partisanship and love sport for the joys inherent in it, perhaps you don’t care about who wins or loses, you just want a thrilling contest, right? Either way, Australia’s surrender on Day 3, for 91 runs on a wicket on which India had scored 400 just a little while ago, was very disappointing.

India have made progress in alien conditions — the last two series in Australia were won 2-1 by India, the 2021 one won in thrilling fashion in Brisbane. The team has been competitive in England and South Africa, too. Though the IPL has been around for 15 years, the predicted decline of India’s Test quality hasn’t yet materialised. The performances of youngsters such as Shubman Gill and Rishabh Pant in Tests is evidence of that. The fast bowling unit has become very potent over the years. In Australia, India are no more the pushover they were even during the heyday of Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev and Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid. Australia, too, must focus on getting better in Asia rather than glaring suspiciously at the wicket or the groundsmen.

No Australian team is less than fiercely competitive. The defeat in Nagpur would cause severe injuries to their pride. They have the ability to bounce back, but for that, they must give up fear of losing.

Singles tennis slip

India, never a world power in tennis, had got illusions to this effect due to doubles tennis. Starting with Mahesh Bhupathi in the mixed doubles in 1997, Indians have won several Grand Slam doubles tournaments. Rohan Bopanna and Sania Mirza lost an Olympics medal in mixed doubles by a whisker in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. The two, with a combined age of 78 years, reached the Australian Open mixed doubles in January, where they lost in straight sets.

These are creditable achievements, but the fact is that doubles tennis doesn’t present a true picture of the health of tennis in a country. Doubles tennis is tennis, too, but the really real tennis is singles tennis. And in singles, the health of Indian tennis is very poor. For instance, at this year’s Australian Open, not even one Indian player, male or female, could qualify for the singles qualification rounds! Currently, only two Indians are ranked in the top-400 in men’s singles — Prajnesh Gunneswaran (342) and Mukund Sasikumar (399). Ramkumar Ramanathan is No. 413 and Sumit Nagal is No. 506.

Denmark — with a population less than Himachal Pradesh — beat India 3-2 in the Davis Cup recently, and for the first time, India have been relegated to World Group 2. To watch an Indian player doing well in singles tennis is now a forlorn hope. For those of us who have memories of Vijay Amritraj beating John McEnroe in the 1980s, and Leander Paes beating then No. 1 Pete Sampras in the 1990s, the decline is particularly painful.