‘Sleepless at Wanderers’ would have probably best described Team on the night of the 17th Dec 2006, as surely they would be aware that they were on the brink of a historic win in SA, and perhaps as significant as our maiden wins against the West Indies and England in 1971, against Australia in 1981 and more recently against Pakistan in 2004.
On air yesterday, with the top five South African wickets gone by the end of days play, commentator Harsha Bhogle did keep on reminding everyone about the Hobart game against Pakistan, which saw Justin Langer and Adam Gilchrist coming together at 140-5 chasing 300 plus and taking Australia home.., though at times it felt that it was his way of saying,“'touch wood', hang on we are still not there"! Ashwel Prince is no Justin Langer and Mark Boucher though very good, certainly not Adam Gilchrist , but with Indian Cricket you never know, we do have a penchant for manufacturing superheroes out of cricketers who are strictly average against any other country.
Add to that the familiar ghosts of the overseas outings in the past and perhaps the demons within, and the air at Wanderers was one with nervous excitement to say the least, especially if you were an Indian taking in that thin air.
Enough of the prelude. Coming back to business, India needed to strike early and in the third over of the day, Zaheer Khan bowled a well pitched up delivery getting a nice shape found the right handed Boucher in front of the wickets and in line with Mark Benson’s raised finger, just about a perfect way India would have wanted to start the day. Boucher gone, SA 164 /6 having added just one run to the overnight 163/5. Now, Mark Boucher is one of those obdurate batsmen who puts a big premium on his wicket and also is in terrific form recently. He has also been involved in record 9th wicket partnership with Pat Symcox for 196 runs against
In came Shaun Pollock and he tried to stamp his authority by taking 22 runs off the first 9 balls he faced. He flicked, cut, straight drove and even hooked a six over long leg to Zaheer and took the wind out of his sails for a bit. Between him and Ashwel Prince SA had added 67 runs in a hurry (in 14.1 overs) with Shaun Pollock doing the bulk of the work, scoring 40 in 41 balls. Had the demons come back?
In the series against West Indies in 2002, Anil Kumble bowled with a broken jaw held together in a bandage and in an interview confessed that one of the most compelling reason for him to do so was the fact that its not often that the Indian batsmen give him 400 runs to defend overseas. And this was one party the master was not going to mis out on. He had been taken for some runs by Shaun Pollock with one on drive wide of mid on deserving a special mention. Shaun Pollock is one of the cleanest straight hitter of the cricket ball, and thus it was a tad inexplicable that he tried a hoick over mid-wicket going down on one knee, only to be deceived by the wrong one and get bowled! In the context of the situation too, it was perhaps unnecessary, but Anil Kumble took it gleefully. The sight of the ball kissing the leg stump but dislodging the off bail was a nice little visual footnote to some of the more famous ones seen in this test match. The manner in which Pollock got out reminded me of the Proteas in Anil Kumble’s and indeed India’s maiden tour to SA in 1992, when he got many a batsman out in precisely the same manner. In the more immediate context, it absolutely nipped any chance of a miracle and the game looked firmly in
On the other end, Ashwel Prince continued playing a lone hand, playing the ball on merit and keeping the scorers interested by taking ones and twos and an occasional long hit to the boundary. But with Pollock gone and Andre Nel taking his place, the question was ‘when’ and ‘how soon’ not ‘whether’
Anil Kumble didn’t take long to finish off Nel, a flipper catching him right in front. It was a beautiful set piece. A searching yorker followed by a screaming, rearing flipper that hit Andre Nel on his pads before he could even blink. SA 245/8. On the other end, Prince started going for his shots and VRV Singh bore the brunt going for three consecutive boundaries. VRV sprayed the ball all over and overstepped on more than a couple of occasions. But it was too little too late as the master cleaned up Prince with a full delivery bowled round the wicket that invited Prince to drive across to a vacant midwicket, who only managed to get deceived by the dip and yorked himself, the ball crashing on to his middle stump. SA 264/9. The last pair of Dale Stein, who batted with a runner and Makhaya Ntini lasted a few overs before Ntini holed out to Sehwag in the covers off Zaheer and then, there were none! 12 minutes before the scheduled lunch time and it was all over. Team
One couldn’t have written a better script for
If Azhar had been interviewed post match, he would have said,” The boys batted well, bowled well and fielded well” and though not a very poetic and touching testimonial to the proceedings, it would have been nonetheless quite accurate. The most important thing that made it happen though was DESIRE, a desire to win personal battles and accomplish team goals. Its Team
'Touch wood' and Over to
