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| Saturday, 20 March 2004 |
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Are we learning? The high octane series between Asian cricketing giants India and Pakistan could not have got off to a better start than with both teams recording a win apiece in the first two one-day internationals. What have been so remarkable about the two matches are the closeness of the results and the mountain of runs it has produced. Both teams topped the 300-run mark on each occasion. The superfluity of runs had thousands of fanatical cricket fans fortunate to witness it first hand and the millions around the globe who viewed it glued to their television sets lapping up every bit of the action. The first international which India won by five runs at Karachi turned out to be the highest scoring one-dayer in the history of the game with 693 runs being scored by both sides. India rattled off 349-7 and Pakistan replied with 344-8 despite a century from skipper Inzamam-ul-Haq. The match in fact broke the existing record of 664 runs made by Sri Lanka and Pakistan at Singapore in 1995-96. The second match played at Rawalpindi was another run scorcher with Pakistan edging past India by 12 runs. On this occasion Pakistan scored 329-6 and bowled India out for 317 despite a classy 141 runs from the master Sachin Tendulkar. The irony of these two matches was that the losing side produced the centurion. Runs and results are what the one-day game stands for. One-day cricket was introduced to revive the game, which was losing its spectator appeal because of the boredom Test cricket was providing some thirty years ago. The overs-limit game was devised mainly for batsmen because spectators were prepared to spend money and come and watch the bat dominate over the ball. The first two one-day internationals in the on-going series in Pakistan was a good paradigm of what this game is all about. The key to producing two superb games was the pitch. The curators at the two venues should be congratulated for preparing such fine pitches. Regardless of the result, what amount of joy and thrills the two games produced. Pitches for one-day games should not be prepared to assist bowlers and win matches for the sake of winning, but it should be flat as it was at Karachi and Rawalpindi so that it conforms to what this game was devised for. Both teams played magnificent cricket and the results confirm that you don't need pitches to assist bowlers to win matches. Sri Lanka should take a leaf out of the Pakistani curators book on pitch preparations. It is not that our curators cannot prepare such types of pitches but it is the pressures that are brought upon them that are preventing them from doing their job. What we have witnessed in matches hosted here is a struggle with the ball dominating the bat, which has robbed spectators of their money's worth of entertainment. The totals of the teams batting first in the Bank Alfallah triangular played amongst New Zealand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka gives an indication of what we are trying to portray: 199-8, 116, 139, 172, 156-8, 203, 198. Even the pitches prepared for the recently concluded series between Sri Lanka and Australia was more or less on the slow side and not conducive to stroke play. Only on one occasion did a team go past the 250-run mark in the five matches. Fiddling and skills Fiddling with the condition of the pitch cannot compensate what we lack in cricketing skills. It has been the long held belief that the poor state of English cricket today has partly been caused by almost every county fiddling with the pitches. Sri Lanka need not fall into that category. As much as winning is necessary, that result should be obtained on true pitches which will give a factual reflection of where one stands with the others. The international program today is such that there are frequent meetings between countries than before and home advantage is fast becoming a thing of the past. Like Australia are showing us on the current tour that it is only a matter of time before a team will get accustomed to the alien conditions of another country because tours are becoming more frequent. A team that was reluctant to travel to the subcontinent in the past is now forced to do so quite regularly because of the International Cricket Council's (ICC) Test and One-day International championships which make it compulsory for all countries to play each other on a home and away basis. Bangladesh is fortunate in that way. In the past, home boards concentrated only on having tours with established cricket playing countries and nations like New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and Zimbabwe were offered just the one-off Tests. England kept Sri Lanka waiting for 20 years before offering them a three-Test series in 2000-01. New Zealand was not granted another Test by Australia for 28 years after the two countries first met in 1945-46. Unprecedented It was unprecedented but it happened. The West Indies cricket team took the extraordinary step of issuing a public apology following their humiliating ten-wicket defeat in the first Test against England at Sabina Park. They were bowled out for 47 inside a session on the fourth morning for their lowest total in Test cricket.y The official release from the team said they "sincerely apologised to the West Indies public for the shocking performance on the fourth day". But what caused much anger and uproar in the Caribbean was not so much the defeat but the behaviour of some of the West Indian players. Immediately after the match, four of the West Indian squad were reportedly seen in one of the stands drinking and partying which made the manager of the team Ricky Skerritt to utter: "I am disgusted at the thoughtlessness and shamelessness displayed by these players following such a horrific performance." Discipline is the key to success and West Indies' decline in recent years can be attributed partly to the lack of it. |
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