Thoughts on Motera

By CAM

The abundance of Twenty20 and ODI cricket over the past several months left me yearning for a good test match between two very good teams. I simply could not wait for the India-Sri Lanka test series to get started. After all this crazy anticipation, the game finally began in Motera. India won the toss and chose to bat – an obvious choice looking at the pitch. The match was hardly into the first session on day 1 and the Indian batting was wobbling leaving the Motera fans in a state of shock. The Indian batting greats dropped like flies making Welegedara look like the next Sri Lankan wonder.

Thoughts quickly traced back to 2006 when the South African pace attack reduced India to 76 all out. 76 all out!! Some thought this pitch was jinxed? Some you may have even wanted to take the curator for a long walk. IMHO, the Indian first innings was simply a combination of excellent first session bowling by Welegedara and Prasad combined with some careless, almost over-confident batting by the much revered Indian batting lineup. The Indian fans can only thank Rahul, MS and Yuvi for the getting the total to 426, which on day 2 seemed like a decent total.

Until of course Dishan and a couple of Jayawardenes made batting look all too easy by amassing the highest total ever by any team in India. 760 runs!! We haven’t seen a total like that in some time. Certainly Mahela is one of the greats, but to the average viewer, there seemed to be no penetration whatsoever from the Indian bowling. The likes of Harbhajan, Zaheer and Ishant were simply getting whacked around the ground with utter disdain. Amit Mishra snagging Mahela’s wicket was nothing more than a gift. What happened? Blame an all too flat a surface? I’ll buy that – only partly though! There simply did not seem to be a plan to get wickets – at least to the spectator’s eye.

On the flip side, did the Sri Lankans loose the plot? Did they really think that they can bat on and on, declare with a little over 4 sessions to go in the game, and get the most famed batting lineup all out and win the game? Again, IMHO, they should have declared earlier to make this a contest. The 4 wickets that fell in the Indian second innings were no credit to the bowlers. Sehwag gifted his wicket away. Dravid was the victim of a questionable LBW decision. Amit Mishra, the night-watchman, was brilliantly caught by Dilshan, and Gambhir after a responsible century, gifted his wicket away, in a similar fashion to his opening partner. This time around, the Sri Lankan bowling just could not get the job done. May be, after all, the surface is really to blame!

Few batsmen in the world understand the responsibility a batsman shoulders in different occasions, as does Gautam Gambhir. From a flamboyant Twenty20 batsman to one that saved the test match in Wellington, the Indian team is truly blessed with a batsman who is simply a class act. And finally, who can forget to mention a word about Sachin. An amazing tally of 43 test hundreds!! And he has many more to come…

All in all, a great test match. A result would have been nice. Let us hope for one in Kanpur.