Michael Jeh

A Test match for the ages

The Adelaide Test was pulsating, dramatic and poignant, and threw up questions about India's captaincy, and the absence of the DRS

Michael Jeh
Michael Jeh
15-Dec-2014
In a tense chase, India missed Dhoni's nerveless batting, if not his keeping or captaincy  •  Getty Images

In a tense chase, India missed Dhoni's nerveless batting, if not his keeping or captaincy  •  Getty Images

It's a question India will grapple with over the next few years: Do you play the best wicketkeeper-batsman, or do you play the best batsman-wicketkeeper? Do you select the best captain, or is a demi-god immune from such scrutiny?
I refer here to the selection issues confronting the imminent return of MS Dhoni after a pulsating and gripping Test in Adelaide.
My sources in India have been telling me for some time that Wriddhiman Saha is the best wicketkeeper going around on the world circuit. Handy batsman but not quite in the Dhoni class. Apart from one fluffed stumping that had relatively little impact on the Test, Saha did his wicketkeeping reputation no harm with an excellent display in Adelaide, without having much opportunity to do anything brilliant to justify his continued selection. He was unlucky in the first innings, given out caught at first slip. He was dumb in the second innings, throwing his wicket away after getting India to a position they should have won from.
One cannot help but reflect on the match and wonder if the outcome might have been different if Dhoni had played. Leaving aside his inferior keeping and dubious captaincy, field placements and bowling changes, with a rampant Virat Kohli in complete control at the other end, one suspects Dhoni would have clinically finished off the chase from that position.
India may also rue not having played R Ashwin. His batting, in both innings, might have been enough to at least shorten the odds on a draw. Certainly in the chase crafted so beautifully by M Vijay and Kohli, Ashwin's batting prowess may have given his captain the confidence to pick off the target more judiciously. His bowling would certainly have been no worse than Karn Sharma's, operating out of the rough created by his own pacers continually bowling round the wicket when they knew they would be batting last.
With a rampant Virat Kohli in complete control at the other end, one suspects Dhoni would have clinically finished off the chase from that position
Adelaide continues to throw up Test matches like this: India's amazing comeback in 2003, when they conceded 556 and still won the Test; England's astounding loss, having scored 551 for 6 declared in 2006; and Faf Du Plessis' heroic resistance in 2012, when South Africa held on to secure a memorable draw.
This Test had even more drama attached to it, given the poignancy of the occasion. Almost as if to honour Phillip Hughes, it served up a game for the purists, as enthralling a match as I've ever witnessed.
A scoring rate of approximately four an over throughout the five days, including the most magnificent and calm chase from Kohli, the man who has made hunting a target almost an art form. A game of emotion and triumph - Hughes' closest friends turning in amazing personal performances (David Warner, Nathan Lyon, Steven Smith and Michael Clarke), whilst elsewhere the drama continued with Ed Cowan, also one of Hughes' dearest friends, peeling off twin hundreds for Tasmania, and Sean Abbott astoundingly returning career-best bowling figures of 6 for 14 for New South Wales in his first game since the accident.
It's rare indeed to have a game where the Man-of-the-Match award could have gone to any one of five players. Warner, Smith, Lyon, Kohli, and perhaps Clarke, for his century under duress, mentally and physically. Had India triumphed, Kohli would surely have been "the man", but until tea on the last day, Warner was probably the front runner to take the gong.
The drama even extended to the umpires, operating without the benefit of DRS and spoiling an otherwise excellent game with a series of poor decisions on the final day - almost all of them by Marais Erasmus. Even an analysis of the umpiring decisions leaves us with more questions than answers.
Would India have been better off with or without the DRS? Saha's dismissal on day three, Shikhar Dhawan and Ajinkya Rahane in the second innings, viewed against the numerous lbw appeals turned down against Lyon. Most reasonable judges still maintain that the DRS will get more right than wrong, but as long as India remain intransigent, they have no platform from which to complain. To be fair to their batsmen, they have learned to accept poor decisions with equanimity, perhaps fully cognisant of the fact that their bed was made by the BCCI and they must now sleep in it, regardless of accuracy.
Some things are unlikely to change, though, even when it seems blindingly obvious. That Dhoni will walk back in as captain will dismay some and thrill others. The prince in waiting is royalty himself, though, his batting today as good as anything VVS Laxman can lay claim to in his impressive CV of fourth-innings performances. Even more impressive was his gracious and candid post-match speech, the maturity of his words in stark contrast to the unnecessary send-off of Chris Rogers in Australia's second innings.
But to focus on a few minor disagreements that the umpires should have nipped in the bud sooner is to kill a mockingbird, for this was a Test match for the ages - a game that was almost never played, a game that India had no right to expect to win and then, at the end, had no right to lose.

Michael Jeh is an Oxford Blue who played first-class cricket, and a Playing Member of the MCC. He lives in Brisbane