The Surfer

Sometimes you could feel that you were having the better of certain teams, but with Sri Lanka you always knew that they would come back fighting. It was that character that excites one about Sri Lankan cricket and their last tour to South Africa showed it. Everyone in South Africa gave them no chance whatsoever as it was tough for them to come and adjust to South African conditions. They were blown away in the first Test and to bounce back by showing unbelievable character, spoke of their toughness. The characteristics that I feared as a coach years ago are still there and that’s exciting.

I do not disagree that performance is the sole criteria in picking teams, but the seniors need to be handled well. They are mature enough to know what is right for the team as they have huge contributions to the game in our part of the world, and I firmly believe they should be allowed to decide when to go. We all understand the time is not far off for them, and I will not be surprised if the announcements come in the not too distant future, but they should be allowed to do it on their own terms.

India go through four Tests with almost no change in personnel. Do the captain and coach think Rohit Sharma is fit for Test cricket? Is he part of their medium-term vision? Wasn’t it worth giving him at least one – yes, one – Test to try and gauge his temperament? Hasn’t Virat Kohli shown us the benefits of persisting with a young cricketer? Where do Dravid, Laxman and Tendulkar fit into the Test team’s medium-term future? Do the selectors plan to sit back and wait (an agonizing wait) for the players to decide on their own exits?

John excitedly told me that whenever I pitched the ball on off stump, the batsman wasn't scoring. He generally took half an hour to make a point and, considering the tea break at a Test match is only 20 minutes, we were already walking back onto the field at the time. I turned to him and replied that the reason they weren't scoring when I bowled that particular delivery was because the ball had been turning half a metre and they couldn't actually reach it. I thanked him kindly for his input and asked him whether or not he thought I should concentrate instead on getting them out. His blank face indicated that he would have to go back to the laptop before he could respond.

Let us accept that Tendulkar’s form too is a major issue. What do you do with a player who plays badly but cannot be dropped? Tendulkar started the series better than his colleagues but faded away in the last two Tests. His fans will say, he still has the best average in the team. But the truth is that he has not played a single innings that makes any difference to the team’s fortunes for eight straight Test matches away from home. Tendulkar doesn’t look out of form but he seems to have lost the ability to play big knocks.

These are perfectly sensible explanations but I prefer one that draws from Sufism (and this may sound overblown at first and probably is even on reflection but we will stick with it). In these moments, they enter a state of Haal, a kind of temporary state of a different consciousness to the state normally inhabited.

They walk and act differently, with greater urgency and settle upon some central figures around whom they all whir in unison towards one central purpose.

The over-riding feeling was one of shock. Shock that we'd allowed a winning position to slip away so easily and shock that we'd allowed a pressure situation to get the better of us.

One thing leads to another. On the second evening in Melbourne, the inspired Siddle sheared through Tendulkar. From that moment, Australia's seamers became a pack of dogs with a bone. Bowling coach Craig McDermott emerged as an unsung hero. When Lyon finally got his chance, he seized it by the seam. At last, Australia has stopped trying to find the next Shane Warne, figuring that if they finds one half as good, they will be happy.

Some impressive talent has burst forth in the process under the fresh leadership of Clarke. David Warner wasn't even a NSW Sheffield Shield regular last summer when Australia lost the Ashes; now he shapes as one of Test cricket's greatest drawcards since Shane Warne. And there is great excitement about having injured pace pair James Pattinson and Pat Cummins on the park together for an extended run with the new ball.

Over the course of the era that he helped define—and then in the decade after him—the sport grew up from a gawky adolescence to an irresponsible adulthood, and the hesitations of yesterday were cast aside for the noisy satisfactions of a protracted financial bender. Looking back now, the sums involved were minute, but they made headlines at the time: when one of Mascarenhas’s clients became the first cricket millionaire in 1995, it was big enough news to make the cover of the weekly news magazine Outlook. A million dollars is what some cricketers now earn in a month. Mascarenhas was derided for the price he paid to acquire the 1996 World Cup; 16 years later, that amount wouldn’t have bought him two days of Indian cricket coverage. The transformation of the game wasn’t accomplished by one man alone, but Mascarenhas made the first move.

We should have taken the seniors into confidence and asked them to play only two of the three Test matches, therefore allowing a couple of youngsters a longer run in the five-day format. Even though we missed the trick earlier, we can exercise the same option next time we play Test cricket. Seniors aren't liabilities but are the much needed cushions for youngsters. It's imperative to have a few experienced men around who can soak in the pressure and give youngsters the allowance to fail.

This 116 wasn't quite in the class of the knocks that the Australians have reeled off this series, but it was a performance of great resolve and substance, the like of which India have failed to produce on tour. As a unit they have mislaid the art of the meaningful innings, the ability to bat out sessions and turn starts into centuries.