A Tale of Two 46s
GH on India's lowest home Test score
Thirty years ago at Port-of-Spain, with England chasing 200, captain Mike Atherton had the misfortune to be lbw to the first ball of the second innings. He decided to have a shower. It was not a long one. By the time he had towelled off, however, England were six for 27. They were shortly rounded up for 46 in less than twenty overs. The scoreboard provided a image for Mike Marqusse’s Anyone But England, his canonical study of English ‘cricket and the national malaise’.
What did Rohit Sharma do after throwing his wicket away at the top in Bengaluru against New Zealand last night? Nothing to prevent the self-immolation of the rest of his team’s batting, as they were also bowled out for 46, India’s lowest score at home. Unlike Athers, Rohit has been pretty sanguine about it all, merely issuing a mea culpa for his decision at the toss: ‘We thought it wouldn't help the seamers much after the first session or so. There wasn't much grass either. We expected it to be much flatter than it turned out to be. It was a misjudgment on my part, and I couldn't read the pitch well.’ Unlike those doleful English fans, too, Indian fans have rallied to their heroes’ defence.
The low score has traditionally been cricket’s form of shaming national defeat. Australia and India share not only the same patriotic day but a lowest Test score of 36. New Zealanders still cringe at their innings horribilis of 26, while Baz McCullum has spoken of the bout of soul searching that followed his team’s 45 against South Africa in Cape Town in 2013. Test cricketers are the game’s corps d’elite. When a team is dismissed for less than 100, it is usually thought ascribable to some kind of systemic failure - without Boxing Day 2010, there’d have been no Argus review.
But maybe that’s changing. Five of Test cricket’s lowest twenty scores have come since 2010, compared to four in the preceding six decades. Yet perhaps because T20 has normalised the batting collapse for a generation of cricket fans, we see such events less as cultural indictments and more as natural disasters - of the newly virile batsmanship we so fetishise an unavoidable byproduct. RCB have been dismissed in less than ten overs and the Thunder bowled out for 15 without seeming to bother anybody. A culture that promotes attack and exalts the counterpunch will always excuse its excess.
From one perspective, that’s actually saner and more proportional; from another, it’s can be a means of evasion. Because Rohit is right and wrong. It’s arguable he read the pitch correctly: he was on the money that it ‘didn’t help the seamers much after the first session’, for New Zealand’s batters made productive use of the day’s last fifty overs. Had India set themselves to be two-down at lunch, their opportunity to bowl last with a trio of spinners would have loomed as a huge advantage. But this they could not seem to do - it was so last century. Virat Kohli and KL Rahul, caught down leg side, could consider themselves a tad unlucky. But the bard of Indian cricket, Sid Monga, has a crisp analysis here. The captain’s was a lousy shot, Yashasvi Jaiswal could barely reach the ball he nicked, and Sarfaraz Khan looked like the class nerd trying to fit in with the cool kids when he clothed his third ball to mid-off. Rishabh Pant could have been out half a dozen times before he was; Ravi Jadeja’s was a frivolous response to a ball that on the eve of lunch required only a straight bat. As at Indore last year, when Rohit also won the toss, it felt like he and his team couldn’t quite be bothered…..
Did someone say Cheteshwar Pujara? Seldom since his retrenchment has India seemed so in need of such a stabilising influence. And maybe Gautam Gambhir has been imbibing too much Marshall Foch: ‘My centre is giving way, my right is retreating, excellent situation, I am attacking.’ After all, I notice that Foch also said: ‘Airplanes are interesting toys but have no military value.’ India, of course, just played awesome attacking cricket to mow down Bangladesh at Green Park. Yet that’s the essence of Test matches. You need more than one plan. Perhaps being bowled out for 46 is no longer indicative of ‘national malaise’. But it’s not indicative of nothing.
Not for years has defensive technique in bowler-friendly conditions been valued as a skill. Why would it be? Most Test pitches are pretty flat. Most cricket is played with a white ball. Players who are valued are the ones who pick up the line early and hit through it - which is pretty much the opposite of what you should do when the ball is moving around. The aggressive players get the big-money T20 contracts and the applause when Tests are played on flat tracks. And when the ball moves or turns? Well, it's once in twenty Tests, or in Asia, and after the embarrassment of that game there will be another game in Adelaide (or somewhere) where you can carve away to your heart's content.
I'm not saying this as a criticism, by the way. Rationally, you should construct your technique to enable you to succeed in the conditions you encounter most of the time. A generation ago, batsmen were praised for their ability to play on a wet pitch, or a "sticky" one. Those skills are simply no longer required in first-class cricket. Harry Brook's technique against the turning ball was horribly exposed against Pakistan this week, but the week before he hit 317 at almost a run a ball, so no doubt he's justified in thinking that his choices will pay off more often than not.
Anyway, as a retired pie-chucker, it's always fun watching the sloggers suffer when the ball doesn't stay nice and straight for them.
Poor shots aside, there was some wonderful catching from the Kiwis yesterday afternoon. Compared to the two relative sitters dropped by Smith and Root before tea in the Test in Pakistan, which may well cost them that Test match, NZ took every opportunity. Drop two of them and perhaps India get away.