Bracken's Blow

That one delivery from Nathan Bracken came from the other world. Chris Gayle was hanging out the Aussies to dry by Mumbai bay.

Gayle, who has an irregular heat-beat, was making the Australians miss a beat or two. He struck battle-hard Glen McGrath with brute power; tore him into pieces. He strode into Brett Lee with a mission.

Shiv Chanderpaul, his partner with the most unorthodox stance, was in a hurry too. He pulled, slashed and drove like a greedy neighbour.

But that Bracken ball shaped up good enough to draw the opener forward. As the leftie prodded for the ball, it left him so perfectly narrow as to miss the bat but not the stumps.
The moment he missed the ball, Gayle was at the mercy of the Almighty. But the Australians are such destined professionals that the ball had to push the stumps on it way.

And, the peach of a delivery pushed the Champions Trophy away from the defending champions West Indies.

It is remarkable the way the Australians bounce back in a game through a chink. We all thought Lara and his boys would give the Australians a tough time, and the way they batted made us wring our palms for an engrossing tussle.

The Caribbeans were cruising with Gayle supplying more than just wind to their sail. But then Bracken varied his pace brilliantly and forced Chanderpaul to drag one back into his stumps.

Bracken, I reckon, should have been the man of the match. If not for his incisive bowling that sent back Gayle, Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan—who played a shade early to get a leading edge—the Caribbeans would have defended the title, and denied the Aussies the one title that had eluded them.

But these guys from the southern hemisphere are cricketing marauders. They bat, bowl and field like such zealots that we tend to think their cricket fan Prime Minister John Howard has briefed them to invade and rule the Commonwealth countries.

From the mid-80s, days when skipper Kim Hughes left a press conference in tears mourning the nadir of defeats, till now the journey has been one of riveting professionalism. They call it Australianism.
We saw the passage from Allan Border’s days through Mark Taylor’s and Steve Waugh’s till these days of Ricky Ponting. They have gone from strength to strength. The bowlers are precise as machines. They bowl to their field. One foothold, one lapse of concentration from the batsman, they are back and all over you. That’s what makes a team champions.

Look at their bowling attack now. McGrath, Lee, Bracken and Mitchel Johnson in the pace attack, while chinaman Hogg heads the spin department. For a batsman who wants to whack the ball away it is high risk to go ahead against these bowlers. Their quality is such that they perform nine out of 10 times.

McGrath, nearing the end of his career, bowls with less pace but with trade-mark precision. He reigns the corridor of uncertainty. He hits a perfect length and keeps the batsman guessing with his variation. The way he dismissed Sachin Tendulkar (league match) and Brian Lara in the final (thanks to a low catch by Adam Gilchrist) is testimony to the legend’s class.

Lee, the spearhead, is sharp as ever. Bruce Reed-mould Bracken, who skipper Ponting terms as a fantastic One-Day bowler, is improving with each outing. He has an uncanny ability to dismiss left-handers. We saw it in the final as he bowled Chanderpaul and Gayle to pull the West Indians back.

Their batting strength goes down to the tail. With class acts like Gilchrist, Damien Martin, Ponting and Michael Clarke and dynamos like Andrew Symonds and Shane Watson, the Australians can mess up any bowling attack. Ponting is batting at his best. They way the skipper takes on the fast bowlers is a lesson to the youngsters.

Now that the Aussies have won the trophy that their cupboard didn’t have so fat, England will have a hard time protecting the little urn they won 14 months ago by happenstance.

The way the Australians play their cricket, even a World XI is not good enough to beat them. This month’s Ashes Down Under will be interesting to watch. Let’s see how the wounded kangaroo faces a priding Lion.

There may be a hullabaloo over Cricket Australia’s decision to make their team known as “Commonwealth Bank One-day international team”, but whatever name they play under, they will remain the team to beat in world cricket.

After all, what’s in a name?

Woes In Transit

There was anticipation. There was excitement. It was the match we all were waiting: India versus Australia in the Champions Trophy. The pre-match talks hinged on the mouth-watering prospect of the Indian batsmen sorting out the Aussie bowlers.

Sachin was there. Sehwag was there, but Yuvraj wasn’t there. But then you had Dravid, Raina, Kaif, Dhoni…It should be a good one.

It is time the Aussies were beaten, you know.

I was at the Colombo airport waiting for my flight to Dubai, and could watch only a few overs. I had an Aussie friend with me. We kept silent when the umpire called out “play”. He sat in a wicker chair in front the TV in the Palm Strip lounge. I sat back into a sofa. He munched on chicken drumsticks. I dipped into Indian curry.

My heart leaped on to my mouth when Sehwag slashed at the first ball. His feet were as laden as the pillars of Stonehenge. But then, he continued to do the same. Whenever he connected, there were two sounds in seconds: one off his bat and the other off the boundary hoarding.

I looked at my friend and gulped down a smile along with some rice. He shook his head.

Sachin was circumspect. He was playing out the script of his new role of a mentor. He stretched hard to let the ball go. McGrath warmed up as Sachin was beaten on the defensive push.

I thought the Indian master would stroll down the strip, as he did in Malaysia recently, to greet the ball on the up. After all, he had a point or two to prove to his Australian nemesis. Ha, then came the moment. As our flight was announced and the airline staff asked us to be at the boarding gate, McGrath bowled that beauty. It looked an innocuous one till it reached Sachin’s bat. Suddenly it drifted into the corridor of (un)certainty. Sachin offered the full face of his bat. There were outbursts of celebration behind the wicket. McGrath had done it again.

My friend turned back and punched the air. I sulked.

Alright, you get out to good balls. But what about those 30-odd balls you pushed and prodded? You should have played your natural game, right?

Talking of natural game, I have to talk about my cousin, my childhood cricket adversary. Named after a famous Pakistani batsman—a danger of having a cricket-loving father—he was a natural fast bowler. He was short but quick.
Sadly, he was too good in imitating his heroes though he was a good bowler. Variety was his forte, and his curse. He bowled six different balls in one over. He bowled a perfect leg-cutter with a Hadlee action, an in-dipper with Imran action, an outswinger with a Kapil Dev action and a nasty snorter with a Marshall action. But in the course of all this, he forgot his own action, and was hammered around the ground.

As we dragged our feet to the boarding gate, I wondered why Sachin couldn’t play his natural game as Ponting does. We saw in the Champions Trophy final what happened to Lara when he tried to curb his instincts to play shots. Again, McGrath got him pushing outside the off-stump.

By the way, I had my first golf stint in Nuwera Eliya, the beautiful hill station in Sri Lanka. The swing wasn’t a bad one. Only glitch was it turned out to be a copy-book cover drive!