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!