Is there a tomorrow for Sourav's India?

THE `JADEJAM' in which that Azharoller-coaster ride landed our cricket, did it not have Wasim Akram hitting the ball spot `on the red' as he said: ``India now has only one match-winner in Sachin Tendulkar.'' Even Tendulkar (76 and 65) could not the Mumbai match-winner be - for a Sourav's India unable to drive home a 99-for-5 spin-edge, at a time when the odds were virtually 100 to 1 against a Steve Waugh-dismissed Australia mounting a fightback. Here is where Sourav, as a leader of men, was called upon to match his pre-series big talk with action.

Action replay after action replay of Adam Gilchrist (122) strikingly taking the match away from Sourav and co. even as Matthew Hayden (119) held firm (more firm than did the Wankhede Stadium wicket) saw our heads droop in the field, just when the opening had been created for India to be a global spin player again. That 99 for 5 was the hour in which the Ugly Aussie's 15-0 handsome hold in Test cricket looked like being broken at last. But this early Sourav grip on the rubber slackened the moment Adam Gilchrist carried the war to our camp. Once it became manifest that audaciously adamant was Gilchrist in hitting his way past our unseasoned spin, Sourav appeared to be singularly bereft of ideas on how to dam the flow of Aussie runs.

Sourav since has noted that India lost out to one of the great Test knocks of all time. Any Test knock is only as great as it is allowed to be. Without taking anything away from Adam Gilchrist for his `assault of the new century' on India, or from Matthew Hayden for his one-in-a-hundred role as a supporting player, the fact remains that Sourav had merely to get our spin to readjust its sights to two batsmen being pure left-handers - not to a rattling right-left combination. That Sourav failed to get his match-winning act together, here, was a signal failure of leadership. It boiled down, in the final bowling analysis, to Attitude vs Aptitude. Australia displayed the aptitude to turn the second-day lunch-tables on India. While India's attitude was flawed from that points-scoring stage at which Sourav engaged a distantly baiting Steve Waugh in a passage of arms.

Fine words butter no parsnips. Sourav would have been better advised, on the `Eve' of this traumatic Test series, not to add to the pressure on India via that `off-field' trip. `Dil chhed koi aesa Naghma' is a sentiment sitting pat on the silver screen rather than on the sightscreen. Personal life is private only so long as it does not intrude upon public life. What made genuine viewers of the game feel even sadder, in the face of dismal defeat, was the ritzy style in which the whole issue of the country's captaincy was trivialised by the glossily gossipy segment of the media in India.

Sourav's being dismissed for 8 and 1 in a `Test of nerves', a couple of elementary errors of judgment by him while leading India, could have been accepted as the rub of the lush Wankhede green. What could not be overlooked was India's captain not appearing fully focussed. This is still not a nation advanced enough in its thinking to ignore the paparazzi as of no more than meretricious nuisance value. The captain, in India, must not only lead but be seen to lead on the telescreen.

The boomerang outcome is that tomorrow is not another day. Another D-day it is for Indian cricket unless, in his own Kolkata so mistily linking with Dona, Sourav gets a fresh grip on himself. Team effort of a rare order is now needed to retrieve, in the core Eden Gardens Test of the series `live' on the small screen from tomorrow morning, Wankhede ground so mindlessly lost. One Sachin swallow cannot make India's summer. One match in the series should not have meant so much loss of Sourav credibility. The credibility gap between Wankhede and Eden is not now easily bridged. For the `Aquafresh' car-gear to reverse in the viewer's eyes, Sourav must make sure that India is not, yet again, led up the Eden Gardens-path by an Adam upsetting our apple-cart with shots exploding from behind. A behind left exposed, in the Mumbai Test, through want of gumption in pressing home that winsome 99- for-5 position attained.

Steve Waugh is on record as underpinning how, for all the 10- wicket margin separating the two teams in the first Test, it was a victory as hard-earned as any by Australia during those 15 in a row. No doubt the spirit of Sir Donald Bradman came to Australia's rescue when that team was down for the Michael Slater catch-count. But the way our untried spin spearheaded by Harbhajan Singh (ultimately 28-3-121-4) had the Kangaroos `on the hop', the first Test initiative gained should never have been surrendered. If the still raw Rahul Sanghvi bowled dismayingly overall (10.2-2-67-2), it was baffling to see him not given the ball after this left-arm spinner had sent Australia's exemplary `rearguardian', Steve Waugh (15), packing just when the Aussie captain was aiming to carry on, at the Wankhede, from where he had left off at the Brabourne - 106 and 34 (not out both times) vs Mumbai.

I know the losing captain has to carry the Pepsi can. Yet could Sourav, with his left hand on his lost heart, say that he went into the needle first Test of the series with his mind rivetingly on the job? Result - Eden now is no garden party. The Kangaroos have their tails up. Only briefly at the Wankhede did India look like hitting back sans the world class of Tendulkar. Like when `Fluid Drive' Venkatsai Laxman thrillingly counter-attacked, taking three fours in one over from Shane Warne. This was when the wayward Nadeem bounce of the pitch got Laxman.

Still this unfulfilled virtuoso would agree that it was a shot of lazy elegance he had played on the first day. Only to be pouched by Ricky Ponting off Glenn McGrath, when Laxman looked all set to dominate the bowling, having kept Sachin (76) imaginative batting company. In a line-up where Rahul Dravid (9 and 39) looked equipped only to sheet-anchor the Indian innings, it was all- important for Laxman to have seized this first Test chance with both wristy hands. V.V.S. Laxman (20 and 12) thus had his share to contribute in putting India on the back-foot at Eden.

The Mumbai Test (despite the mood in which Adam Gilchrist called the shots) was therefore, I say, not so much won by Australia as lost by India. The way Sadagoppan Ramesh (44 off 84 balls) created problems for India - towards the end of the second day just when, as a left-hander, he had begun to stroke the ball crisply - summed up our first Test failure as a failure of outlook. All that Ramesh, appearing well teleset, had to do, in the closing half-hour, was to pledge rather than edge. It passes comprehension why Ramesh should persist in this habit of gifting away his wicket just when headed for a really big score. If this is not lack of commitment, what is?

Look at the vein, by contrast, in which their left-handed opener, Matthew Hayden, took Kangaroot. Hayden had lots of luck during his knock. But those slices of luck were team-spiritingly integrated into a wholesome ton. Without ever achieving the fluency of stroke that Gilchrist did, Hayden had a major contribution to make towards posting Australia's first series- influencing Test win in India over the last 30 years. He vitally sealed one end. In doing that, Matthew Hayden could well have laid the foundation for Steve Waugh to seal the rubber. Unless Sourav now proves that Kolkata (as his childhood sweetheart) means everything to him in his cricketing life and times.

The nation has no time for the kind of losers Sourav and his men showed themselves to be at Mumbai, confronted by an Australia viewed to black-band together in the highly inspirational shadow of Sir Donald Bradman. A dim teleview of it is what all India will take if Sourav and his team fail to lift their game watchably at Eden. Chepauk beckons to India, now, to make it a 1- 1 fight to the finish.

RAJU BHARATAN

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