Mahela
Jayawardene's twin centuries in the recently concluded test
series against England were vital rearguard actions when he came in to bat with
Sri Lanka in trouble having lost 2 wickets off consecutive balls on both occasions.
However, Jayawardene’s heroics are probably to be expected from someone who not
only has undoubted class but also has the third highest home average of batsmen with more than 4000 Test
runs at home. It also brings into focus the value of performing in unfamiliar
conditions.
Cricket attracts in many ways. Test cricket is a battle
of endurance and skill, and the latest entrant to cricket, T20s - at the risk
of angering the self-styled purists - requires a calm head in high-pressure
situations, while the 50-over one-day version falls in the in-between category
of requiring skills and composure but both in equal measure.
Despite all these varied challenges the game, when
stripped to its most basic form, is about batting to score runs or bowling for
wickets. But even there a player’s great challenge is that the exhibition - or
the more new-fangled term "execution" - of these skills is greatly
influenced by the conditions in which the game is played. This is where the
emphasis lies on knowing the conditions - the weather, the ground, and the way
the pitch is likely to behave - very well. To be able to perform even when
these conditions are not familiar is what separates the good players from the
great ones. To be able to do that consistently places players in a different
league altogether.
Football has, for many years now, placed such an emphasis
on away performances that a winner of a home-away series of games if tied on
goals is the team that has more away goals. This, even though almost nothing
changes in terms of the major factors like dimensions of the field, and the
quality of the pitch with the only major change being the crowd which is so
overwhelmingly backing the home team that it many teams consider the home crowd
their 12th player, an advantage the visiting team does not have.
In comparison, with cricket matches so much more matters than
the crowd alone – with the pitch being the biggest factor along with the size and, in some cases, the shape, of
the grounds, and the weather conditions, a player’s away performances have to
be seen as the benchmark of quality.
Batsmen and bowlers have to adapt to alien conditions when they tour and in the
non-stop international schedule they have to come to terms with the conditions
in a handful of practice games, and net sessions.
Sambit Bal made
an excellent point of how Sachin Tendulkar and Brian
Lara were the two finest batsmen of the generation for him because they
averaged over 50 even in the 1990s when bowling attacks and pitches were much
tougher.
If cricket in the 2000s has tracks that tend to be more batsman-friendly
then it is even more pertinent to focus on away performances since the basic nature
of each country’s wickets is almost never lost. A flat track in Australia still
bounces more than anything in India and a placid-looking wicket in Sri Lanka
would still turn more than any pitch in England. Visiting batsmen have to adjust
to these subtle changes which they probably would never have encountered in
their years of development as a batsman. Then there are the totally different
conditions like a green wicket at Headingley, a bouncing track at Durban or a
square turner in Mumbai. These raise the bar on the skills and concentration required
to a new high and many a batsmen generally recall those knocks as being their
finest essentially because the conditions were so tough.
When playing
in alien conditions batsmen have to make adjustments to a technique which is
very well-developed in terms of the basics of footwork, back-lift and
shot-selection. This adjustment is not easy as a lot of it also depends on the
form the batsman is in. When in bad form and playing away from home
shortcomings in technique get more easily exposed as a player tends to fall
back on his natural game and that natural game is suited generally to home
conditions. Batsmen from India playing in England have to be less gung-ho going
after anything pitched up as the seam and swing could take it further way and
induce an edge while a South African batting line-up cannot just lunge forward
with hard hands against spinners with close-in fielders prowling about. Batsmen
cannot learn new tricks overnight like coming down the track to spinners or
playing the pull and the hook so it is all about knowing what they can do and
adapting that to suit the conditions. It is fascinating to watch how different
players approach these away conditions.
Differing
conditions do not just affect the batsmen. The bowlers too have to do things
differently. Pace bowlers have to learn to be more patient and less attacking
on drier and flatter wickets while spinners cannot just toss the bowl around
the off stump and let the pitch do the rest in places like Australia and New
Zealand. Conversely pace bowlers from the subcontinent when playing on
fast/bouncy or seaming/swinging wickets tend to get too carried away on finding
pace-friendly conditions and in trying to do too much spray the ball all over
the place. Bowlers end up having to do more to adjust to different conditions because
a subcontinent tour can help spinners in the touring team while a tour to
England can help the visiting fast and medium-fast bowlers.
If
the thrill of watching players perform in alien conditions has to remain then
cricket has to take a hard look at how it tends to regulate and over-react to the
perceived quality of wickets. More damage is done to this game and especially
the Test match format when both teams pile on a mountain of runs in an innings
on wickets which are totally unresponsive than in a Test match that gets over in three days. A
short game full of wickets tumbling is a much greater exhibition than a
meaningless one where even tail-enders help themselves to centuries. Cricket
has to put an end to sanctioning pitches which are unpredictable and make
scoring difficult just because visiting teams are not good enough to perform on
those surfaces. The utopian wicket is one where there is seam and bounce on the
first day, settling into a batting track for the next two before beginning to
crack for the last couple of days. Such ideal pitches cannot be produced so it
is best that pitches are allowed to be prepared favouring bowlers than batsmen.
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