For English August refer to India’s March

The English media has turned upon its team with the ferocity of a Mumbai monsoon. They are doing a great job for Australia. Indeed even Aust...

The English media has turned upon its team with the ferocity of a Mumbai monsoon. They are doing a great job for Australia. Indeed even Australian’s genial, nationalistic, cricket writers couldn’t have done better for their team. It is staggering. No more than one Test match out of five has gone by but the obits have been graphic and brutal. It is time for the England team to rise collectively and say, as did Mark Twain, ‘‘The reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated!’’

Few games have the ability to surprise as much as cricket does. Series have been turned on their head in the past, when faced with desperation heroes have risen, when faced with easy victory complacence like a cancer has set in. And one of the great proverbs of the game, of life too, is that no match is won or lost till the last ball is bowled. And while newspapers might be announcing funeral services, England’s cricketers and coach will doubtlessly be fortifying themselves with hope and resolve.

They need to and some recent numbers might help them.

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In March 2001, Australia’s cricketers came to India with fifteen straight wins behind them. India were in disarray, the great Kumble was injured, a new coach was finding his feet and Australia, under a brilliant captain were in a ruthless mood. The first Test was over in three days, Australia bowled India out for 176 and 219 and won by ten wickets. India won the second and third tests and therefore, the series 2-1, something nobody could have predicted. Scaling the Himalayas without oxygen would have been considered an equal alternative.

In October 2004, Australia’s cricketers returned to India. In the first Test at Bangalore, India were bowled out for 246 and 239 and Australia won by 217 runs. The series already seemed theirs and even though they played brilliant dominating cricket it was 2-1 after four Tests. Had it been a five Test series, like the Ashes, India were in with a chance of making it 2-2.

England will be aware too that for all the might demonstrated by Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne (and with every game they make their retirement a more terrifying thought for Australia), the game was lost because they did the simple things badly; things that on another day they wouldn’t spare a second glance at. Catches were put down and while that can be a disease the cure is not unknown. A couple of brilliant catches early in the second Test by England and the difference between the teams may not seem that large.

But for that to happen, England must believe that the difference is surmountable. As mentioned previously in these columns they cannot believe that defeat is inevitable and search for clues to justify it.

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Australia, to the contrary, believe victory is theirs by right and use the first favourable observation to confirm that. The difference between these two teams, as is true with most contests, is that one team believes it can win while the other believes their opponents will win. The result, in such a situation is inevitable.

England’s plight is not without explanation either. For the last sixteen years, every young child has opened his newspaper to be told that Australia are supreme, invincible. When the time comes for this young child to pick up a bat and helmet and walk out to play Australia, the beliefs that have been indoctrinated into him will walk out too. England’s cricketers must feel besieged by their own where, no more than two weeks ago, they thought they had an army behind them.

They must seize the initiative now, much as India need to do in Sri Lanka, not wait for it to come knocking on their door. It never does anyway. It needs people of strong beliefs and resolve to counter perceptions. Once they take the lead, others will follow.

That is where Rahul Dravid will be tested in Sri Lanka and that is where Michael Vaughan’s role in history lies. They must play the big points well; in the runs they score, in the words they choose, in the options they select. The next couple of weeks are crucial for both of them.