A face-saving exercise

Series done and dusted,India look to find meaning in the final Test at The Oval.

Cricket possesses unrivalled patience for lopsided and meaningless duels. In boxing,referees put both the fans and the opponent out of their misery when the loser on the ropes can no longer take the body blows showered on him. Tennis is contemplating doing away with dead rubbers. Many other sports also follow the best-of format,where hands meet in the centre of the court/field once the defeated has been pushed to a point of no return. But not cricket.

In this sport of ours,we indulge in the inconsequential. Cricketers are programmed to look purposeful and inspired even before the most insignificant of games. Its an old trait that has survived,despite the constantly evolving nature of the game. So much so that no one really smiled,let alone burst out laughing,when MS Dhoni spoke earnestly about playing for pride before the fourth Test. That after his team barely showed any for the first three harrowing losses,in a series where the narrowest margin of defeat was by a whopping 196 runs at Lords.

In the subsequent two Tests,Englands victory margins swelled to 319 runs at Trent Bridge,and an innings and 242 runs at Edgbaston. But yet when Andrew Strauss reminded his team and the media about the dangers of taking the foot off the pedal,once again nobody laughed. Forget the pedal,England can sleep at the wheel since they have already won the race.

Team India led by a skipper who had never lost a Test series before the current debacle arent used to participating in a futile race,one in which the opponent has already crossed the finish line. Because the heady 2000s witnessed the team kicking old habits and reaching new heights,coupled with the fact that most of the current players made their debut in the new millennium,India havent played a single away series in which the last Test did not have a say in the final verdict of the campaign.

Threes company

Sachin Tendulkar,Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman are the only three members in this tour party who in the past have been in an Oval-like situation. And they are quite aware of the meaningfulness in such a meaningless game. During the 1999-2000 Australian series,the batting mainstays took the field for the final Test at Sydney with the team trailing 0-2. An innings defeat was to result in a whitewash the last time India was to suffer such a humiliation. But the Sydney Test is remembered less for Australia romping home to a 3-0 victory and more for the birth of a certain Very Very Special cliche,thanks to Laxmans fighting 167 his first Test century in the second innings.

A special case

The silken knock in that so-called worthless game proved to be a watershed innings for Laxman,and in hindsight,for Indian cricket as well. Before Sydney,Laxman averaged 21 against Australia,but the confidence that he imbibed from that free-flowing knock changed the course of the teams fortunes in the decade. Not only did Laxmans personal average against the leading Test side of that era balloon to 61,but with him cracking the Aussie code,a dressing room full of drooping shoulders,shattered confidence and fractured egos found nirvana. And when the Aussies arrived on Indian shores on an unprecedented winning streak,Laxman scored 281 in Kolkata and changed the face of Indian cricket for good.

In case the juniors in this side find it tough to drag themselves from their beds for the final Test and motivate themselves,they can have a word with Laxman asking him to walk down memory lane. Or else,they can just take a leaf out of Rahul Dravids book the batsman hit The Oval nets before the rest of the team,and was sweating profusely by the time the others arrived. There is also,of course,Tendulkar for ultimate inspiration,who stared long and hard at the 22 yards on the eve of the final Test. When it boils down to preparing for a game,the masters are not bogged down by trivialities such as the scoreline of the series .

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But for those who cant get 0-3 out of their minds and are looking forward to go through the motions or sleep walk through the Test,consequences can be catastrophic. The final game of a disastrous tour has traditionally been cruel to the future of the fringe players in the side. Post-mortems look for scapegoats and it is almost always the lesser players who face the axe. While Laxman turned a sagging career around in Sydney,the same game witnessed MSK Prasad,Hrishikesh Kanitkar and Vijay Bharadwaj playing Test cricket for the final time. There are many in this team too who happen to be just one push away from oblivion. Crickets patience with lopsided games is famous,but so is its ruthlessness with non-performers.

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