Sixty-four overs had gone and the binoculars in the press box were trained on Zaheer Khan as he ambled back to his mark. In the days leading up to the Boxing Day Test,it had appeared at the nets that Indias bowling spearhead had lost weight. He seemed a little haggard. A shave on match day did him no favours. Nor did the new hairstyle the spiky crown replaced by a floppy mass falling over his forehead. The eyes behind the binoculars searched for signs of fatigue in Zaheer,perhaps even a hand reaching out to feel his hamstring. The last time he appeared for India on day one of a big Test series,he had done precisely that and it had proved to be his last act of a miserable tour for his team. Zaheers presence on the field lifts Indias morale and makes their bowling look more dangerous because he is such a good bowler,and because he makes everyone else look a little better. At the MCG this afternoon,in front of over 70,000 people,as he called out to the umpire to announce he would go round the wicket to Michael Clarke,his reputation was on test. Promising start With the new ball,Zaheer had bowled superbly,threatening the well-being of Ed Cowans midriff with an in-ducker in his first,and beating David Warner thrice in one over with deliveries that curled away from the left-hander. After lunch,though,he had looked deflated,and his attempts at bouncing Ricky Ponting had seemed somewhat misguided. Delivered in the mid-120s,these balls had sat up waist-high and invited the former Australian skippers wrath. With his eye a little more forgiving than in his prime and form not on his side,Ponting had met these deliveries a fraction late,pulling them behind square. Runs were leaking. Now,after tea,Clarke had replaced Ponting and another 50-plus partnership had blossomed. Zaheer switched his angle. What could he do with an old,worn Kookaburra? Plenty. Clarke played the angle,the ball left him off the seam and beat him by a good couple of inches. The next ball started slightly wider. Clarke had played the square cut commandingly throughout his innings of 31,and aimed the same stroke. He realised too late that the ball had darted in,and left him no room. It hacked off his inside edge and clattered into the stumps. Zaheer knows his body better than anyone else,and knows when to go full steam and when to take things a little easy. In the warm-up games,he had bowled well within himself. This was only to be expected,but gave no clue on how fit he was. Doubts had persisted into Boxing Day. Chin music Now,as the patter of applause that greeted Michael Husseys entrance died down,Zaheer wagered on one big effort ball. It had to be perfectly directed,and it was. Pitching not too far short of a good length,it cut back and rose towards the left-handers chin. Hussey jumped awkwardly,and the next instant Zaheer was almost next to him,turning around to implore umpire Marais Erasmus to rule the batsman caught behind off his glove. Time stood still. The finger went up. Replays revealed that Hussey had been wrongly given out for a first-ball duck,the third in his last seven innings. With that dismissal,his average had fallen below 50. Later,Zaheer returned to bowl three overs with the second new ball,and got one to swing into Brad Haddin and rap him on the back pad right in front. Erasmus was unmoved. It was the closest any of Indias seamers had come to breaking the frustrating seventh-wicket stand between Haddin and Peter Siddle. In all,Zaheer bowled 23 overs and took 2 for 49. It is too early to say whether his body will last all four Tests,but the volume of his first-day output has been encouraging. Better still,he seems to have lost nothing of the ability to crank up the intensity at will and deliver critical wicket bursts with the old ball.
