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Journalism of Courage
It is no accident that Australia have their hands around the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. They have played and looked like the world champions they are and, in a contest such as this, both are important.
When India are on top of their game, and Australia are slipping, the contests have been even. Here India have looked ordinary in key areas and I8217;m afraid they8217;ve just not been good enough. Most times, better teams win series and by their performances here Australia are sending out strong signals to the rest of the world. They are hungry and if their players are ageing, they are hiding it well.
Most teams revolve around key players but often it is prudent to judge a side by the supporting cast. If they can outplay the equivalent players in the opposition, the team has a great chance of winning.
Australia8217;s big 5 are among the best they have ever had, that alone is good enough, for few teams can say that about their players. But take out Hayden, Ponting, Gilchrist, Warne and McGrath and see what you have. Langer, Martyn, Lehmann, Clarke, Gillespie and Kasprowicz. Put in Lee and Katich and then start making a comparison with other sides around the world.
Or look at this series. India8217;s next best are Chopra, Kaif, Patel, Agarkar, Zaheer 8212; not much of a contest. We must keep that in mind while assessing teams.
I fear Australia have been better prepared as well. Either that, or, more likely, they have carried out plans better. An enormous amount comes out of studying, and understanding, the competition. John Buchanan does that with Tim Neilsen for Australia. It is fashionable to rubbish, or doubt if you want to be polite, theories that come out of those that haven8217;t played Test cricket. It is arrogant and defeatist to think so. The analysts produce the theories, it is up to the players to execute them or reject them and at Nagpur I saw two examples that showed up the great value of backroom research. Even though Australia had made 398, as soon as Sehwag got 16 in the first over, a fielder went out at third man. On previous occasions Australia had conceded too many boundaries and the resultant movement of the scoreboard had taken the pressure off the batsmen. This time they are clear; the boundaries will be plugged at the first opportunity, even at the cost of a catcher.
Australia know that most of India8217;s batsmen are impatient and hence the strangely defensive fields right through this series. In certain intervals the field placement has looked bizarre but over three Test matches, you have to admit, it has worked.
The other hypothesis, dare I say fact, is that in Test matches India8217;s batsmen aren8217;t always alive to the single. And so Australia placed cover a touch deep, so too with point, giving key fielders those extra couple of yards to cut boundaries.
It was a ploy that could work only with teams that don8217;t scamper for singles, otherwise batsmen could easily pick up four singles in an over. But Australia8217;s homework on India8217;s inclination to take singles was spot on and it meant that even if batsmen occupied the crease for a reasonably long time, the scoreboard didn8217;t register enough.
These are the little learnings that proud teams take the trouble over. When great teams lose, or under-perform, as Australia did in the previous two series, they know where they can go wrong. When they plug that loophole, they become even more dangerous; first because they now have no apparent weakness and second, because they know they had one and become a little more humble. Australia are a great team that know where they went wrong and as a result, are doubly dangerous. Their arrogance was their weak point and they have left their ego behind in Australia.
Like Ferrari, whose success comes as much from what Schumacher does behind the wheel as from what the support staff does in anonymity, so too with Australia. The Border-Gavaskar Trophy will belong as much to the magnificent cricketers as to the backroom squad that did the research.
You need to be many things to be world champions.
