Tony BeccaTHE PRELIMINARY round of the ICC Champions Trophy comes to an end in Chandigarh today with India up against Australia in a contest which will see the winners joining South Africa, New Zealand and the West Indies in the semi-finals scheduled to get under way on Wednesday.
Who will it be, will it be India or Australia?
Based on everything, and although they lost to the West Indies, on paper and on form, it should be Australia.
Although they lost to the West Indies after defeating England, India, however, are no pushovers, and with a little luck, with some good batting from Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, captain Rahul Dravid and Yuvraj Singh, plus Mahendra Dhoni, they could upset the odds and storm into the semis.
At the start of the tournament, the opinion was that any one of the eight teams could win it and the question now is this: where are the other three and what happened to them?
Failed To Cope
The other three, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and England, are on their way home and for the simple reason that although they bowled well, generally, they failed to cope with the conditions.
As far as their batsmen were concerned, they simply could not cope with the slow pitches - some of which also produced inconsistent bounce, and as far as their bowlers were concerned, they could not control the ball which, in the night, became wet due to the heavy dew.
The cry out of India, and not only from Pakistan, Sri Lanka and England, but also from Australia, South Africa, India, New Zealand and the West Indies, is not so much that the pitches have produced inconsistent bounce from time to time, but that they are too slow - so slow that strokeplay is impossible, huge scores almost impossible.
The fact of the matter, however, is that while strokeplay can be difficult on slow pitches - and even then that should depend on the quality of the bowling, batting is far from impossible, and so too, therefore, are huge scores, even in the fast-paced one-day version of the game.
Batting Woes
The problem is that something has gone wrong with the art of batting.
When I was a boy, or a young man, batsmen used to look forward to slow pitches - and they seldom missed out when they came upon one.
Bourda in Georgetown, Guyana, was, for example, a batsman's friend - both to those, like Rohan Kanhai, Basil Butcher and Joe Solomon, who were born and bred on it, and to those, like Frank Worrell, Everton Weekes, Clyde Walcott, Gary Sobers, Neville Bonitto, Collie Smith, Allie Binns and Easton McMorris who were born and bred on the fast, really fast, pitches of Kensington Oval and Sabina Park, to Len Hutton of England, Colin McDonald of Australia and Martin Crowe of New Zealand.
They all enjoyed themselves batting at Bourda.
Without even thinking of more modern batsmen like Alvin Kallicharran, Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Clive Lloyd and Jimmy Adams who scored heavily in Asia, I can also remember, as a boy or as a young man, batsmen like Weekes, Sobers, Kanhai, Butcher and Solomon going into India, taking on their best spin bowlers on their slow pitches and scoring centuries after centuries.
Is it that the batsmen of today are not as good as those of yesterday? No, I do not believe so. Based on the performance of Adam Gilchrist - 92 versus the West Indies, Runako Morton - 90 not out versus Australia, Stephen Fleming - 88 versus South Africa, Damien Martyn - 78 versus England, Brian Lara - 71 versus Australia, Mohammed Yusuf - 71 versus New Zealand, Dhoni - 51 versus the West Indies, Shivnarine Chanderpaul - 51 against India, Mark Boucher's 69 and Justin Kemp's 64 after South Africa were struggling at 42 for five against Pakistan on Friday, performances that saw each and every one of them standing firm, using their feet well, and stroking the ball confidently and consistently, it cannot be.
Not Disciplined
While technically they may be a bit short, it appears that the batsmen of today are simply and generally not as disciplined, not as patient as those before them - not even in comparison to great attacking players like Weekes, Sobers, Kanhai, Richards, Lloyd and Greenidge.
The ICC Champions Trophy continues with the first semi-final in Chandigarh on Wednesday and although the pitches are likely to be the same, hopefully the batting will be better - much better than it was up to Friday, as good as it was yesterday when Chris Gayle and Dwayne Bravo of the West Indies, Andrew Straus and Ian Bell of England batted confidently and brilliantly.
