March 23, 1998

Australia is considered the world's finest team. Well, as the first Test demonstrated, except in India.

By Rohit Brijnath

Alarm, bully, daunt, awe: synonyms for intimidate
--The Synonym Finder

"Lousy decision," railed Nayan Mongia at day's end. "I wasn't out, and (umpire George) Sharp told Sidhu 'Tell Nayan, sorry'." Ricky Ponting seemed a trifle peeved as well. "That's @$#&! out?", he looked to have questioned the umpire in the first innings. He didn't appear to be out, neither did others. Yet Mongia was fined by the match referee for dissent, Aussie petulance was forgiven, and that forgotten phrase "brown man's burden" was back in use. No wonder it was as if smoke was drifting out of Chennai's Chepauk stadium, steam rising from the arena.

But it wasn't just tempers aflame. It was also genius igniting, bodies burning, the game alight. Lynch the cynics who say that the five-day game, an examination of character and stillness and refinement, was an archaic sport. Test cricket lives, Chepauk endorsed that. But look closer and it was much more. This was a collision of cultures, a clash of cricketing civilisations.

Hides like sandpaper, belligerent in their skills, men who drink a Foster's in a single gulp, conquerors of every cricketing continent but this, the Aussies arrived as abrasive invaders. Soft-spoken, passive, men who drink tea in measured sips, who evoke admiration but rarely awe, the Indians were rulers of only one piece of turf, their own. Yet it was not just a team that Australia, whose last Test series here was in 1986, had to confront; they had to deal with a complicated, foreign land of which they have negligible understanding. And so as India won the Test, the irony was delicious. The most intimidating team in the world had been intimidated.

ALARM: "I used to call it the 'rat ( in the room) and riot (in the streets)' mentality," explains Mike Coward, celebrated Australian cricket writer who has toured the subcontinent since 1982. "There was a sort of unconscious cultural elitism among past Australian teams that came here." History doesn't always repeat itself. In this 50th anniversary of official encounters between India and Australia, a new thinking has emerged. "Players were actually looking forward to this tour," says Coward. Indeed, they were pursuing immortality; to win in India and Pakistan might finally assure them of the label, "the greatest Australian team ever".

Homework was mandatory. Coach Geoff Marsh's room is littered with videos he has studied and for players to refer to on tour. "Usually Warne uses them most, but he hasn't this time." Oddly, in Australia Marsh never screened them for his team. "For last year's Ashes series, I showed them highlights of the English batsmen scoring runs, their bowlers taking wickets, and one of my player remarked 'Shit, they're a great side' and we lost the first Test." More pertinently, he circulated one of Coward's columns on India, about "going with the flow and understanding the huge crowds, the noise, the different lifestyles". For the geographically isolated, intellectually insular Australians, adapting and adjusting was vital.

But columns cannot simulate the numbing lethargy, the disorientation that subcontinental humidity brings. "It's a major factor," said Taylor standing outside his dressing room cramped with crates of Bisleri water. Said Gavin Robertson, emphasising the conditions to a friend: "Some of us were just losing it out there." They were too. Fielding suffered. Then Steve Waugh, unsettled on the fourth day, fired three successive, futile bouncers at Tendulkar and talked tough, leading two former cricketers to note, "That's why he shouldn't be captain of Australia. He's too aggressive." It's the heat, right? Welcome to India, mates.

BULLY: "Good ball," says Navjot Sidhu, tapping one back to Shane Warne. The bowler picks it up, so goes one story, and snarls, "I always @$#&! bowl good balls." Sleeves pushed up, displaying wwf arms, face raining sweat, mouth spewing trash -- "He's got a line after every ball," says Saurav Ganguly -- Warne looks like a disgruntled labourer, when in fact he is a dealer in a delicate deceit. It is incongruous that a man whose diet consists of beans, pizzas, pasta, toasted sandwiches and lollies possesses such sophisticated gifts. The Indians acknowledge them. "He's tops, the best; he bowls the same length, yet keeps altering direction, making you think all the time," admits Ganguly. Michel Platini, they once said, had feet that thought; if so, then so do Warne's fingers. He is so mesmeric that when his over ends a dissatisfaction reigns.

Yet, there is disquiet, for as Keith Stackpole says, "This is the first time I've seen batsmen who understand him." In England, when he turns the ball a yard, says Rahul Dravid, "They go, Oh my God. Here we see that every day." It means that Warne is shorn of his psychological advantage, that menace and mystery that forms half of his weaponry. He is left with his skills only, prodigious yes, but fatal no. With no Glenn McGrath, no Jason Gillespie, no worthwhile back-up, he seems unlikely to decimate the Indian batting twice every Test. Indeed at Chepauk, the Indian batsmen did the bullying.

DAUNT: Mark Taylor, we are told, is a surveyor by profession. It figures, for he has a fine appreciation of the landscape of cricket. His study of Indian batsmen is apparent in the particular fields he sets for each one; his understanding of his best bowler is obvious too, altering fields for Warne depending on how much he is spinning the ball. Similar compliments are not bestowed on Mohammad Azharuddin. Still, the new Azhar, on the cover of Society in an Armani suit ("I work hard, I deserve the lifestyle") does not flinch from criticism that fast anymore, admitting, "We have not been a good team lately. We need to win away from home." Brave quotes often return to haunt Indian captains, but in Chepauk he had one thing Taylor didn't: batsmen who understand spin. Or to put it another way, a complete spin attack. "Well, we have spinners in Australia, but it's not something our batsmen are totally used to," said Taylor.

Prior to a television interview, when told he would be questioned on how to bat in India, Mark Waugh had drawled, "Gee mate, hadn't quite thought of that." A portrait in laconic arrogance, he knew he possessed the cultured craft to survive ("He's the toughest," admitted Anil Kumble); Ponting and Blewett, on the other hand, played with the trepidation of men tip-toeing through a minefield. Still, men like Ian Healy offered defiance. As a commentator on Australia's ABC Radio put it, "When Mongia called for a helmet after Kumble's third ball, the Aussies could have thought, 'It's hot, this is too hard'. But they didn't." Yet when Chauhan, Raju and Kumble attack like a pack of hunting dogs, courage alone is not enough a virtue. This ain't Perth mates, it's home advantage.

AWE: The great American sportswriter Red Smith once wrote after watching an astonishing sporting performance: "There is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic can ever be plausible again." He could have been reacting to Tendulkar at Chennai. Some innings find no measure in words. At best, we can say he scored 155 not out, his 15th century. He hit 14 fours, thumped 4 sixes, ran 1 three, 13 twos and 46 singles, next morning laughing at his running, saying, "I never train at it, I'm getting old at 25." Never would he say that at the running-between-wickets speed test at the nets conducted by new trainer Andrew Kokinos, he was quickest.

He drove, pulled, swept, nudged, flicked, cut, one shot a street bully, the next an aristocrat. At the other end, Dravid watched. "You have to be in awe," he says. "Indecision, whether to go forward or play back, is everyone's problem. He is never in doubt." Marsh adds later: "He scores so fast."

Speed turned the match. India had scored 257, Australia 328. On the fourth day India needed to keep its wickets, score wildly, allow for time to get Australia out. In the first innings, passion overrode reason and Tendulkar hurtled out to Warne early in his innings, caught at slip. In the evening Ravi Shastri told him: "Too many runs (204 for Mumbai versus Australia), so perhaps overconfidence." Tendulkar agreed. In the second innings, reason and passion found a perfect harmony, and Australia just watched. "He's better than Lara," said Marsh. "He's bigger than Ben Hur," said Paul Wilson. "We have to be switched on when he plays, allow him no boundaries, for then he doesn't stop," said Taylor.

The match was won, the intimidation was complete.

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