India crumble on day four

When India talks of "rotation policy", you've got to wonder if the phrase has a different connotation to that understood by the rest of the teams.

For India, thus, the phrase refers to the policy of rotating one good session with several bad ones. And Test matches, looked at one way, are about playing -- and winning -- session by session.

Bloemfontein proved to be a classic example. Late evening yesterday, in testing conditions and under pressure, VVS Laxman and Shiv Sundar Das batted well to give India a measure of initiative. 96 runs were lopped off the South African lead for the loss of just Rahul Dravid, the bowlers had been tamed, the new ball had been aged 27 overs -- what more could you have asked for?

The answer to that is, one hour of batting in the morning aimed at consolidating, at playing themselves back in and, in the process, blunting the early sting in the Protean attack and setting it up for the turnaround. What we got, instead, was a series of giveaways. And what made it worse was that South Africa made a tactical error first up and looked to have given India a huge advantage.

The day four pitch was two-faced. Or more accurately, two-sided. On one end, there were huge cracks -- television commentators generally test the pitch by pushing their car keys through the deck, but at the end we are talking about, they could if they wanted to have pushed toy cars through. Worse, the edges of the cracks were crumbling and coming off in bits and pieces -- which meant that if the ball hit one of those cracks, you had no way of knowing just what it would do, you hit one of those tracks you were hitting dynamite. And this in turn meant that if India had a decent total to bowl at in the last innings, a certain Anil Kumble would be salivating.

And in contrast, the other end was flat, hard, almost unblemished and good for batting on.

The ideal scenario would have looked at South Africa's best bowlers -- Shaun Pollock and Nantie Hayward, to give them names -- taking it in turns to bowl into the flawed end, using the cracks to aid their pace and make things even harder for the batsmen, while Kallis, Ntini and Klusener to hold down the other end. But once Kallis was cracked for two fours in the first over of the day's play by Das, Pollock jettisoned that idea in favour of teaming himself with Hayward, even if that meant the paciest of the South African bowlers would be bowling into the benign end of the track.

This in turn meant that if India could see off the early spell of the two best Protean bowlers, they would then face two replacements who, thus far, have been cannon fodder for their shot-making.

What we got, instead, was a display of irresponsibility. VVS Laxman, who had on the third evening reined in his natural instincts and seen off a searing spell by Shaun Pollock, cut one immaculately through point for four and, a ball later, stood with feet nailed to the crease and pushed at a regulation ball just outside off, to get the thick outer edge through to Kallis at slip off Pollock. Laxman has this theory, which he keeps telling us, that if he can survive 45 minutes, he can handle any bowling. On the evidence of a few recent innings, one begins to wonder whether Laxman needs to start his innings 45 minutes later.

That was off the second over of the morning. The third over saw Hayward take over from Kallis. The first ball was a loosener -- short, very wide of off, and going wider off the seam. Shiv Sundar Das went chasing -- stretching to extreme lengths in fact in parody of a cut and managing to get a touch through. His innings of 62 was studded with fine strokeplay and a refreshingly positive outlook -- but all that good work was undone by one rash shot, too early in the morning.

The first ball Sachin Tendulkar faced, from Pollock, hit a crack on a full length and reared into the batsman as he lunged into a forward push, resulting in a bone-jarring crack on the knuckles. Tendulkar, taught a painful lesson about the vagaries of the deck, settled down to bat with caution, in a mode quite different from his first innings essay -- and then undid all of his own hard work when he lunged way forward into a drive, reaching for it and hitting off the toe of the bat to cover.

The wicket was Kallis' 100th -- and put him up there in the genuine all-rounder category of players who have 3000 or more runs, and 100 or more wickets, to show for their efforts. An elite list, what's more, with Gary Sobers topping it, followed by Tony Greig, Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Ravi Shastri and Richard Hadlee ahead of Kallis.

Virendra Sehwag has this uncanny ability to play the first ball as if he had played 50 before it -- feet, bat, everything in place from the get-go. That was on display here, as he got off the blocks with three flowing fours as his first three scoring shots. In the 47th over Kallis, who by then was running into the kind of headwind that would have stopped Maurice Greene dead in his tracks, bowled one middle stump which Sehwag, seemingly caught unawares by the ball stopping on him a touch, flicked straight to square leg.

Neil McKenzie had been fielding all morning with a black arm band, and perhaps his mind was still on whoever it was he was mourning -- the regulation catch went into, and out of, his hands. Sehwag added insult to Kallis' injuries by promptly laying back and cutting him on the up over slips for four, then producing a searing straight drive to end the over.

India went into the lead in the 49th over -- with four top batsmen back in the hut and not much to follow the pair in the middle. And one of them, Saurav Ganguly to give him a name, was giving a passable imitation of the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof. The Proteas quicks appear to have worked out that all they had to do was aim for the Indian captain's legs just behind good length, consistently forcing him back and out of the blue, cutting loose with the genuine lifter. Time and again, Ganguly flirted with disaster with the lifting deliveries and one way or other, managed to survive. But at no point did the mode of survival inspire any confidence that it could last -- and the inevitable end came when Ntini tried his luck with a lifter. Ganguly -- who appears not to have worked out that lifting the bat into a rising delivery is not the way to go -- did it again, and this time, the ball kissed the glove en route to the keeper.

At that point, India were four ahead. Lunch came after three more runs were added, and India at the end of the first session were 191/5. Another way of putting it would be to say that the batting side had scored 95 runs, off 25 overs, for the loss of Das, Laxman, Tendulkar and Ganguly -- in other words, no contest, it was South Africa all the way.

Virendra Sehwag started off the second session with a flowing drive through cover for four. But later in the same over, Pollock bowled a regulation back of a length ball, just outside off. Sehwag, who is one batsman you don't much associate the word 'hesitation' with, on this occasion hesitated, changed his mind, and decided to let the ball go through rather than play the punch he had originally intended. The ball came up and in to hit the bat as it was withdrawing, and crashed into the stumps.

The next two wickets were fortuitous -- Anil Kumble a tad unlucky to get the LBW going against him to a Hayward delivery going down to leg, and Dasgupta equally so, pushing at an away going delivery and not quite touching it, but getting the caught behind against him all the same. That was off Pollock, who then made it his second five-fer of the match when he kicked one off a crack and into Zahir Khan -- a delivery too good for a number 10 to cope with, Zahir obligingly gloving it away for Boucher to dive and hold.

Srinath and Nehra then had their fun, holding up the Proteas pacers and playing a series of educated slogs that essentially served to lengthen the game, before Srinath finally holed out to mid on trying to clear the fielder off Pollock -- who, in the process, took his first 10-wicket haul in a Test.

India ended with 237 -- leaving South Africa a mere 54 to knock off to complete the formalities. Given that the team has plenty of food for thought in any event, here's a bit more: Test cricket is about accumulating, using the singles and twos to build scores while the boundary hits provide the acceleration. India, though, appears to play to a different plan -- when the 9th wicket fell, the Indian score contained 37 boundaries -- and just 30 singles.

Does that tell you something about how the team played?

Right -- as said earlier, a good 200, 250 on the board, and India could well have ended up on the winning side of this one. As it turned out, the target was a mere 54 -- so what would you expect? Why, a team that would look to make a few points ahead of the next Test -- by putting out a cordon of slips and asking the bowlers to slip the leash and see if they couldn't take two, three wickets out.

But no, Srinath runs in with just two slips, the rest of the field strung out in defensive formation. Defending what, precisely?

Interestingly, Kumble opened with Srinath and in his second over, with the first ball, ripped down a top spinner that Gibbs went across to off to try and flick, was beaten for pace off the deck, and trapped LBW for 1 -- a rare sub-10 score for a batsman with 147, 74 and 107 in his previous three outings.

Kallis and Kirsten then pushed their way to the target, giving South Africa a 9-wicket win with a good 120 overs -- four sessions -- to spare.

India can go to bed with this thought -- Bloemfontein was their best chance to start a series on the positive side of the ledger. Inserted, India racked up a mammoth 372 runs on day one -- and then made a mess of it. Again with the ball, it had its chances to peg South Africa down to a reasonable lead -- and let that slip. With the bat, it ended day three on a very solid 96/1 -- and ruined it all in one morning of madness.

In Tests, you get one chance to stamp your authority. The top teams take them. India, with this lineup, got three chances -- and failed. And we still debate batting orders and bowling lineups -- when the fact is, they don't really matter. India's results -- or lack of them -- are not so much about who is playing and who is not, as about a team that, collectively, does not have the nous to seize its chances when they are offered.

Detailed Scorecards:
Indian 1st innings
South African 1st innings
Indian 2nd innings
South African 2nd innings

Day Three: India fight back on third evening
Day Two: South Africa do unto India...
Day One: Tendulkar, Sehwag stun with tons