By Anil - 23 December, '02
December 23 2002

A bizarre Test series in New Zealand ends in farce, as manipulated playing conditions make a mockery of the game and trigger an uproar among both Indian and New Zealand observers. In the end, the 2-0 score reflected the margin of tosses won far more than of test matches.

It was a Pyrrhic victory for New Zealand, whose cricket lurches from one crisis to another. Fresh from a dispute over payscales between administrators and cricketers, as a loudmouth NZPA representative was swept away to allow a contest against the wealthiest and most attractive of cricket tourists, other unpleasant characters took over to destroy the contest. "Bizarre" is the word best used to describe the happenings in cricket in this humble little island in the far east of the Pacific. The Indian tour started off with a "bizarre" form of the game which was greeted with contempt by fans in India, whose fans the NZ administrators so much wanted to win over. After India very nearly won a form of game which they had never seen or heard of before - in spite of lacking 4 top players including the captain and vice-captain who decided to give the strange game a skip - a shaken NZ cricket board arranged for unfit and underprepared pitches for an even more "bizarre" Test series, which ended in flames.

At the end of it all, 4 Test innings were completed in under 2 days of play and less than 200 overs. A match that had started a day and three-quarters late farcically ended a day and a half early. NZ captain Fleming admitted that his side's batting could not hope to achieve much abroad as long as NZ turned out underprepared pitches, pointing to the fact that only 3 fifties were scored in this match, two of which were made by Indian batsmen who had hardly any practice at all going into the test matches, and had been missing their cricket kits until just before the start of the first Test!

NZ's own media blasted the 2 pitches prepared in Wellington and Hamilton as a disgraceful tactic meant to upstage the world class Indian batsmen. Most fans found the proceedings offensive, whether it was over-watering the pitch in spite of heavy rain, or trying to secretly dry it out ahead of a NZ innings, something that Ganguly brought to match referee Proctor's attention. The ICC once again proved its leanings, as it proceeded to completely ignore the proceedings in NZ and the outcry against it. Had such an abbreviated couple of Tests occurred in India, or indeed any of the 4 Test playing countries of the Indian subcontinent, the ICC would have undoubtedly been seen moving measures to ban those pitches or take other corrective action. Had Australia collapsed in such fashion in India on such a hellhole of a pitch, and India's batsmen also had done the same, the second Test would never have been allowed to take place on an even worse pitch. The ICC evidently believes in taking care of its own.

The few parochial Kiwis who mumble defensive words about India preparing similar pitches which aid spin are hypocritical and far-fetched in the extreme. Steve Waugh had hailed the pitches on which his team had played in India as "excellent", whereas England had actually played in seaming conditions that rivalled their own, with both Mohali and Bangalore aiding pace. Hooper said that every pitch on which his team recently played and lost Tests was good.

Those parochial few would do well to note that significant action has been taken to change the pitches in India to ones that assist seam, with the help of foreign consultants from the very same culprits that subjected India to such treacherous ones - New Zealand. In fact, those consultants have reportedly damaged several of the pitches which they rebuilt, causing them to slow down rather than speed up. Both Mumbai and Kolkata, which had hard and bouncy pitches that assisted pace, have deteriorated since New Zealand consultants relaid them at an extravagantly high cost to the BCCI.

New Zealand, which won both crucial tosses in somewhat suspicious circumstances, bowled ordinarily but with great success. Tuffy, a medium pacer who was instrumental in the Indian collapse, simply put the ball in the right place and saw the pitch doing the rest. Shane Bond, a heavily hyped paceman, bowled poorly and was not even able to impress with his speed, showing a top speed of 142 Kph, and mercilessly hammered to all corners of the ground by such batsmen as Tendulkar, Sehwag, and even tailenders Harbhajan and Nehra. By comparison, Indian paceman Zaheer Khan was the pick of all the bowlers, with the best figures of any bowler from either side in the first Test as well as the first innings of the second Test. Fast bowler Ashish Nehra edged out Bond in the pace race with a top speed that reportedly just topped Bond's peak - a fiery performance on a drying pitch that had eased out considerably in the fourth innings at Hamilton. Even NZ bowling suffered in comparison to the Indian bowlers, who engineered collapses in much less friendly conditions after Ganguly lost both tosses - whereas the Kiwi batsmen performed extremely poorly for players that have supposedly grown up in such home conditions, against a pace attack that they talked down at every opportunity. This was in spite of umpiring by Aussie umpire Harper and Sri Lankan Ashocka de Silva that seemed to clearly favor New Zealand, with both Fleming and Richardson receiving several lives after being given the "benefit of the doubt" after being plumb LBW to the Indian pacemen.

As a side note, the reluctance of these umpires to give the wicket of the NZ captain was notable, even while being extra unkind to Indian captain Ganguly. Clearly they consider the wickets of captains to be key to the final result, and act accordingly.

And speaking of bowling speeds and radar guns, it is interesting to note that Australian speed guns have been exposed by Bond's comments that he felt "undersold" by the radar gun in New Zealand which registered a rather pedestrian top speed of 142 Kph for him in extremely helpful conditions, whereas the same degree of effort had him showing up in the mid-150s in Australia. This exposes the Australian tactic of attempting to mislead the world with Brett Lee's speeds, after disgruntled Australians were wounded to the quick with the arrival of the world's fastest bowler Shoaib Akhtar on the cricket scene. But every cricket fan knows that when Pakistan travelled to Australia recently and defeated them, Akhtar was routinely registering 15 Kph higher than Lee, at which point the operators had presumably recalibrated their speed guns to a more normal setting fearing that Akhtar would otherwise register 175 K regularly, making a complete mockery of their cocked up systems. Thus, poor Lee could not register a speed higher than 140 K during those matches, even though he seems to hit 156 K with alarming regularity when Akhtar is not bowling in the same match. The abysmal depths which some will plumb to mislead others is disturbing.

Back to New Zealand -- nobody believes that they have won the Test series fair and square, and the results will be consigned to the dustbins of history, and a chapter of shame for their cricket. Most even in their own camp are convinced that the results would have read 0-2 against them if both the tosses had been won by Sourav Ganguly instead. A disappointing series for their fans, who could not enjoy the artistry and aggression of Sachin Tendulkar who according to people at Wisden, one of numerous cricket magazines that like to rate cricketers, is the second best batsman of all time, but according to many experts the best batsman ever to have graced the game. As Ganguly says, no wonder New Zealand has so few cricket fans when they prepare pitches that would be considered unfit for a club game.

On to the ODIs then. Unless New Zealand comes up with something equally bizarre in this next leg of India's short tour, and they would be well advised not to, for fear of endangering their own preparation ahead of the all-important World Cup, this series should see a resounding Indian victory. The much-feared Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag should make mincemeat of the mediocre Tuffeys, Bonds and Orams, which would be par for the course and exactly what the cricket fans of the world expect to see.