An early morning watching test cricket

I don't like test cricket on flat pitches very well. Matches I like most are where top innings score is about 300 to 400, two batsmen score centuries and a couple of bowlers take five fors. Basically I like the perfect test matches most. Fairly remarkable, one would say, isn't it. Matches I like second best are ones where a team is bowled out for under a hundred and the other team gets out for 189 and so on and bowlers end up with ten fors for the match. Run fests come a distant third. Of course, T20 comes after all this and they should just eliminate one dayers, now that they are neither here nor there.

In this context, waking up at 3:30 in the morning to watch the third day of the Napier test match was an unusual decision, particularly after a sloshy Friday evening, thanks to Vikram V. But I had reason, Tendulkar and Dravid were batting. 110 runs in 31 overs for the loss of 1 wicket reads pretty unspectacular but, boy, was I rewarded. Shots of such exquisite beauty are rarely to be seen in a two hour passage of play. Securing these memories is the reason why I want to describe these shots knowing fully well that words will never describe what was experienced.

Let me begin with Tendulkar, as all cricket conversations have begun in India for the last 20 years. There were the two cover drive to begin with. Commentors described it very well when they pointed out how Tendulkar moved his feet to make the cover drive into a straight drive. Then a pulled/ hooked a ball off his face, my favorite shot of his for the morning just because he doesn't play the shot all too frequently. I knew he was in nick. When Patel came on to bowl there was the delicate deflection that entirely his invention. Then there was the slog sweep and the cover drive against the spin in that same over of exhilarating batting against spin.

Dravid began with an on drive, his signature shot. Then there was the cut between gully and point, hit down in the ground. There was an excellent camera shot of how Dravid had rolled his wrist to keep the ball down. It was also the only shot that infrared showed to be not hit of the middle in the two hour session but just slightly off centre towards the ground. At this point, I was pining for the pure square cut hit perfectly perpendicular to the pitch. It was once, in the middle to late nineties, when Tendulkar used to play it a lot, my favourite shot. And guess what, I got it. In the very next over. Once again it was hit straight in the ground. Dravid rounded off the session with a cover drive of his own.

Laxman was at the crease for only 20 minutes or so but he had four beautiful strokes of his own. The first two were wristy on drives off the spinner Patel hit through increasingly narrow gaps between mid wicket and mid on. Then there was the square drive off the first ball of the last over of the sesion. And just as the over was winding down, I was wishing how a straight drive would make it a perfect session. I must have done some good somewhere for, for the second time in the space of an hour my wish was granted. Of the last ball of the over Laxman hit the most thumping of straight drives.

None of these shots were hit with brute power. Even the slog sweep, which is necessarily a shot of violence went all the way for six on the strength of timing rather than power. In fact, the camera showed that Tendulkar had tried to hit the ball down. All but the first square cut from Dravid were hit off the middle of the bat. Each shot seemed to contain exactly the right amount of power. It was classical batmanship at its very best.

The past and the future stretch interminably on both sides of the narrow isthumus of the present. Hence, life is half memories and half hopes. However, at times like these, when the present is so beautiful, it carves out its own space. And the delicious thought of these memories staying for ever. Ah!