The Picador Book of Cricket

by Ramachandra Guha

  But, although this was the same team as they’d had before, they had a leader this time . . . a great player in his own right, a shrewd tactician and a man who had the respect and liking of his side . . . and of the opposition, too. A great cricketer this Worrell . . . a great cricketer in every sense of the word. A quiet man with a sense of humour, and a throaty laugh, the sort of man one cannot imagine falling into panic.

  The play immediately after tea went magnificently with short singles coming apace and the occasional four keeping the scoring rate about a run a minute. We added 50 in around even time, with ones turned into twos and half-runs turned into quick singles. Davidson played two hooks from Hall that I can still see as if they were happening now. The second hit the ground a foot or two inside the fence and was a glorious stroke. Despite all this, however, we still had to push the scoring rate along to keep up with the one a minute needed for victory. Worrell changed his bowlers and put Hall in cotton wool for the new ball. Sobers, Valentine, Worrell, and Ramadhin all bowled but with little impression and gradually the game was tilting our way.

  There was great tension around the ground. Not out in the centre, where the players remained cool, keeping the simmering excitement of the game within bounds, but in the crowd there was a frenzy that I hadn’t seen before at a cricket ground. Spectators hushed to the delivery of each ball and then would come the shaking burst of excitement – or a long sigh if nothing happened.

  The new ball had the crowd simmering . . . they had expected it, but now that it was here it was a new device to put them on the edge of their seats. In the dressing rooms players who would think nothing of being in a similar situation to the players if on the field, were shaking like schoolboys at their first match . . . and twenty minutes later I was suffering the same emotion . . . but out in the centre it was all so different.

  Come on now, concentrate, I thought. Wes has got the new ball . . . but don’t worry about it . . . just play it like the old one. You’ve got 27 to make in half an hour . . . so just get your head down . . . this’d be a hell of a game to win after being in such trouble.

  Worrell also had a pretty good grip of the game in the middle. During this tense period, when lesser men and skippers would have panicked, he ruled with an iron hand.

  ‘Relax, fellas and concentrate . . . come on now, concentrate,’ he would exhort.

  Joe Solomon was to achieve a moment of some fame in the second Test in Melbourne when he was given out through his cap dropping on the wicket, and 67,000 spectators rose to his defence . . . but his real fame came a few weeks earlier on this beautiful Brisbane afternoon.

  The clock above the scoreboard showed ten to six and Australia needed 9 runs . . . just 9 runs. Sobers bowled a ball down the leg stump and a little push to the onside made it 8 runs to go . . .

  Solomon was a bit slow getting to it – watch for another one there, Alan.

  A single to Davidson and I had the strike again. The ball pitched down the line of the leg stump . . . again I pushed it wide of Solomon at forward square leg and called for ‘One’. But this time Solomon was on to it in a flash and in the same action threw from side-on to the stumps. The bails were scattered as Davidson vainly tried to make his ground at Alexander’s end. The West Indians were jubilant. But I was far from jubilant. It was a bad call . . . a dangerous call. Even if Solomon hadn’t hit the stumps Davidson would have been out by a yard with Alexander crouching for the return.

  It was tragic but it had happened and I did some harsh thinking . . .

  Come on now, concentrate . . . don’t let’s have any more run-outs.

  Grout came in, played two balls and took a quick single off the second-last ball of Sobers’s over . . . the second-last over of the day and of the match. Try as I might I couldn’t get the last one away to take strike to Hall’s last over and Wally was left with the job at the bottom end.

  Hall took the ball in his hand and slowly paced back to his mark. The mark was a long, long way from the batsman, nearly out to the sight screen, and just before he turned for his run-up the players in the dressing room and on the patio in front of the room had a much better view of him than the crouching batsman. He’s a tall man, almost ebony in colour, with flashing white teeth that light his face when he smiles. He has broad shoulders, and a lithe bouncing run to the wicket, gathering himself in as the popping crease approaches, to explode in what seems a flurry of arms and legs as he hurtles the ball at the opposing batsman. He likes an occasional drink and singing calypsos . . . but he dislikes batsmen.

  As he walked back to the mark there were four minutes to go – this was definitely the last over.

  Grout had the strike in this last over of the most memorable of cricket matches, and waiting in the pavilion were bowlers Meckiff and Kline, waiting in case they were needed to make the last 6 runs for victory from those eight balls from Hall.

  Meckiff had spent the early part of the innings at the back of the dressing room, but as the score mounted he and Kline either sat on the edge of their chairs or paced up and down near the windows, to watch the game. Grout had prefaced his arrival at the crease by some nervous chain-smoking, and when Davidson was dismissed had searched desperately for his batting gloves . . . only to find he was sitting on them! Now he was facing the first ball of this last vital over from ‘Big Wes’.

  I watched, every nerve tense . . .

  Just push a single, Wal . . . anywhere will do . . . Get an edge . . . off the pads . . . anything . . . but we must have a single so I can have the strike.

  We got it, too, but in a painful way. Wally was struck in the solar plexus, a crippling blow, and the ball fell at his feet. It had hardly hit the ground before I was on my way without calling. Wally saw me coming and made off down the pitch holding his stomach . . . an agonizing single to be sure.

  Five to win and seven balls to go . . . I thought. One four will do it just one four . . . concentrate . . . concentrate.

  Next ball . . . it was a bumper. Surely no one in his right mind would bowl a bumper at that stage of the match . . . but it was a bumper delivered with every bit of speed and power the big fella could muster. I tried to hook . . . trying for the 4 runs that would have all but won the game. The only result was a sharp touch on the gloves and Gerry Alexander’s victory shout as he caught me.

  Have you ever tried so hard to do something . . . concentrated so desperately that everything else was pushed out from your mind . . . and then seen it disappear in a fraction of a second? Then you’ll have some idea of how I felt as I passed Grout at the other end and said: ‘All yours, Wal . . .’

  He merely lifted his eyes and muttered: ‘Thanks very much!’

  Now it was 5 to win – and six balls left.

  Meckiff played the first ball and missed the second and the batsmen scampered for a single as the ball went through to Alexander. A bye . . . brilliant thinking from Grout . . . and near heart failure for the spectators as Hall grabbed the return and hurled it at the stumps at the bowler’s end. Valentine just managed to get behind the ball and save it from 4 overthrows. This was almost too much for me. I leaned across to Jackie Hendriks and whispered: ‘What’s wrong with Wes, Jackie? He can throw much harder than that.’

  Grout had the strike now, and someone near me muttered: ‘Please bowl another bouncer, Wes . . .’ Wally is one of the best hookers in Australia and we needed only 4 to win.

  Evidently Grout also expected a bouncer for he got into position to hook only to find the ball was of good length. He misjudged his shot and it skewed off the top edge straight to Kanhai at backward square leg.

  Kanhai set himself under it as the Australian players watched. But in a flash Wes changed direction and was hurtling towards the now dropping ball. It was a nerve-racking sight, even for the Australians who didn’t have time to realize the implications of Hall’s charge.

  Someone gasped: ‘Wes! No Wes!’ Too late! Next moment the ball was whisked away from Kanhai’s steady hands and fell to the ground.r />
  The dressing-room patio was sheer chaos. All restraint disappeared and players shouted and assured one another that this was the end . . . they couldn’t take any more.

  Just 3 runs needed – only 3 more. Meckiff trusted to a five-iron shot from the next ball, hitting ‘outside in’ and the ball flew to the midwicket boundary.

  Watching from the patio we lost the ball in the setting sun but the batsmen were scampering up and down the wicket, determined to get the 3 runs needed for victory in case the ball didn’t hit the fence. It didn’t . . . the ball stopped a foot or so short of the boundary – a curse on that uncut clover! – and was picked up by Conrad Hunte.

  Of all the minor miracles that took place on this day I give pride of place to this one. Hunte was about eighty yards from the stumps when he picked up, turned and threw in the one action. I couldn’t see the ball . . . all I could see was the blurred throwing action to my right and the batsmen turning for three. For Grout to be run out the ball had to go directly to Alexander . . . not to the right or left but directly to him . . . thrown on the turn and from eighty yards. It was a magnificent throw and as Alexander swept the bails from the stumps Grout was hurling himself towards the crease . . . but still a foot out of his ground.

  The game was tied, with two balls to go! One run to win . . . and last man Kline joined Meckiff.

  Hall bounded in to bowl the second last ball of the match to Kline. He knew he must be deadly accurate . . . the only way to prevent the batsman getting the run that would mean victory for Australia was to bowl at the stumps . . . to spreadeagle them if possible.

  There was not much sound on the ground at that moment, and even less as Hall let the ball go. It pitched in line with the middle and leg stumps and Kline played it with the full face of the bat to forward square leg.

  The crowd screamed as the two batsmen set off on the winning run. They crossed as Joe Solomon was just about to gather it in both hands . . . he picked up as Meckiff got to within about six yards of the safety of the crease. Solomon the quiet one . . . good and dependable . . . the sort of man for a crisis. Was there ever a more crisis-like moment in a game of cricket than this?

  There surely could never have been a better throw. The ball hit the stumps from the side on with Meckiff scrambling desperately for the crease. Umpire Hoy’s finger shot to the sky and there came a tremendous roar from a crowd of 4,000 . . . who sounded like twenty times that number . . . greeting the end of the game. A TIE . . . the first in Test history.

  ⋆ ⋆ ⋆

  The World Cup final of 1996 was much more than a ‘sporting’ contest. The previous winter the Sri Lankans had toured Australia, where they faced racist taunts. Their best bowler, who had passed the scrutiny of rule-makers the world over, was called for throwing by an Australian umpire. Earlier in the World Cup the Australians had refused to play in Sri Lanka, saying the island was not ‘safe’ enough. Asians, always touchy about these things, took this as a slur on subcontinental hospitality. To show that the emerald isle was safe for cricket at least, a combined Indo-Pakistan team stood in for the absent Australians. With this background, it was ordained that Sri Lanka would play against Australia in the tournament’s final. Our report comes from an American writer who learned to love the game in exile in England.

  MIKE MARQUSEE

  David Slays Goliath (1996)

  The teams lined up on the field for the national anthems, the Australians in canary yellow with green lettering and the Sri Lankans in deep blue with yellow lettering. I had become accustomed to the garish pyjamas but the music was an unwelcome innovation, another sop to the jingoists. The Australian anthem was played first, followed by another tune which nearly everyone at the ground assumed belonged to the Sri Lankans. It took me a moment to realize why the theme sounded so familiar. It was ‘Nkosi Sikelele Afrika’, the song of the liberation movement and now of the new, democratic nation of South Africa. I turned to the lone South African in our wing of the press box. We shared a bewildered look. When ‘Nkosi’ finished, the Australians trooped off casually, but the Sri Lankans remained in place, waiting for their anthem. After an embarrassing silence the loudspeakers crackled with ‘Namo Namo Matha’ (‘Hail Motherland’), and the opening rites were concluded. As this bungled celebration of national identity was enacted, I surveyed the stadium. The boundaries and the stands were festooned with the insignia of multinational corporations: Coke, Shell, Visa, Philips, Fuji, National Panasonic, ICI. Whatever happened in the field today, they had already walked off with the true spoils of the World Cup.

  Sri Lanka’s itinerant cheerleaders, the veteran Percy Abeysekere and his young apprentice, Lionel, had made the journey from Colombo, thanks to corporate benefactors. Throughout the match, they ran ceaselessly to and fro with their giant Sri Lankan flags, cheered by the Pakistani fans. There were small islands of Australian support, but they were engulfed in a sea of Sri Lankan enthusiasm. The afternoon was overcast and breezy and the brilliant colours of the lion flag, gold and crimson and orange and green, fluttered in luminous streams. Because of the rain, the verges of the outfield were sodden and the boundary rope had been drawn in. It was as if the organizers had dropped a school playing field into the middle of a vast modern arena. The short boundaries, I reasoned, would benefit Sri Lanka, with their penchant for hitting over the top in the first fifteen overs.

  Ranatunga won the toss and invited the Australians to bat. This had been his policy throughout the World Cup, and he persisted with it at Lahore, despite the fact that no team batting second had ever won the World Cup. He had been under pressure to play an extra bowler, but he kept faith with all seven of his batsmen. The Sri Lankan brains trust, guided off the field by manager Dav What-more, born in Colombo but raised in Australia, remained confident that they could outscore any other team. The match began on schedule at 2.30 p.m. The general stand was half empty; the long queue was still working its way through the gates.

  This was the fourth time I had seen the Sri Lankans play in this World Cup and I had grown more attached to the side and its diverse personalities with each exposure. In the field, they were a charming mélange of willowy youth and portly experience. The two Sri Lankan pace bowlers, Vaas and Wickremasinghe, tried to harry the Australian openers, but on this flat pitch anything short stood up and asked to be hit. With a meaty bat, Taylor dispatched the quick bowlers square on both sides of the wicket. Although Mark Waugh, thus far Australia’s outstanding World Cup performer, was out early, clipping Vaas into the hands of Jayasuriya at square leg, the Australians seemed unperturbed. Ponting, helmetless, slashed Vaas to cover off the front foot. Then, with a sweet flick of the wrist, he deposited a short ball from Wickremasinghe high over midwicket. Taylor continued to cut and drive crisply, and when spin replaced pace in the fourteenth over the score had already reached 79 for 1. My heart sank. The Australians looked like a well-oiled tank rolling to victory. What foolishness to think that the odds would be overturned, yet again, in this World Cup.

  Luckily, Ranatunga and his men did not suffer such dark thoughts. Although Taylor and Ponting continued to take runs freely off the spinners, the Sri Lankans remained vigilant in the field, and Muralitharan and Dharmasena kept their nerve while searching for the right length on a pitch just beginning to turn. The Australians passed their hundred in the nineteenth over. In the press box old hands predicted a total of not less than 330. This first innings had begun to seem like an academic exercise. The real drama would come later, watching the Lankans do what they do better than anyone in one-day cricket history: chase outlandishly large totals . . .

  Ranatunga juggled his spinners. Jayasuriya replaced Murali and De Silva came on for Dharmasena. The boundaries dried up, though Taylor and Ponting kept the score moving by pushing for singles and posted a 100 partnership off only 110 balls. At the halfway stage, after 25 overs, they had reached 134 for 1, a strong position. Shortly after, De Silva induced the first and only false stroke of Mark Taylor’s innings: the ball flew off the
top edge to deep square leg where Jayasuriya, running around at full tilt, took a difficult catch. The day before the final, he had been named ‘Player of the World Cup’ and presented with a new Audi (breathlessly described by Tony Greig as ‘state of the art German automotive technology’). It was a popular choice. Batting, bowling, fielding – the man had seemed irrepressible, injecting the spirit of the playground into the overwrought arena of global cricket. Now he popped up again, and the crowd was delighted. Sri Lankan flags fluttered.

  Ponting, frustrated by his slow progress to 45 off 73 balls, tried to make room to run the ball down to third man but was deceived by De Silva’s gentle turn. He lost his balance, missed and was clean bowled. In an attempt to knock the spinners off their line, Taylor sent in Shane Warne. At Madras, in the quarter-final against New Zealand, the ploy had worked. Warne’s big hitting had stolen the momentum. But this time Taylor and Warne were out-thought by Ranatunga and Murali. As Warne went on to the front foot to turn the off-spinner to the leg side, Murali pushed a faster ball through to the keeper, Kaluwitherana, who whipped off the bails even as the batsman completed his forward lunge. A huge cheer greeted Warne’s dismissal. Steve Waugh was the next victim of spin strangulation. Shaping to flick Dharmasena to the leg side, he sent the ball flying off the leading edge high and deep over the bowler’s head. De Silva, running from mid-on, judged the catch perfectly and leaped in delight; only three years before, he had been omitted from the Sri Lankan side after failing a fitness test. At the end of the thirty-fifth over the score was 170 for 5.

  Stuart Law and Michael Bevan now faced the Lankan spinners. Bevan was listed on the scoreboard simply as ‘Michael’, a Pakistani payback for the countless times their names had been muddled by commentators abroad. These two had saved Australia from ignominy in the semi-final. Both were powerful and determined players, and expert at the one-day art of controlled acceleration. But their opponents were inspired by the clatter of Australian wickets. Earlier the Sri Lankans had been watchful, as if waiting for the prey to enter the trap. Now they scurried around, clapped and called to each other, responding with alacrity to Ranatunga’s constant adjustments. In his second spell, Murali gave the ball more air and it turned and bounced disconcertingly. Suddenly it was impossible to pierce the field. The crowd emitted a continuous happy roar, which rose and fell every time a ball was bowled and every time a fielder intercepted a shot. I could not have been more wrong about the short boundaries. In their first five overs at the crease together, Bevan and Law managed to score only 8 runs. When Law pulled Dharmasena for six in the forty-third over, it was the first Australian boundary in seventeen overs. Soon after, he tried to slash a wide ball from Jayasuriya and only succeeded in spooning to De Silva in the gully. Bristling with belligerence, Ian Healy, the most experienced wicketkeeper in the Cup, joined Bevan at the crease. De Silva tossed the ball in the air like an expert angler dangling a fly in front of a trout’s nose. Going for a big hit off the front foot, Healy played around the ball and lost his off stump. At the end of the forty-fifth over the score was 205 for 7.