African Safari: The tour diary
Ashish Shukla - 15 October 2001
The woes of the more-travelled
The Indian caravan has begun to roll, not only in terms of performance,
but also by way of moving from one centre to another. The flight from
Bloemfontein to Port Elizabeth went via Johannesburg and lasted all of
six hours. By comparison, a road drive between the two destinations
measures four and a half hours on the clock!
The Indians are in the process of now asking the hosts, in this case the
United Cricket Board of South Africa, to have their Cape Town-Durban
flight scheduled early at 9 in the morning on October 25. The urgency is
only to be expected, as India play Kenya in a day-night match on October
24 and then play the finals at Durban on October 26 - quite easily the
farthest distance between two major destinations in South Africa.
Somehow, unlike the cricket boards of England or Australia, a visit by
an Indian official to check out the venues before the start of a series
never seems to benefit cricketers and the team. If the team was quite
reluctant to play the first-class games in Zimbabwe for 105 overs a day
in May-June this year, they have reasons to complain about the present
itinerary where busy periods are followed by long stretches of inaction.
These stretches haven't quite translated into socialising for players.
It can't just be put down to the instructions of Greg Spencer, the
security officer of the squad; the boys are more intent to maintain
their focus and concentrate on cricket. Spencer, to be fair to him,
doesn't quite oversee how the players spend their evenings. He is only
active when the squad is moving together - for nets or for a match - and
can be a bit stifling, even for players, with his safety precautions.
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Coach John Wright is not the one to waste these free stretches of time.
He says he doesn't believe in off-days - instead, he terms it as "rest
days". Also, practice on the day immediately after a game is never
"optional" for boys - it is only not "compulsory." So it was at Port
Elizabeth on Saturday, where half of the squad turned up and Wright
worked on the issues that have been hogging his attention.
One, of course, is the matter of Reetinder Singh Sodhi. So good is he as
a fielder that Indians somehow always find a way to put him on the field
- in most cases in place of Javagal Srinath! But he is there as a
player, not a twelfth man, and waiting to get into the Indian first
eleven for the one-day internationals on this tour.
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His chance may come against Kenya at Port Elizabeth on Wednesday when he
might be asked to bowl 10 overs at a stretch. Sodhi understands that he
needs to work on his bowling to merit an automatic selection in an
Indian one-day team. He is yet not a specialist batsman and needs to
make it up with an improved show in bowling.
Rahul Dravid, the senior pro in the side, is doing whatever he can to
help out the youngsters. Sodhi, to quote an example, was one of the
beneficiaries of his attention at the nets on Saturday. "Jammy" spent a
long time working on the Punjabi youngster's batting technique and
driving ability.
Coming to Jacques Kallis' controversial catch in the slips of Sourav
Ganguly at Centurion last week, Pat Symcox has a tale of his own to
narrate. It so seems he had Arjuna Ranatunga caught off a full toss in a
Test in Sri Lanka but the batsman didn't budge from the crease and the
standing umpire was also unmoved. Ranatunga went on to make 130 and
added to Symcox' s misery.
The Indians, though, are largely satisfied with the standards of
umpiring on this tour. Ganguly seemed to have done his homework on a few
of the men in white coats in this country. Like at Bloemfontein, when he
brought Anil Kumble from the end where umpire Dave Orchard was standing.
Orchard is trigger-happy when it comes to giving leg-before decisions
against batsmen. Small then wonder that as many as five lbws were
registered during the Kenyan innings last Friday.
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