Bob Woolmer
FROM THE PAVILION
The one-day triangular series featuring South Africa, England and Zimbabwe is coming to its climax. The hosts are expected to win; they are the favourites.
The team has changed again (Dale
Benkenstein, who had been promised an extended run, got two games!), and it won’t be long before the team is selected for the short tour of India, which is made up of just two Test matches and five one-day internationals.
I thought it would be fun to reminisce and inform you of what it is like to tour India.
For the Western stomach, the subcontinent is a place where the word runs takes on a completely new meaning. The water there is below standard generally, and you take ice in your drinks with trepidation. Everywhere we went the question was asked, “Is the ice filtered?”
The food there is wonderful if you like
curries and spicy food. A mild curry in India is red hot to those outside the country and the Western food is cooked in very different oils and does not taste the same. I am sure that the Indians who come to the West suffer too from our methods of cooking.
I suggested in my tour report that we take our own chef for future years. However, it is probably now an unnecessary cost as the main centres boast some of the most magnificent hotels in the world.
The other abiding memory is the sheer chaos on the roads and the wonder that there are not more accidents. It would seem that in order to pass the Indian driving test, you have to drive with your hand firmly attached to the horn – and because cows are sacred in the Hindu religion, you stop as they walk across the road. This sometimes can take a long time. I can imagine the early-morning news traffic report saying that the main road in Calcutta is slow moving due to some cows in the road!
While I denigrate some parts of India, the experience of India is such that no one should miss it. It is a fascinating place and has some of the wonders of the world, such as the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort. Jaipur is fantastic, as is Nagpur. However, in all Indian cities sanitation needs urgent changes and such is the volume of people that it is very claustrophobic for those used to the wide- open spaces of Africa.
As a cricketer you have the status of a film star. If you should venture out to go shopping on foot, you will find 2E000 people following you just out of curiosity. The Indians love their cricket so much that they will go out of their way to help, and we met some wonderful people who looked after us so well it was almost embarrassing.
What of the cricket? Away from home, India have not won a Test since 1986. Conversely, if my memory serves me correctly, India have not lost at home since 1986. So they are due to go down.
On our last tour of India we did really well: we got to the final of the one-day series and lost basically on a pitch that was a “win the toss, win the game” variety. So after dominating the preliminaries we managed to suffer that “choking” tag from the ill-informed!
Our run into the first Test was
excellent in terms of results, but the real facts were that the batsman’s preparations were less than adequate and this was compounded by a dreadful Test arena in Ahmedabad – the worst I have ever come across.
This was compounded by dreadful travelling arrangements and an incessant amount of time at the Centaur hotel near the airport in Bombay. It seemed necessary to travel to Bombay to branch out anywhere else in India. “All flights lead to Bombay!”
We felt we were equipped to beat India. We had prepared with a spinners’ camp, where the batsmen had played against and discussed playing against spinners. Despite the local nets and conditions (I forget how many times I was told “You will just have to make the most of them”), we were in good spirits when we hit Ahmedabad, where we were confronted by the worst Test venue I have ever been to. All this of course is history. We lost 2-1 despite, I think, playing pretty well.
So what are the keys to success? Playing on faster pitches and being able to dominate or frustrate their spinners are vital. The batsmen must get rid of the catchers around the bat and try not use the pad too much. The lbw law is under scrutiny worldwide and in India it is no different.
Umpires are not too happy when you sweep,
but the surfaces are such that if you advance down the wicket and the ball turns appreciably, the chances of your being stumped are pretty good – so you have to develop the dummy, and hope you catch the bowler napping. What, you ask, is the dummy technique? Simply, you pretend to advance and then rock back off the front foot and hit hard off the back foot.
The Indian teams are great players of spin but are more susceptible to bounce and pace. In Bombay and Bangalore South Africa have more chance of success with their seamers. Patience is the key to success, both on and off the field; the multitude of people will get to the most calm of characters, the less tolerant will find it very difficult.
Fitting into the culture of the country is very important: learning to smile and say “please” and “thank you” in the native tongue always has an excellent effect.
My best wishes go out to the selected team and I trust their runs will all occur on the field and that they will enjoy the experience. It is the only way!