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Why Sourav Ganguly is the most fascinating Indian cricketer of our time

Rahul Bhattacharya08-Feb-2006

Love him or hate him, you just can’t ignore Sourav Ganguly © Getty Images
At some stage, hard to say when, Sourav Ganguly no longer remained a cricketer and turned into a folk hero and a folk villain. Averages and the rest came into it but with Ganguly things became a matter of convictions of the soul. Anything he did or did not do could provoke an outcry. Everything that was done to him or not done to him could provoke an outcry. Ganguly issues took the form of movements. In many ways he is cricketer-phenomenon in India’s modern pop culture.A year of sustained chaos, encompassing several riots, numerous u-turns and countless epitaphs, has now led to a predicament of superb absurdity. In a recent column the satirist Jug Suraiya was badgered by his partner to attend yet another festive-season party. ” meet lots of interesting people,” he protests. “I’ll end up as always like a spare Sourav; present and accounted for, but no one quite knows what’s to be done with him.” Indeed, no one quite knows.The Ganguly situation is impossible. No answer is a solution, not even the one of respectfully putting him out to pasture, because he isn’t going, and if he isn’t going he is almost certain to be back. No, the situation must resolve itself and the rest is commentary. The fashion is to be exasperated, if not disgusted, by the whole affair. Personally I’m not tired of it. Not in the least. I’d be lying if I say I’m not fascinated: as human dramas go, there’s too much in it.And the situation could not be what it is were Ganguly not what he is. On braving my surname and referring to Ganguly as the most fascinating Indian cricketer of his generation in a recent article, I was ticked off by a reader: “I am sure no person, living or dead, on earth outside people of Bengali origin thinks that Ganguly comes anywhere close to being one of the most fascinating cricketers, let alone being `the most’.” Another put it more succinctly: “A f***ing Bong standing up for another f***ing Bong.”Never mind the enlightened. The reactions Ganguly evokes comprise a phenomenon broader than Bengali parochialism. Cricinfo.com’s diarist Siddhartha Vaidyanathan reported from Pakistan that the first thing locals asked him after the was about Ganguly. They were unhappy with the treatment meted out to him. They related to his naked passion. In one way or another Ganguly speaks to watchers. At once he compels you to assume both the best and worst about him; at once he can prove you both right and wrong. In short, he makes you feel. I have not spent quite so much time discussing, debating, any other cricketer. What is it about him?

In … out … in again, the going has been tough for Sourav Ganguly in the recent past © Getty Images
I suppose Ganguly came to symbolise individualism and rebellion. Individualism in that he was given to flouting norms, yes, but also in the way he could not be bothered about members fitting into or giving energy to the group. To him match-winning talent was match-winning talent and that was that. Type was important: the brasher the better. In his book Aakash Chopra and Mohammad Kaif were meant for walk-on parts and Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh for glory. This could not be scoffed at because, as much as the attitude may have bred hubris, at the time the team was being built there exuded from it a rawness of belief that was both effective and appealing.A journalist recalls being phoned by Ganguly to watch a youngster in a first-class game that was being televised. (Watch this boy. He is going to be a big player. I want to pick him right away.)” A few months on, Mahendra Singh Dhoni smashed 148 against Pakistan from No. 3. One player put it this way: “If you capture Dadi’s imagination, he will do anything for you.” And vice-versa, for once he’d captured Dadi’s imagination the player too would do for anything for Dadi. Yuvraj on his first comeback to the team was quoted saying: “I’m ready to die for such a captain.” Harbhajan’s unstinting support can in some way be understood in light of the fact that, feeling defeated by disciplinary issues, the chucking saga, an ordinary international track record, and economic pressure at home, he was contemplating moving to the US to drive trucks for a living at the time Ganguly fought for his selection.Generally Ganguly fostered angry or reckless young men. To him “good behaviour”, a broad term espoused by the present team management, belonged in school and probably not even there. He himself had been summoned to the match referee no less than 12 times in the last decade. His approach was bound to precipitate what could possibly be termed a cultural conflict in the world of modern sport. For Ganguly, like for Arjuna Ranatunga, competitiveness involved brinksmanship rather than training. As far as they were concerned Australia were not to be aspired to. They were simply to be toppled. England were not to be appeased. Victory lay precisely in their disapproval. In other words, Ganguly and Ranatunga wanted to do things their way. Both carried a resonance of the anti-colonial rather than that of the savvy global sports professional of the age (in Pakistan, Ganguly blithely sported an oversized beanie bearing a logo of the wrong corporate). If it was limiting it was also inspiring. And it invited, from Western observers especially, a ludicrous mix of suspicion, ridicule and condemnation. Much more easy to be gracious about well-mannered fellows who toe the line.So far so good. Ganguly quenched the thirst for individualism, which is an essential allure of sport; he had an effect on young players and followers similar to that of a rock concert, and all the while kept a successful team together thanks also to a wonderful set of seniors and a fine coach.And yet, after a point every day for him became a day of decay: the uncorrected technical errors, the sinking fitness levels, the sagging fielding, the jaded tactics, the lowering of standards for himself and by extension for the entire side – not least the gifted youngsters over whom he had so much influence. Finally, his almost politician-like desperation to hold on to power manifested itself in an insecurity – or was it the other way round? – that tore away at the very fabric of the team.The deterioration looked all the more stark because of the contrast with that most outstanding of cricketers, and Ganguly’s exact contemporary and heir, Rahul Dravid. Simply, Dravid built himself on stronger foundations. Ganguly batted pretty as a butterfly but, distracted, found himself blown away by the winds of high pace. Dravid opened up once his base was sufficiently secure. When it came down to it, Dravid had the rigour to last. Likewise, where Ganguly the leader powered on bare-chested with the belief that with flair on his side nothing was impossible, Dravid appreciates that any group must have the safety net of work ethic, discipline, punctuality, enthusiasm – the finer things. Dravid’s brand of risk-taking is more cerebral. With Ganguly there was always the element of danger, of losing it all. Ganguly was not about systems and processes. Ganguly was about whims and instincts. This was the thrill, and a great thrill. But I suppose when you’re losing, the thrill is gone.***Personally, commenting on the Ganguly situation has been challenging because it involves a tussle between the heart, which wants the individual, the rebel, to beat the odds and win, and the mind, which cannot help but log the slow, sad decline. Then the watcher and the journalist in you battle and they can be, but are not in every instance, the same.Besides, this was a situation like no other. The more I dwelled on the issue the more I stopped dwelling on the rights and wrongs (there were so many that there weren’t any) and the merits of the case (which became too tiresome). They didn’t matter so much either. Simply, I just wanted to see how it would unfold on a human level.I suppose in effect I was choosing the simple intimacy of the watcher to the powerful insider-ness of the journalist. I couldn’t see why a nebulous “what’s best for the team” should become a pamphleteering cause with me – that was merely a parameter to be considered while trying to pass honest judgement on the actions of the men responsible. Beyond that it was neither my duty nor my inclination and I felt foolish for harbouring any guilt in this respect. At a deeply personal level it did not matter a great deal to me whether India became the next Australia or not. Cricket was at once a massive joke and the most significant human theatre and all the joy ultimately came from the universal stuff and would be fulfilling regardless. And banging on either way missed the most crucial point of sport – that we really don’t know what’s going to come.It was with this sense of freedom that a colleague and I jumped on to a spontaneous train to Rajkot on the eve of a Duleep Trophy fixture in which Ganguly would need to prove his form and fitness. It felt like something special might happen, and it did. On a municipal ground, in an environment so anti-climactic that it was melodramatic, the soon-to-be-deposed Indian Test captain hit a rousing century. It was lovely to watch, not so much because of his strokes, some of which were indeed vintage, but because of all the other layers to it.That evening I met Ganguly at his hotel. I was apprehensive. I had written critical articles about him over the past few months and these things have a way of getting around, often in exaggerated form. I had nothing specific to ask him. I only wanted to try and gauge what he might be thinking, how he might be reacting to the uniqueness of his dilemma.

Sourav Ganguly was largely calm through ups and downs, but his fans certainly were not © Getty Images
There was an air of complete serenity about him, heightened because he was initially sitting on a swing in an open courtyard. He looked the perfect : crisp white kurta pyjama, hair neatly parted, thin-rimmed spectacles.It was an easy, enjoyable, and in some ways warm, conversation. Broadly, three things were striking. One was that retirement was very far from his mind; how others might like to remember him seemed to be their own business. Another was his sense of hurt about allegations of “divide and rule”. But the most remarkable was his aura of calm. His family members would later tell that he has always been so, that he had never ever lost his cool off the cricket field, that nothing ever fazes him. He himself would say that he believed in destiny and expected to be playing the World Cup of 2007. In that short little meeting I could appreciate more properly than ever before the temperament of a man who at any moment of time has more knives at his back and more garlands at his face than a cabinet of ministers.A week on, Ganguly was dropped from the one-day squad altogether. Then stripped of Test captaincy, then deemed a Test allrounder, then… you know the story.The most revealing moment came in the response to his being dropped after the Delhi Test against Sri Lanka. He could have retired right then a saint, all sins forgotten. The man who a few months ago was among the most reviled in the land now had the undiluted support of the nation. It was extraordinary that he would pass up the opportunity and choose instead to put himself and the team under so much pressure and run the risk even of humiliation – were he to return and flop. As ever he left you grappling with mixed feelings: to admire his self-belief or to dismiss him as delusional? What to make of such a man?And so there he was in Lahore in India’s first Test of the new year. He probably should not have been playing at all. Despite the denials to the contrary, it is learnt that his inclusion in the touring party had more to do with the wishes of authorities other than the selectors and the team management.Late on the second afternoon: Pakistan 668 for 6, India wilting. Ganguly had just made an impressive dive at the boundary. Now a high ball swirled above his head. An initial misjudgement, frantic back-tracking, a final, flailing leap, a one-handed catch both spectacular and comic, a slow-motion backward roll on hitting the ground, and off like a bomb upon regaining poise, injecting humour and spirit into a weary side. It felt like he was one of the boys again. Even Greg Chappell smiled. It was by a distance the most contagious moment of the game. He did not bat a single ball and humbly carried drinks in the next Test.He was back again for the final match. He made 34, 37, and two errors which were each to be – as luck would have it, and since this story has a strain of tragedy running through it – his only error of each innings. Both times the team required a big score and in the final analysis these were a pair of letdowns. Still it was not an illusion: he indeed batted beautifully, more fluently than any other Indian in the match and as fluently as he had ever done in his career. Few could have expected it. Among those few was Ganguly.Two days later he flew back home as Dravid turned his mind to the upcoming one-dayers and, some part of it no doubt, to the batting order for the next Test series. And that’s where the Sourav Ganguly saga rested at the last opportunity to update.

Brian Lara’s 120 was an innings unlike a regular Lara knock – it had few flourishes, and hardly any extravagant strokeplay

On the Ball with S Rajesh14-Jun-2006The story of the final day of the St Lucia Test was Brian Lara. In three innings in this series before this, Lara had managed all of 25 runs, but here, with West Indies battling to stave off defeat, Lara rose to the challenge. It was an innings unlike a regular Lara knock – it had few flourishes, and hardly any extravagant strokeplay. However, it was exactly what the occasion demanded.As the graphic shows, Lara defended or left alone 56% of the deliveries he faced (172 out of 307). On a pitch showing low – and sometimes inconsistent – bounce, Lara eschewed the low-percentage horizontal-bat shots: only 11 of his 120 runs were scored from cuts and pulls. Mostly he relied on drives and flicks – they accounted for 92 runs. Also, you’d normally expect Lara to attack part-time bowlers, but here he was most circumspect against the opener-turned-offspinner Virender Sehwag, whose 96 deliveries to Lara only cost 30 runs. Of all the Indian bowlers, Anil Kumble was the one against whom Lara scored the quickest, managing 32 from 69 balls.This innings by Lara was his second-slowest score of 50 or more: the only instance of a slower innings was also against India, at Nagpur in 1994-95. The table below lists Lara’s five slowest half-centuries and hundreds. Interestingly, three of them have come against India.

Lara’s slowest innings of 50 or more

Against Runs/ Balls Strike Venue & year

India 50/ 135 37.03 Nagpur, 1994-95 India 120/ 307 39.08 St Lucia, 2006 Australia 52/ 121 42.97 Melbourne, 1992-93 South Africa 83/ 186 44.62 Barbados, 2000-01 India 55/ 123 44.71 Barbados, 2002

Wasim Jaffer on consistency, making comebacks to the Indian side and maturing as a batsman

Nagraj Gollapudi08-Dec-2007

Jaffer has the highest average among opening batsmen since March last year © AFP
Wasim Jaffer knows where he stands. He knows he is only the third batsman in history to get a double-hundred at Eden Gardens after Rohan Kanhai and VVS Laxman. He knows he is up there among the top run-getters in Tests in 2007 so far. He knows that in a team full of batting legends he has logged the most runs this year for India. For the first time in a stop-start international career that has lasted almost eight years now, he is confident of his place in the team.Jaffer has finally come some way towards fulfilling the promise he showed all these years as a talented opener for Mumbai. So far this year in Tests, he has two centuries, four fifties and that double to his credit. After the selectors gave him a third life – he made an inauspicious debut in 2000 against South Africa and then lasted five Tests in his second comeback, in 2002-03 – recalling him for the home series against England in March last year, he has made sure to cling on to the rope he has been given. “2007 has been really going well, [all praise belongs to God],” he says.As on the field, Jaffer has a placid, quiet disposition off it. It is often mistaken. “I’m a reserved person by nature and if I meet you for the first time I’ll have to trust you to open up. It’s not arrogance as people think,” he explains.The turning point arrived four years ago. “I was the youngest of four siblings and was really pampered from the beginning, but after my mom died in 2003 I got quite responsible in my own life and that has helped in my game.” In the past Jaffer has spoken about growing in maturity each time he was dropped from the Indian team. Exactly what is maturity to him? “Identifying situations and finding a solution,” he says.Technically Jaffer’s Achilles heel has been the late movement of his feet as he gets into position to play. It’s still work in progress on that front, but he has improved considerably, even if he sometimes fails to pick the length early, as when he shouldered arms to a Mashrafe Mortaza delivery and lost his off stump to the first ball of the Chittagong Test. Jaffer for his part thinks it’s more to do with focus.There has been no easy solution in this instance. He still tends to be a scratchy starter, scoring either low or big. In 17 of his 45 Test innings, he has been dismissed for single-digit scores; his average score when he gets past 50 is 98.71.He is beginning to be more consistent, though, and thinks he is increasingly capable of hanging in there to convert starts – unlike in the first phase of his international career. Since March 2006, when he made his latest comeback to the side, he has scored highest (1473 runs) and has the best average (47.50) among Test openers who have scored at least 500 runs. “Giving a good start and getting a big score – that’s what I’m trying this year, to be more consistent,” he says.Had Jaffer found that elusive consistency back when he played his first Test, he would possibly be a senior pro in the side by now. “It does cross my mind. Had I played consistently from 2000, I would have played 80-90 Test matches by now. But that’s my destiny. I don’t complain about too many things.”I’ve had three comebacks and earlier I felt I wasn’t ready for international cricket, where you need to be mentally really prepared,” he says. “Over the years as I went back to domestic cricket, I worked a lot on my game and my mental side, and whenever I was dropped I learned quite a lot.”My game is more about concentration, spending time at the crease, rather than going bang-bang.”Having said that, he has not managed to completely lose the impulsive streak that has often seen him play a false stroke and give it away. An example came during the Boxing Day Test in Durban last year, in the second innings, when he picked one from outside off and miscued a pull into the hands of square leg. In his defence Jaffer says, “That is one of the shots I score runs with, but sometimes you don’t pick up the line and when you get out, it looks bad. But the situation was such that I should have avoided playing that shot, because if we had played 30 or 40 more overs, we could have drawn that Test.”All through our hour-long chat Jaffer talks about the help he has received from providence. How has his faith benefited him? “I believe in destiny,” he says. “You put in the effort, but He is the one who gives the results, right or wrong. I believe in Allah and am quite religious.” He turns 30 this February. They say the third decade in a man’s life is when he establishes himself in the personal and professional spheres. Jaffer thinks he has attained a certain balance.A large part of that has to do with his marriage, last October, to Ayesha, his girlfriend of four years. “In a way, yes, I’ve become more stable,” says Jaffer. “My wife looks after me a lot. She comes from London but she’s willing to give many things up for me and I’m really happy that I have her.”Another significant relationship, this time on the field, has been his partnership with Dinesh Karthik. Jaffer’s hundred in Cape Town at the beginning of 2007, came in a defeat for the team, but it saved him in the nick of time from being dropped again. He had had a miserable tour going into final Test of the South Africa series, and is thankful the team management kept faith in him. He draws parallels between his example and the mini-slump Karthik finds himself in. “He has not done well in just three innings and already the media are talking about dropping him,” Jaffer points out. A hidden side of Jaffer is his interest in the history of the game. As a kid, and into his teens, he enjoyed reading books about players of various eras. Reading, he says, helps him with his concentration It’s no secret that camaraderie between the openers can be key to a team’s prosperity, and both Jaffer and Karthik have managed pretty well on and off the field. “Our wives have become good friends,” smiles Jaffer. He thinks having a long-term batting partner helps, and that even though Karthik’s restlessness may be a stark contrast to his own demeanour, “it gels with my laidback self”.The two have combined well in the past – notably during the England series, where they gave a semblance of stability to the top order with some valuable partnerships. “[In England] I was consistent even if I was not as successful as I would’ve liked to be. I didn’t get a hundred, but as a team we performed well and won the Test series.”Despite the double against Pakistan, Jaffer thinks the true test of his cricketing life is around the corner – the forthcoming Australia series. He started on his preparation a month ago. “Yes, we are short of time for practice, but as a sportsman one has to adapt fast. And seniors do help. I asked [VVS] Laxman, before this Pakistan series, to help me with understanding the Australian surfaces, since he is one who has done well there. So he gave me some plastic balls, and he thinks if I practise with them on cement wickets, the ball comes on at the same speed as on pitches in Australia.”A hidden side of Jaffer is his interest in the history of the game. As a kid and into his teens, he enjoyed reading books about players of various eras. Reading, he says, helps him acquire “a knowledge of how things were at different times. It helps me to get good concentration at times.”His reading, and his experiences of having watched – and now playing with – the greats, have inspired Jaffer. “I want to be noticed, too. I want to become one of the great players, too.”Part of that quest is about earning the respect of his team-mates and the opposition. “If the opposition respects me as they respect [Sachin] Tendulkar, [Rahul] Dravid, [Sourav] Ganguly and Laxman, if I can be counted in the same breath, it will be some achievement,” he says. “And for that I need to be consistent in my batting.”

Virender Sehwag justified the national selection panel’s decision with a scintillating 75 on Saturday against India Green before he erred while looking good for a century

Nagraj Gollapudi in Ahmedabad27-Oct-2007

What matters now is where Sehwag will fit into the playing XI © Cricinfo Ltd
Dilip Vengsarkar, India’s chairman of selectors, stressed on form and fitness when he announced the team for the first two matches of the forthcoming one-day series against Pakistan at home. Virender Sehwag has had trouble on both fronts for a while so it was surprising to see him among the 15 chosen.On Thursday, after a disappointing performance against India Red, where he managed only 9, Sehwag told a television journalist: “What interview can I give when I haven’t done anything”. But the selectors felt he had done enough and drafted him back in to the squad for the first time since the tour to Bangladesh earlier in May.Sehwag will be aware he can’t take it easy now. Even though he said, “I had expected a recall,” he must know he was rather fortunate to have got ahead of S Badrinath, who will once again have to wait on the sidelines before the selectors formulate a clear approach of giving him a fair trial.The selectors did say that Sehwag’s past form in the Test arena impacted their final decision. Sehwag himself was to later admit, “It gives me the confidence to be back against Pakistan, against whom I have done well.” Sehwag’s Test average against Pakistan is a whopping 91.14 from nine Tests, but his one-day average against them is a modest 32 in 20 ODIs.What matters now is where Sehwag will fit into the playing XI, if he does actually gets there. Sehwag said he would let the captain decide what position he fits into, even though his career figures suggest he is better off batting in the top three.Vengsarkar is of a firm view that form is not quanitfiable; instead it’s a personal judgement. And Sehwag justified the national selection panel’s decision with a scintillating 75 on Saturday against India Green before he erred while looking good for a century.Sehwag got into the groove pretty early and flicked the first ball of the innings from Munaf Patel to the fine-leg boundary. It was the sign of the things to come. Sehwag’s skill lies in his raw, unencumbered approach to batting. His batting is not easy on the eye but the ease with which he dispatches the bowlers is dazzling. Once you see it, you can’t forget it.At Motera, for about an hour, Sehwag freed himself and lay to waste the India Green bowlers. Unlike the hesitation he displayed in the first game on Thursday, the tone was set pretty early. Abhishek Nayar provided ideal fodder and Sehwag cashed in on his harmless medium-pace. He struck two boundaries in Nayar’s first over, followed by one more in the second, but Sehwag’s fusillade came with full force in Nayar’s third over: a cover-driven four, a hoicked six over midwicket, a straight lofted four over the bowler’s head and a chopped four to third man which took him two adrift of 50.He went past the milestone in the next over, when he ripped Pankaj Singh to cover and long-on. Parthiv Patel chose not to take the third Powerplay, bringing on the spinners whose pace Sehwag had to adjust to. It was an effective move, with Sehwag throwing his wicket away while trying to cut one that darted in from Iqbal Abdulla, and brought an abrupt halt to a rampaging innings.He briefly acknowledged the spectators’ cheers with a half-raised bat but changed his mind and walked off with his head down. Sehwag had to be angry at himself for missing out on a deserved century. But he didn’t have to hold his head down for long. While he receieved treatment for his back on the massage table, his team-mates broke the good news.

How did the baggy green turn into an enduring symbol of Australian sporting excellence?

Peter English29-Jun-2008

For players who believe in the baggy green, it’s almost a god-like figure.Nothing can be said to demean it and the spirit will remain strong forever.In the other, mostly older, corner are the Test representatives who werepleased with representing their country. They thought the cap was, well,just a cap.The philosophical clash between the modern men and their predecessors iscaptivating. Time, regulations and increased commercial opportunities havechanged the view, with current players usually getting only one baggy greenin a career. Previously a couple were handed out on each tour, often withsuch disregard they were flung like newspapers on delivery or buried in abox of team clothing.Mark Taylor insisted in 1994 that everyone in the team wear the cap duringthe first fielding session of a Test, and the importance of the headwear hasgrown significantly – some believe outrageously – under the captaincy ofTaylor, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting. Richie Benaud talks of the “kerfuffleabout the baggy green” and calls the item a piece of memorabilia.”There used not to be anyone beating their breast or talking about the baggygreen,” Benaud says. “And no one was spraying beer over it.” One of Benaud’scaps sold for 50c at an opportunity shop in Sydney, then later increased invalue to A$10,925 at auction.Benaud, Ian Chappell, Neil Harvey and Arthur Morris don’t own one, and therewas not one hanging in the home of the late Bill Brown. “A lot of what goeson with the baggy green is for commercial reasons and I have a major problemwith that,” Chappell says. “I don’t remember having one discussion about thecap during my playing days.” Brian Booth, a Christian and a Test captain inthe 1960s, is uneasy about the growing “idol worship”.If you share Chappell’s view of the cap being a “$5 piece of cloth” you’ll be amused – or disturbed – by the devotion in The Baggy Green: the pride, passion and history of Australia’s sporting icon. Disciples will find the work of Michael Fahey, who bought Mike Whitney’s cap in 1991, and Mike Coward, the respected cricket writer, fascinating for the depth with which it chronicles a previously untouched history.”The baggy green elicits a multiplicity of emotions and attitudes from those privileged to have worn it,” Coward writes. “Without exception these men, famous and forgotten, speak of a profound sense of pride and privilege. Some talk of the humbling nature of attaining it, others of an awesome responsibility to justify selection and to serve the ghosts of summers long gone. There are those who speak unselfconsciously of a reverence for the cap and those who foresee dangers in its worship.”Waugh, who believes in the baggy green more than anyone, introduced the on-field ceremony for debutants, who were presented with their cap by a former player. “It gives me power and the team aura,” Waugh says. His continual wearing of a faded, ripped and stained hat added another element to the past-and-present debate. Geoff Lawson said Waugh was disrespectful for having a “tatty and neglectful” cap, and Bob Simpson believed the modern versions have been “denigrated a bit” by their overuse.”Like the martial arts master, Steve Waugh’s cap is symbolic of everythingthat is great about Steve Waugh and Australian cricket,” Justin Langer saysin defence of his former captain. After his final Test, Langer’s baggy greensmelled so bad he said it would have to sit behind glass.Taylor originally wanted to show off the beauty of the cap and the team’spride in it when he introduced the fielding regulation, but a by-product ofthe decision was that it was also intimidating. “There is no doubt,” Taylorsays, “that its aura provides Australian teams with a psychological edge.”The religion has been passed on to Michael Clarke, who called for hispristine baggy green shortly before reaching his century on Test debut in Bangalore in 2004. “I havethe ultimate respect for the cap,” Clarke says, “and if I have any input into the next generation I will see the tradition continues.”A lot has changed over the past four decades. In the 1970s a group of players swapped one of their baggy greens for a London bobby’s helmet. Others have been given away, traded, stolen, eaten by moths, loaned to museums or auctioned.A lot has changed over the past four decades. In the 1970s a group of players swapped one of their baggy greens for a London bobby’s helmet. Others have been given away, traded, stolen, eaten by moths, loaned to museums or auctioned While the Test representatives play a central part in the early stages of the book, there is more to the story than the anecdotes of those who have worn the cap. Fahey and Coward combine to produce a complete account of an accessory that has managed to transform into an icon. The chapters on the commercialisation and sale of the caps show the value in dollars rather than sentiment – one of Bradman’s from his 1948 tour went forA$425,000 while Victor Trumper’s 1907 piece sold for $83,000.The authors have also done well to find fine pictures of prominent baggy greens. Tibby Cotter, who would die in World War I, is shown preparing to bowl in his 1909 skull cap, Bill Brown wears his baggy while on the way to a game of tennis with Jack Fingleton in 1938, and Neil Harvey, who usually batted bareheaded, poses under his 1949-50 sun shade.The history covering the evolution of the hat is meticulous without being heavy, and deals with some common myths. For example, Fahey corrects an Australian government belief that the country’s coat of arms is a badge on cricket’s most famous accessory.A green and gold skull cap was first worn on the 1899 trip to England, which was Victor Trumper’s maiden tour, and the headwear evolved to a “baggy” style in 1920. Now it is made of 100% wool and still contains the coat of arms similar to the ones on the team’s 1880s blazers, which included a sailing ship, slaughtered sheep, sheaf of wheat, miner’s pick and shovel. Over the past 88 years the style has been as consistent as arguments between different generations of players.

Practically one bad ball short of ending his career, Johan Botha does not really miss the most controversial delivery of recent times

Telford Vice18-May-2009A bloke who carries an illegal weapon up his sleeve should look the part. Johan Botha is one such man. There’s a glint in his slivered eyes and a grim set to his jaw that warns you not to mess with him and his doosra. It’s this delivery – essentially the finger spinner’s answer to the wrist spinner’s googly – that the ICC has effectively banned Botha from bowling. To use the umpirese for being strongly considered to be chucking, Botha was “reported for a suspect action” during South Africa’s one-day series against Australia last month.The news loomed like a mugger in a dark alley for a player who had risen almost stealthily from mediocrity to the ranks of the respected. His star leapt into fully fledged orbit during South Africa’s one-day series in Australia in the first half of 2008-09. He took eight wickets at 23.50, was the most economical bowler on either side, and showed himself to be a nerveless captain in his team’s series triumph. Ranked ninth among one-day bowlers early in April, Botha is currently 11th and behind only Muttiah Muralitharan, Daniel Vettori and Shahid Afridi in the spinners’ pecking order.All that meant nothing when he presented himself at the University of Western Australia (UWA) to be tested again. The first time he put his future in the hands of the men in white coats and their protractors – after being reported on his Test debut in Sydney in 2005-06 – he spent 16 months out of the international spotlight finding a remedy for his squiff elbow.This time almost everything in Botha’s armoury passed within the 15 degrees of separation from the straight and narrow, which has been declared legal. The exception was the doosra, which clocked in at a filthy 26.7 degrees. To hear Botha tell it, the demise of his doosra is no great loss. “I haven’t bowled it much in the last year,” he said. “My other deliveries have become more consistent so there’s less of a need to bowl it.”The umpires who reported him, Rudi Koertzen, Brian Jerling and Asoka de Silva, submitted 18 video clips to state their case. Not one of them featured the doosra. And no wonder – Botha is adamant he did not bowl the delivery in the match that led to him being reported.That wasn’t the only unusual aspect of Botha’s latest brush with the chucking police. “I was surprised that the doosra was a problem, because your elbow flexes less when you bowl it than with the other deliveries,” he said.The doosra, it seems, makes about as much sense to many of us as Amy Winehouse might do anytime after breakfast. Vincent Barnes, South Africa’s bowling coach, took up the challenge to explain the dastardly thing: “It’s an extremely difficult ball to bowl because it involves a big bio-mechanical change in a bowler’s action. You grip the ball as you would for an orthodox offspinner. But at the point of delivering an offspinner your palm faces the batsman, and the movement of your hand and wrist is similar to what you would do if you were turning a doorknob. If you’re bowling the doosra, your palm faces you at the point of delivery.”

“There are other guys out there who bowl the doosra who should be sent for testing. Let’s see how they shape up under the new regulations”Mark Boucher

Crucially, Barnes said that “at some stage, you have to bend your arm a little”. Botha concurred, but parried skillfully: “You have to bend your elbow to bowl it, but in my case it starts bent and stays that way.”Barnes also offered a fact that only a mother and a coach would know. “Johan’s arms aren’t straight when they hang by his sides. They are naturally bent at the elbow. He has a natural deformity.”Bruce Elliott, the UWA professor who is also the ICC biomechanist, had made an interesting discovery in his dealings with finger spinners. “He said he had found that a lot of bowlers from the subcontinent could bowl the doosra legally, but not Caucasian bowlers,” Barnes said. “Actually a lot of guys bowl the doosra in the nets, but they won’t risk it in a match.”Many a bowler would be unnerved at having their grip on the tightrope of legality reduced to a toehold, but not Botha. “One bad delivery could end his career,” Barnes said. “It’s a very serious thing, and as a team we’ve had to be strong around him. But he’s tough, a thorough professional. The same evening he was reported this time we went through everything and the next morning he was back in the nets, trying to get it right.”Mark Boucher, the wicketkeeper who has to decode Botha’s offerings from the other end of the pitch, gave a typically blunt view. “I can pick his doosra, but whether he throws it or not I wouldn’t know,” Boucher said. “Often when you slow these things down with cameras theylook a lot worse than they really are.”Of course Boucher wouldn’t be Boucher if he didn’t take a swing at someone, in this case Botha’s fellow practitioners of the murky art: “There are other guys out there who bowl the doosra who should be sent for testing. Let’s see how they shape up under the new regulations.”Botha, who is of sturdy Afrikaner stock, refuses to show as much as a twitch of alarm at what still seems a delicate state of affairs. “You just get on with sorting it out; what else can you do,” he said.Finally a straight arrow of sense in all of this.

Having stared elimination in the face earlier in the tournament, Chennai found their most menacing roar at the most opportune time

Cricinfo staff26-Apr-2010It was hard not to watch this match and think of another that took place a generation ago, the final of a tournament that may one day come to be regarded as the pinnacle of limited-overs cricket. Even the circumstances were similar. One team had dominated the group stages, while the other had been lucky to survive. But when it came to the games that mattered the lucky survivors were just clinical. Just as Imran Khan’s Cornered Tigers improved as the World Cup went on in 1992, so did MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings. And just as England fell short at the MCG, the Mumbai Indians found themselves unable to raise their game when they most needed to.Some will argue that the best team didn’t win, and Dhoni candidly admitted that Chennai “could have played much better”. But while the league table doesn’t lie, neither does the evidence of the last week, when Dhoni’s monstrous hitting kept them alive in Dharamsala before both Deccan Chargers and Mumbai were swept aside.The catalyst for Pakistan cricket’s finest hour was Wasim Akram. Doug Bollinger isn’t in that class as a left-arm pacer, but there’s little doubt that it was his arrival as a late replacement for injured stars that transformed Chennai’s season. “Our domestic pace bowlers didn’t bowl very well,” said Dhoni. Bollinger did, especially in tandem with the outstanding R Ashwin. “He has done the job of a seamer for us,” said Dhoni. “He’s an effective bowler and he has that carrom ball to confuse batsmen.”Dhoni cited a motivational speech from team owner N Srinivasan as one of the significant moments of the campaign, and expressed satisfaction in the performance of the team’s domestic contingent. Suresh Raina crowned a hugely impressive season with a match-winning hand of 57, and will be one of the key players as India look to regain the Twenty20 World Cup that they won in 2007.”Raina takes the opponent on,” said Dhoni. “But lately, he has learnt to finish off games. He doesn’t just make 30s or 40s. He respects the bowlers when he needs to. It’s a great format for a young player to get noticed in, but we shouldn’t get carried away. It’s a good platform for youngsters because they’re put under pressure and you can see how they react.”Having fallen short at the final hurdle in 2008 and at the penultimate one a year later, Dhoni called this a triumph for the way the team had prepared. “We only get a week or 10 days before the tournament starts, so it’s important that you gel well as a team. We’ve also been very unlucky with injuries.”In the final, Chennai made their own luck, taking the crucial catches that Mumbai fluffed and exerting relentless pressure with their slow bowlers. Their spin-heavy attack was clearly a big factor in Kieron Pollard being held back till the very end, and Dhoni admitted that the circumstances had forced him to choose the XI that he did. “It may not sound the right combination, but it worked for us,” he said. “When you can only pick four foreign players, it’s tricky. You need your domestic players to do well.”M Vijay, Raina and Ashwin all passed that test, as did Shadab Jakati, who dismissed Sachin Tendulkar and Saurabh Tiwary in the same over to leave Pollard with an impossible task. “When you lead India in a World Cup, you’re playing with 15 of India’s best cricketers,” said Dhoni when asked to contrast the IPL experience with the international one. “Here, you don’t necessarily pick the best XI or even the best balanced one. But it worked for us.”Having stared elimination in the face earlier in the tournament, Dhoni’s boys, like Imran’s charges, found their most menacing roar at the most opportune time. And Mumbai, like Gooch and England 18 years ago, simply had no answer.

How high the ball rises upon pitching determines the quality of a track; if it is variable, it determines the quality of batsmen too

Aakash Chopra03-Dec-2009While everyone is busy criticising the flat tracks for the Test series between India and Sri Lanka, we should remember that it wasn’t all that long ago that Stuart Clark’s bowling was making life difficult for batsmen in Champions League matches at the Feroz Shah Kotla. Also, how a second-string West Indies attack gave everyone sleepless nights during Champions Trophy matches at the Wanderers. The two extremes do exist. In my opinion, bounce is the key factor in the quality of a track. It’s the bounce that makes stroke-making easy and the lack of it that makes batting predictable.The low blows
You are more likely to find low-bounce surface in the subcontinent, and perhaps in the West Indies these days. In theory all you need to do on such surfaces is stay on the front foot and play with a straight bat. In practice, though, it is quite difficult to take a long stride forward when the ball is pitched short, especially when the bowler at the other end is a certain Shoaib Akhtar.I remember watching Shoaib bowl at full throttle on a low Kotla pitch. He was bowling in the high 140s, and getting the ball to reverse-swing too. There are only a few batsmen in the world who can take a long stride forward to a genuinely quick bowler, let alone stretch forward when the ball is pitched short. Fortunately we had one such batsman, Rahul Dravid, facing Shoaib, but even he found the low bounce difficult to negotiate. He went forward on almost every occasion, but still couldn’t stop one from breaching his defence.Similar scenes were repeated in the Champions League matches played in Delhi. Even though the mind tells you to get forward when Brett Lee has bowled short of a good length, the body simply refuses to go forward. It’s sort of a reflex action.Bowlers are smart operators and aren’t shy of banging it in short on a regular basis on such surfaces. Since you can never be sure of the bounce, it isn’t advisable to duck underneath the ball, but getting on top of every bouncer is not possible either, even when the wicket is keeping low.In Delhi’s concluded Ranji match in Lucknow, a lot of batsmen got hit on the body because of the lack of bounce. Pitching on the exact same length, some deliveries sailed comfortably over the head and some had the batsmen in a tangle. Ideally you should look to play every short-pitched ball, and then either get on top of it or sway away.A batsman has to keep in mind not to be impulsive. A good puller of the ball, for instance, automatically sets himself up for a pull as soon as the ball is dropped short. Ricky Ponting had first-hand experience of this in a warm-up game in Hyderabad last year. Irfan Pathan kept banging the ball in short, and Ponting kept playing the horizontal shots, and kept turning around to see the ball bounce twice before reaching the wicketkeeper. Every time he did it, I asked him if he was enjoying the bounce.Later in the match, I too fell victim to the lack of bounce. I went back and across to a Stuart Clark bouncer and expected to play the ball around my ribs, but to my utter disbelief the ball crashed into my shoes. This time it was Ponting ribbing me about the bounce.On such surfaces the fielders standing in the slips, along with the wicketkeeper, suffer as much as the batsmen. You might have criticised MS Dhoni and Sachin Tendulkar for letting a couple go through between them in the current series, but on pitches with low bounce you hardly get the time to react. The pace at which a bowler bowls isn’t reduced, but fielders have to come up a long way to ensure that edges carry to them. While you stand almost at the 30-yard circle in Australia, at times you have to stand at not more than 15 yards away to the same bowler on low tracks. Good fielders keep coming up because it’s better to drop a catch on the full – at least you have a chance to catch it – than watch the ball land in front of you.The other kind: unpredictable high bounce•Getty ImagesThe high tide
While playing on surfaces with extra bounce, a batsman needs to stay on the back foot and play with the horizontal bat more often. Even though it’s tougher to adjust to high bounce than low bounce, it’s still manageable.The problem is when the bounce is not predictable. The West Indies attack posed all kinds of problems to the Australian batting in South Africa during the Champions Trophy. The ball was bouncing alarmingly from a good length to hit Ponting and friends on the hands or other parts of their bodies.All you can do on such surfaces is to have decisive footwork, which Ponting did have on that day, and try to get to the pitch of the ball whenever it’s pitched up and use the depth of the crease to go fully back when pitched short.On such surfaces balls pitched fuller cause problems, because there’s very little time to adjust to the uneven bounce. Hence bowlers try to keep it up to the bat as much as possible. The batsman needs to counterattack to force a bowler to change his length. That’s the reason one goes hard at balls that are pitched up, hoping that the bowler starts bowling short to cut down on the runs conceded. So it isn’t always right to criticise a batsman for playing what seems like a reckless shot, because it may just be an attempt to survive.While most batsmen will not believe or accept it, there are times when one gets scared of uneven bounce. I have seen batsmen, especially in the lower order, back away towards square leg, and you can’t blame them. The match I’m referring to here is a Ranji Trophy game played on an underprepared green top at the Kotla between Delhi and Orissa. Balls pitched just short of a good length were frequently sailing over the batsman’s and wicketkeeper’s heads. You not only need a lot of courage but also a large share of luck to survive on such surfaces.While batting on surfaces with low bounce isn’t dangerous, it makes for boring cricket beyond a point. On the contrary, it’s quite entertaining to see batsmen hopping and jumping while batting on surfaces with uneven bounce on the higher side. But how can one not feel for the batsmen?

Their physical make-up and bowling actions might be different but when it comes to taking wickets and making batsmen quake, Steyn and Morkel seem identical

Telford Vice05-Jul-2010You could say there are six inches of separation between Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn. Morkel looms large at 1.96 metres, or 6ft 5in. That’s significantly loftier than Steyn, all 1.81 metres or 5ft 11in of him.Loose-limbed and lanky, Morkel sticks out even in the rarefied ranks of fast bowlers. But if he played in the NBA, where the average height is 2.01 metres, he might be considered on the shorter side of tall. Put the more wiry Steyn in the real world and he’s a strapping six-footer almost. However, in the elongated circles of those whose vocation it is to bowl fast, he’s vertically challenged. Perhaps the great leveller is Malcolm Marshall, over whom Steyn would have towered by an entire centimetre.Anyone out there know of a batsman who called Marshall “Shorty” and emerged unbloodied? Thought not. Don’t try that with Steyn, either. It would be just as painfully stupid to ask Morkel, as you make your way to the crease, what the weather is doing up there.In fact, it’s Steyn’s relative lack of height – locked and loaded as it is with his other attributes – that makes him so dangerous. Were he taller, chances are he wouldn’t whip through his action as tautly and cleanly as he does. He would therefore generate less pace. The converse applies to Morkel. He creates uncertainty for batsmen in similar fashion to a spinner who flights the ball above their eyes. The difference is that, once launched, the missile hurtles towards its target at breathtaking speed.Together Steyn and Morkel form perhaps the most feared pair of assassins currently playing international cricket. So far their partnership is worth 22 Tests, in which they have combined to take 195 wickets at an average of 25.44.Steyn is similarly successful whether Morkel is around – when his average is 23.15 – or not, when his wickets come at 23.13 apiece. But Morkel would seem to be a more threatening bowler in Steyn’s presence. His average when they bristle in the same Test attack is 28.60, compared to 30.77 overall. That said, Morkel has played just four of his 26 Tests without Steyn.Both play their first-class cricket for the Titans, where Richard Pybus presided over their rise to prominence. “Steyn was incredibly raw when he first came up,” said Pybus, the former Titans coach. “He was a talent, but he didn’t know how to win games or even how to construct spells. I was very protective of him when I was asked about him, because he needed to do his learning.”Steyn made his Test debut in South Africa’s home series against England in 2004-05. He took eight wickets in the three matches, and conceded 416 runs. Sixteen wickets followed in his next rubber, against New Zealand, but he was still expensive. Four more series passed in which Steyn’s wicket tally refused to reach double figures. He hit the big time in two Tests against New Zealand in 2007-08, taking 20 wickets at the stupendous average of 9.20. His lessons learnt, Steyn roared to 200 wickets in 39 Tests.Morkel leapt to international prominence when he made India’s top order look gun-shy while playing for a Rest of South Africa XI in Potchefstroom in 2006-07. He was duly rushed into the team for the second Test as a replacement for the injured Steyn.Almost inevitably, Morkel’s premature elevation had its downside. “Unfortunately for Morne, a lot of his growing up has happened in the shop window,” Pybus said. Not that anyone has doubted that Morkel is bound for glory, as he suggested with his match haul of 12 for 91 in the decisive game of the 2008-09 SuperSport Series between the Eagles and the Titans in Bloemfontein. “He was world-class; everybody else was just first-class,” Pybus remembered.

“He was world-class; everybody else was just first-class”Richard Pybus on Morne Morkel in a domestic game

Steyn might seem the more dangerous of the two to some. Not to Pybus. “Morne has closed the gap on Dale,” he said. “He’s a strike bowler, he’s nobody’s first-change bowler. He needs to get that new ball in his hand and let it rip. I think he’s found himself as a young man, but he’s still a few five-wicket hauls from the finished article.”The value of Steyn and Morkel to South Africa’s cause was only made plain in their recent Test series in the Caribbean, where the West Indian pitches were even more flat than the home side’s batting. Steyn took 15 wickets and Morkel 14. The other 20 were scattered among five bowlers.Equally lethal though South Africa’s new-ball pair appears to be on that evidence, they are differently engineered under the skin.”Dale’s a bit of a freak,” said Grant Compton, the South African team’s strength and conditioning expert from 2007 to 2009. “His fast-twitch fibres are very well-developed. That makes him an explosive cricketer. But he also has amazing endurance.”He hyper-extends his arm when he bowls, which means his arm bends as he delivers the ball, but not in an illegal way. It actually bends backwards. That’s why sometimes it looks like he’s slinging the ball. Also, he glides into the crease. He doesn’t ram his front foot down, and he has a very efficient action.”Morne has awesome levers and he works very hard at staying in top-class shape. He does put his front foot down hard, and his action is less efficient than Dale’s. The ground reactions going through his body are far greater than in Dale’s case.”But he gets great purchase off the pitch and he extracts a lot more bounce than Dale. It matters so much that Morne is really committed to his conditioning. That is undoubtedly the key to his success.”All of which will come as cold comfort to Test batsmen everywhere. The prospect of Steyn, 27, and Morkel, 25, ganging up on them for years to come can’t be something to look forward to. But best they get used to the idea. That is, after everything, the long and the short of it.

Andrew Strauss’s decision to spread the field with Australia at 8 for 189 may have taken the pressure off the hosts’ tail, but his rapid half-century seized back the initiative for England

Andrew Miller at the SCG04-Jan-2011By the end of the second day at Sydney, Andrew Strauss had set up England’s innings with a brilliant assault on the new ball, but for a brief and uncharacteristic spell towards the end of Australia’s first innings, he appeared to suffer something of a loss of nerve. It was almost as if he believed the rumours of a correlation between Mitchell Johnson’s batting form and the occasional explosiveness of his bowling, because with Australia reeling at 8 for 189 against a ball that was just five overs old, there seemed no other reason to abandon a gameplan that had suited his side so well.Until Johnson was joined at the crease by the unassuming Ben Hilfenhaus, a boa-like run-rate of 2.22 had been asphyxiating the Australians, not least the hapless Mike Hussey, who picked out the cover cordon for four sweetly timed shots in a row before inside-edging Paul Collingwood’s final delivery onto his leg stump. But then in a slightly doo-lally passage of play, England’s fields were scattered and the tail was allowed to break free, adding a further 91 runs at nearly five an over.It is true that Johnson is a cricketer who thrives on confidence. On the three previous occasions he had made significant runs in the first innings of a Test match, he had followed up with searing spells with the ball – his 96 not out against South Africa at Johannesburg became 4 for 25, his 47 against India at Mohali became 5 for 64, and of course his 62 against England at Perth last month became an unplayable 6 for 38.When, however, Strauss decided that six men back on the fence was the best way to prevent Johnson’s inner beast being unleashed, it was a counterproductive spell of captaincy that enabled a substandard first-innings total to grow in stature with every rasping strike. Apart from anything else, the time and runs equation meant that England were unable to get their noses in front before the close, meaning that regardless of their own impressive response with the bat, they’ll still need to push on until tea at the earliest on day three to secure the sort of first-innings advantage that they might otherwise have taken as read.”It is frustrating when that happens but it does happen quite often in Test cricket, the tail wagging,” said James Anderson, who eventually wrapped up the innings for his third four-wicket haul of the series. “Johnson and Hilfenhaus had a licence and free rein to swing the bat, and sometimes it comes off – it did for Hilfenhaus, who had his eyes shut for the majority of his innings.”I wouldn’t call Mitchell Johnson a tailender – he’s a very competent batsman,” added Anderson. “We saw reasonably early on that he was hitting the ball well, so we decided we wanted to bowl at Hilfenhaus and Beer. I think we had every right to [do what we did]. We still had two or three slips to Johnson but just had an in-out field to him – and then attacked the other guy.”But if you’d given us 280 when they chose to bat on that pitch we’d have taken it,” he added. “So we were pretty happy with our couple of days’ work as bowlers. We think it’s a challenging total, that we can get past.”All the same, England memorably failed to overhaul a similar scoreline at Perth last month, when Australia’s first-innings 268 was given a whole new complexion by the ferocity of Johnson’s old-ball assault. But where Strauss may have erred in the field, he made fine amends with the bat, taking personal responsibility for clawing back the lost momentum with a 58-ball 60, before leaving the stage to his sidekick Cook after being undone by the best delivery that Hilfenhaus has bowled all tour.It was a scenario reminiscent of the Boxing Day Test last year at Durban, where Dale Steyn’s whirlwind 47 had given South Africa an improbably formidable total of 343, only for Strauss to respond with a brilliantly counter-punching 49-ball half-century. Then as now, his silent accomplice was Cook, who played the tortoise to his captain’s hair in making just 15 of the first 71 runs of the innings, before going on to record a brilliant anchorman hundred. At 61 not out overnight, and with 638 runs to his name in the series already, Cook has the chance to extend the similarities even further.”It’s been a massive thing for us to be getting off to good starts,” said Anderson. “It just settles the dressing-room down when you know it could be a nervy start with the new ball doing a bit, and when you see those guys leaving the ball really well and putting away the bad ball, it gives everyone a lot of confidence.”The two batsmen were helped on their way by a shapeless spell of new-ball bowling, not least from Johnson, who was entrusted with the cherry for the first time since the same pair had destroyed him at Lord’s in 2009, but responded to the honour with three wayward overs for 13. But the manner in which Strauss in particular climbed onto the offensive was instantly reassuring. “I honestly just think that Straussy is quite a positive batsman, no matter what form of cricket he is playing,” said Anderson. “He puts away bad balls, and that’s exactly what he did today.”Cook by the close was ensconced in his own little world, oblivious to anything but the very next delivery – albeit grateful for Umpire Bowden’s no-ball referral on 46. Shortly after posting his fifth half-century in seven innings, he overhauled Michael Vaughan’s tally of 633 runs in 2002-03 to become England’s highest run-scorer on an Ashes tour since the seven-Test series of 1970-71.”He’s been fantastic. Considering people were questioning his spot during the summer, I think he’s shown exactly what a player he is,” said Anderson. “He’s got huge character, huge talent – and there were no doubts in our dressing room that he was going to perform when he came out here. He relies on the shots that he has got, and his mental toughness to get him through, and he’s shown how talented he is this trip.”