Playing It My Way: My Autobiography (14 page)

Unfortunately, we lost the third Test at Port Elizabeth to the pace and guile of Allan Donald, who picked up twelve wickets in the match. We were still in the game at the end of the first innings of both teams, but it was Donald’s opening burst in the second innings that made all the difference. We lost our first six wickets for 31 and, despite a brilliant hundred from Kapil Dev, we never really had a chance. I got a bad umpiring call and was declared out to Brett Schultz, caught behind, when the ball had actually hit the inside of my thigh. The umpire met me at the end of the game and apologized for getting it wrong. It was understandable, for umpiring is one of the most difficult jobs in cricket and it is only human to get things wrong sometimes.

We were determined to level the series in the fourth and final Test match at Cape Town, which started on 2 January 1993. While we failed to achieve that, we didn’t play badly. Javagal Srinath bowled particularly impressively, picking up six wickets. This time Allan Donald bowled a lot of overs to me from round the wicket, pitching it short of a length to make the most of the spongy bounce Cape Town is known for. I decided to try a new approach. He was bowling short and was getting the balls to come into my body. I realized that the best way to counter him would be to frustrate him. My thinking was simple: if taller guys can use their height to stand up on their toes and get on top of the bounce, why shouldn’t the shorter guys use their height to go
under
the ball. So I decided to change my stance in this match. Normally I used to leave a gap of ten inches to a foot between my feet while batting, but in Cape Town I increased the gap to two and a half feet. This meant I was effectively even shorter than normal and could easily get under Donald’s deliveries, forcing him to change the length he was bowling. It proved successful and I managed to bat for more than four and a half hours, facing 208 balls for my 73, which helped us draw the game.

In the ODI series, which for some reason was played between the second and third Tests and which for the first time was played with two new balls, one from each end, we gave a good account of ourselves, despite losing the seven-game contest 2–5. Most of the matches were low-scoring and 200 or thereabouts was considered a competitive score, which seems extraordinary these days.

We had lost to South Africa in both formats but I must say I had relished the challenge of playing against some of the best fast bowlers in the world. Every side faces difficulties away from home and at the end of the tough South Africa series we were looking forward to dishing out a few challenges to Graham Gooch’s England when they toured India in February–March 1993. Remarkably, it would be my first ever Test series on home soil.

There’s nothing quite like playing in front of home crowds and in home conditions. When the first Test at Eden Gardens in Kolkata started on 29 January 1993, the enthusiasm among the spectators acted as huge motivation. Mohammad Azharuddin, our skipper, who always relished playing at Eden Gardens, set the tone with a brilliant 182, while I managed a half-century. By the fifth day we needed just 34 to win and to my complete amazement 70,000 people had come to the stadium to see us knock off the winning runs and take a 1–0 lead in the three-Test series. I remember hitting a short ball from Paul Jarvis, the England fast bowler, over square leg to the boundary to win the game.

Back in the dressing room there was no holding back. We really needed that win after the disappointment in South Africa and it felt particularly great to see the spinners come into play in conditions that suited their art. The English batsmen I had seen hitting through the line in England in 1990 were now struggling against the turning ball. The boot was on the other foot and we were enjoying every moment of it. Playing spin in the subcontinent is quite a challenge and England were finding it very difficult. We had a three-pronged spin attack in Anil Kumble, Rajesh Chauhan and Venkatapathy Raju – a lethal threesome. With the fast bowlers Kapil Dev and Manoj Prabhakar both very able with the bat, we had the flexibility to go in with five bowlers, making our attack look that much more potent.

The second match of the series started in Chennai on 11 February and it was in this match that I got my first home Test hundred. The surface, a very good track to bat on, was hard with a little bit of bounce. I scored 165 and could easily have gone on to score a double ton if I hadn’t played a disappointingly loose shot to Ian Salisbury, the leg-spinner. I had set out to hit the ball over midwicket and ended up top-edging it back to the bowler.

Navjot Sidhu also made a century and we posted a sizable total of 560. Despite some resistance from Neil Fairbrother in their first innings, England were forced to follow on. Chris Lewis put up a good fight in the second innings, making his maiden century, but Kumble took six wickets and we ended up winning the match comfortably. We headed to Mumbai for the third Test four days later, having already taken an unassailable 2–0 lead in the series.

This was to be my first Test match at the Wankhede Stadium, where I had grown up playing a lot of my cricket, and hence it was a homecoming of sorts. It was the same for Vinod Kambli, who got a spectacular double hundred in this match. England must have been reasonably pleased to post their biggest total of the series in their first innings, 347, with Graeme Hick making his highest Test score of 178. Yet we posted an impressive 591 in reply, of which I contributed 78, and then Manoj Prabhakar took three quick wickets and the spinners did the rest, handing the English another innings defeat. It’s fair to say that we had successfully put the disappointment of South Africa behind us.

Anil Kumble, who had bowled beautifully in all three Test matches, was declared Player of the Series. Anil was becoming the match-winner we had been looking for and discipline and rigour were the hallmarks of his craft. He did not turn the ball much but made up for it with great accuracy and tenacity. I never saw Anil let up in intensity and have nothing but the highest regard for him, one of the greatest players to have represented India.

The ODI series was more closely contested and we went into the last match at Gwalior on 5 March 1993 needing to win to level the series. Up till then, I had had a mediocre run batting at number five or six. However, at Gwalior I managed to score a quick 34 off thirty balls at a crucial time in the game and was involved in a key partnership with Azhar, who scored a brilliant 95 not out as he took us to victory.

The England series marked the beginning of a very successful phase in Indian cricket. We followed up by beating Zimbabwe in a one-off Test at home and were gradually getting into a healthy winning habit in home conditions. In ODIs we had started winning close contests and we went into the next major one-day tournament – the Hero Cup, also featuring South Africa, Sri Lanka, the West Indies and Zimbabwe – as one of the favourites.

Not long before the Hero Cup I played a festival match in Bangalore. When Kiran More, normally a wicketkeeper, bowled me a juicy full toss I tried to hit it for six but ended up twisting my wrist. It was a freakish injury and while I was able to continue batting, I was in serious pain. After a few days the injury had still not eased and it was decided that I needed to have an injection. This was my first cortisone injection and Dr Anant Joshi flew in from Mumbai to Delhi to administer the shot. I was to be injected on my wrist very close to the palm, and with the Hero Cup just days away, I was apprehensive about the recovery. The injection, which was pretty painful, was the first of a hundred or more cortisone injections over the course of my career.

The one match of the Hero Cup I will never forget is the semi-final against South Africa on 24 November 1993. We batted first, scoring a very modest 195 in our fifty overs. We knew we needed to bowl and field exceedingly well if we were to stop South Africa from making the final. Our bowlers, led by Anil, did a very good job and at the end of the forty-ninth over South Africa needed six runs to win. Having made a match of it despite scoring too few runs, we now had to decide who should be entrusted with the task of bowling the all-important final over.

I volunteered to take the responsibility. I had not bowled on the day and so I thought my bowling would have a surprise element to it. Also, the track had assisted the slower bowlers and Kapil’s pace might have been easier for the South African batsmen to deal with. Then I realized that after fielding for forty-nine overs and in the slightly nippy evening, my body was stiff and my hands were frozen. I knew I had to warm up again quickly because there was no second chance. One wide could mean the match was over.

The first ball was a good-length delivery to Brian McMillan, one of the best all-rounders in the world at the time, who managed a single. But in the process South Africa lost Fanie de Villiers, who, in trying to get McMillan back on strike, was run out by a throw from Salil Ankola. Importantly, it meant that McMillan was at the non-striker’s end and the new man was facing me. This was my opportunity. Allan Donald, the new batsman, wasn’t great with the bat and if I managed to pin him down we definitely had a chance of winning the contest. The key was to keep the big-hitting Brian McMillan away from the strike.

As Donald walked to the wicket, I knew he was feeling the tension. I just had to hold my nerve and not try anything fancy. I deliberately bowled slower to him and even tossed one up, giving it a bit of spin. Donald was unable to cope with the lack of pace and ended up putting himself and his team under pressure by playing out three dot-balls. He didn’t manage a single till the fifth ball of the over. South Africa now needed a boundary off the last ball to win. For our part, we just needed to stop the boundary and we were in the final.

The key to handling pressure situations like these is to keep yourself steady, follow your instincts and think clearly. I was aware that there had been occasions in the past when a batsman had got an inside edge attempting a huge heave and the ball had beaten the keeper standing up and sped to the boundary. In such circumstances there’s little the bowling team can do. Remembering this, I asked Vijay Yadav, our keeper, to stand back, as if to a fast bowler.

It’s difficult to believe, looking back, but McMillan did try a slog and he did get an inside edge. Yadav easily picked up the ball twenty yards back and South Africa could only sneak a single. In the most dramatic of finishes we had managed to win and were in the final. I had conceded only three runs in the over and we had won by two runs. The packed Eden Gardens crowd, which numbered close to 100,000, turned hysterical. Paper torches were lit all round the stands, creating an unbelievable atmosphere. I felt a sense of exhilaration and was soon engulfed by my team-mates. It was one of the best one-day internationals I had played in.

The other, rather unexpected, contributor to the Indian victory was a mongoose, which kept coming onto the ground during the second half of this day-night encounter at the Eden Gardens. It seemed that every time the mongoose came on the field the momentum shifted and the South Africans lost a wicket. While it was just a coincidence, of course, it turned out to be a lucky coincidence for India!

After such a nerve-racking semi-final, the final was a relatively easy affair, with Anil running through the West Indies line-up to give us the title. He bowled brilliantly and finished off with career-best figures of 6–12 as we won the Hero Cup in front of a packed Eden Gardens. To make the victory even sweeter, I managed to get the wicket of Brian Lara. Getting Brian Lara out was interesting because Ajit, who had travelled to Kolkata with me to watch the semi-final and the final, had mentioned to me in the hotel that I should look to get Brian Lara out if I got a chance to bowl to him, and also suggested that I should bowl stump to stump to him. As it happened, I did get a chance to bowl to Brian, who had opened the batting for the West Indies. After he had hit me for a few runs, I bowled him a delivery slightly outside the off stump, which nipped back in a shade and bowled him. Delighted with the wicket, I immediately thought of the discussion I had had with Ajit.

My first year of cricket on home soil had gone really well. However, there were still things I desperately wanted to do. One was getting my first ODI hundred and another was opening the batting for India in one-dayers.

It was the morning of 27 March 1994 and later that day we were playing New Zealand in the second game of a four-match ODI series in Auckland. Navjot Sidhu, our first-choice opener, woke up with a stiff neck and was in no position to play. That’s when I went up to Azhar and our manager Ajit Wadekar, a former Indian captain and a leading batsman of his time, and pleaded with them to give me an opportunity at the top of the order. Why did I think I should open? Well, I had the ability to attack bowlers and play shots from the word go, and in the one-day game, the key was to take advantage of the field restrictions in the first fifteen overs. I was sure that I just needed a chance to prove myself. I told Wadekar Sir that if I failed I’d never ask him again. In any case, there was no reserve opener in the team and they had no choice but to experiment with an irregular opener in place of Sidhu. If they put me at the top, they could still get a middle-order batsman to fill in for me at number four or five. After a lot of pleading, they finally agreed.

New Zealand scored just 142 batting first, but we still needed to make a good start. As I walked out to bat, I felt different in some way. I told myself that this was my big chance to open the batting for India. I did not want to let down the captain and the coach. Once I was at the wicket I cleared my mind and was just intent on hitting the ball hard, come what may. It was one of those days when everything fell into place and soon I couldn’t wait for the next delivery. The quicker the better, as far as I was concerned. I managed to score 82 off forty-eight balls, finally holing out to the left-arm spinner Matthew Hart off a leading edge. I had hit fifteen fours and two sixes.