My musings on Sydney

India's tour to Australia for Cricket is turning out to be a battle on more than one front. At this point, it doesn't seem muck cricket like, but more like an enduring lesson in diplomacy, sports-psychology and sportsmanship.

India have lost the second test match and Sydney and Australia have achieved a record of 16 consecutive test match wins. A lot will be said and written about this test match. So, I decided to jump in the fray and instead of concentrating on records, decided to write a few thoughts. Anyway, this test match should not be remembered for the records, but for the game itself.

Umpiring

Firstly, the umpiring errors. Its very easy to take the view that Bucknor and Benson were biased against India. But if we think a little more objectively, what else could be the case? Bucknor and Benson were having a truly bad test match and that it could happen to anybody. If that is the case, Bucknor and Benson should be forthcoming in their apology to Indian cricket on their follies and promise to do better in future.

Second possibility is that they are truly incompetent. This is something that the umpires themselves will not accept. So, ICC should step in and annul the test match result and take action against the umpires.

Either of the two scenarios still do not explain why such mistakes (9 of them) are clearly against India (8 of them benefited Australia). Human errors apart, the third umpire making a mistake puts it, in my mind at least, that this match is a proof where umpiring consciously favored Australia.

More of the umpiring biases towards Australia in recent years on this blog. I quote from there:

"whenever Australia face a crisis situation they have more often that not been aided by the on field umpires whether home or neutral. Such attitudes raise questions on the ethical integrity apart from the bias quotient of the officiating umpires. It is for this reason, and for this reason alone that Australian players and media are highly reluctant to make use of technology. Rather, they would prefer to bear [read enjoy] human errors; for they know that at the end of the day technology will not conform to their needs at crisis situations and bail them out. As long as human errors are aiding their cause of establishing world record winning streaks by rescuing them from hopeless positions they would leave the tough part of biting the bullet to the opposition."

Australia's dominance

So, why should the umpires be biased. I don't know. The simplest reason is that Australia wishes to keep the winning thing going at any cost. And it seems the cost to pay is fairness. Australia has been challenged time and again in the recent past and history tells us that no team can keep on winning as well as Australia have done in the past decade. To prolong the streak, they need something more than just good cricket. In the past, they have resorted to sledging. Apparently, that is not good enough, particularly against teams like India which are willing to fight fire with fire.

Once sledging was proved to be ineffective, they have started being unethical on the field, complaining about Harbhajan and getting him a ban when there seems to be no evidence against him. Then, they decide to wrongly appeal on more than one occasion in this match when clearly they clearly knew that, based on cricket alone they could not win the match. Harbhajan's ban serves the important puspose of allowing their captain to score some runs in this series.

Ricky Ponting, who had disciplinary issues as a young cricketer has moved to be a great player. That said, he also wishes, as anybody else would, to stamp himself as one of the greatest captains of the game. His two World records, enviable test and One day record indicate that he is in line for the same. But sometimes all this can get to you. Now, Ponting wants to usurp Steve Waugh's record at any cost, even at the cost of cheating. if they continue to keep cheating, they might not just complete this tour of India at 18 consecutive wins, but also probably end next year at 25, the following year at 35 and so on. Nothing can stop you if you wish to play the unfair game.

India's Gumption

If Australia seems like an unfair winner to this test match, I feel India is a fair loser of this test match. True that they played the game to spirit and that they had a lot of things going against them. All that still doesn't explain Wasim Jaffer and Yuvraj Singh repeatedly failing at crucial points to hand over the onus to the Aussies. It also doesn't explain the poor batting display during Michael Clarke's penultimate over of the match. Well knowing that 12 more balls can get them to safety, unable to play a part-time slow bowler with three wickets in hand is not acceptable. It needs gumption to turn history on its head and India lacked it at key times in this match.

Having said that, I have to hand it to the Indians for playing so well and putting up such a fantastic performance and getting so close. They have two more matches and to prove that the Umpiring decisions alone won Aussies the match, they should defeat Aussies in both test matches and prove that they were in fact the best team in this competition. And lets all hope that God (and more importantly the umpires) are with them for the upcoming two matches.