Line & Length
R Mohan
Murali Kartik made the ball talk against Aussies
October 19, 2007
There is a saying in the game that cricketers do not retire; they go to the commentary box.
Murali Kartik is one of those who has undertaken the journey in the reverse direction. Having been out of international cricket for a couple of years, he has travelled from the commentary box to the playing field and with great success at that.
When the Australians were here for a Test series to cross what they called the Indian frontier, Kartik had bowled them out on a helpful Mumbai pitch, albeit after the trophy had been won and lost. Maybe, it was a case of deja vu as Kartik did much the same to the Aussies in a dead rubber game in what must rate now as his favourite hunting ground - Wankhede Stadium.
The game abounds with comeback tales and of players being drafted from extraordinary places to make the playing XI. Kartik's return to big time international cricket must be considered remarkable even among a plethora of comeback stories. The Aussies had hit him all over the park in the finals of the tri-series when India toured down under, from when on Team India had to select specific roles for Kartik as a defensive left arm spinner bowling the restrictive line from over the wicket.
Having graduated from the Bishen Bedi school of flighted spin, the orthodox spinner may have come to believe that the only way to bowl is to give the ball air and challenge the batsmen. Such methods met with limited success, particularly against the world champions who back themselves to be aggressive in any kind of game situation.
A couple of seasons with Middlesex at Lord's, where he was more welcome than in Team India which merely paid him a retainer to keep him on the books, Kartik returned to top flight action at the behest of new skipper M.S. Dhoni, who saw merit in his style of bowling that has dwindled in international cricket mostly because of lack of quality among practitioners of the art.
Kartik had apparently picked up not only a clipped accent for the microphone from the English county cricket circuit. He had also matured as a spinner who could now appreciate the value of sticking to the basics of line and length and leaving out the more grandiose forms of exaggerated flight out of the bowling equation. On the responsive Mumbai pitch on Wednesday, Kartik found his arm ball to be a more deadly weapon than flight.
On a surface on which the ball was already gripping, the Delhi-based Tamil Nadu bowler, who switched from pace to spin early in his career, used the arm ball to keep the batsmen guessing.
This delivery may not have the pace, sting and pronounced swerve of his teacher Bedi's deadly arm ball. But, on a turner, it gave him the edge to create the ultimate tale of success in a player going on from being a mere 'gob on a stick,' which is how producers term the comments men, to a purveyor of the ball that virtually talked.
While on the subject, there is another cricketer who can any day make the transition from the playing field to the commentary box. Rahul Dravid's lucidity and his posh accent will be readymade qualifications for the job behind the microphone. His playing days are far from over and the former skipper is merely suffering the post-abdication blues any human being goes through after putting in his papers on a most prominent job.
Feeling increasingly isolated in a team that he led not so long ago, the skipper, who once forged India's world record in the chase in ODIs, cannot now be far away from throwing in the one day game in a further sacrifice to preserve his Test career in which he is among the most eminent performers of the modern era. Among the moderns, his Test average (56.50) is second only to that of Ricky Ponting (59.29), that too because he has allowed it to slip in most recent series.
There is no doubt Dravid will one day be one of the better voices out of television. He may not undertake that journey to the media box until he proves himself capable of making as dramatic a comeback in the one-day arena as Kartik.
To be left out of the one-day team on form is not a new experience for Dravid. Yet, the signs are that he may have to give up this form of the game in order to stretch his Test career after which, of course, there will be immense space for a long innings behind the microphone.
Republished with permission from The Asian Age
Murali Kartik is one of those who has undertaken the journey in the reverse direction. Having been out of international cricket for a couple of years, he has travelled from the commentary box to the playing field and with great success at that.
When the Australians were here for a Test series to cross what they called the Indian frontier, Kartik had bowled them out on a helpful Mumbai pitch, albeit after the trophy had been won and lost. Maybe, it was a case of deja vu as Kartik did much the same to the Aussies in a dead rubber game in what must rate now as his favourite hunting ground - Wankhede Stadium.
The game abounds with comeback tales and of players being drafted from extraordinary places to make the playing XI. Kartik's return to big time international cricket must be considered remarkable even among a plethora of comeback stories. The Aussies had hit him all over the park in the finals of the tri-series when India toured down under, from when on Team India had to select specific roles for Kartik as a defensive left arm spinner bowling the restrictive line from over the wicket.
Having graduated from the Bishen Bedi school of flighted spin, the orthodox spinner may have come to believe that the only way to bowl is to give the ball air and challenge the batsmen. Such methods met with limited success, particularly against the world champions who back themselves to be aggressive in any kind of game situation.
A couple of seasons with Middlesex at Lord's, where he was more welcome than in Team India which merely paid him a retainer to keep him on the books, Kartik returned to top flight action at the behest of new skipper M.S. Dhoni, who saw merit in his style of bowling that has dwindled in international cricket mostly because of lack of quality among practitioners of the art.
Kartik had apparently picked up not only a clipped accent for the microphone from the English county cricket circuit. He had also matured as a spinner who could now appreciate the value of sticking to the basics of line and length and leaving out the more grandiose forms of exaggerated flight out of the bowling equation. On the responsive Mumbai pitch on Wednesday, Kartik found his arm ball to be a more deadly weapon than flight.
On a surface on which the ball was already gripping, the Delhi-based Tamil Nadu bowler, who switched from pace to spin early in his career, used the arm ball to keep the batsmen guessing.
This delivery may not have the pace, sting and pronounced swerve of his teacher Bedi's deadly arm ball. But, on a turner, it gave him the edge to create the ultimate tale of success in a player going on from being a mere 'gob on a stick,' which is how producers term the comments men, to a purveyor of the ball that virtually talked.
While on the subject, there is another cricketer who can any day make the transition from the playing field to the commentary box. Rahul Dravid's lucidity and his posh accent will be readymade qualifications for the job behind the microphone. His playing days are far from over and the former skipper is merely suffering the post-abdication blues any human being goes through after putting in his papers on a most prominent job.
Feeling increasingly isolated in a team that he led not so long ago, the skipper, who once forged India's world record in the chase in ODIs, cannot now be far away from throwing in the one day game in a further sacrifice to preserve his Test career in which he is among the most eminent performers of the modern era. Among the moderns, his Test average (56.50) is second only to that of Ricky Ponting (59.29), that too because he has allowed it to slip in most recent series.
There is no doubt Dravid will one day be one of the better voices out of television. He may not undertake that journey to the media box until he proves himself capable of making as dramatic a comeback in the one-day arena as Kartik.
To be left out of the one-day team on form is not a new experience for Dravid. Yet, the signs are that he may have to give up this form of the game in order to stretch his Test career after which, of course, there will be immense space for a long innings behind the microphone.
Republished with permission from The Asian Age
