Defeat leaves Indian hopes fading fast (5 June 1999)

5 June 1999

Defeat leaves Indian hopes fading fast

Martin Johnson

There is still a week before India's official monsoon season, but it is already raining in about 900 million hearts. The nation is obsessed with cricket, especially the pyjama variety, but yesterday's Indian cobra turned out to be as venomous as the type found at the bottom of a snake charmers' basket - weaned on a diet of powdered mouse, with fangs that spend the night in a glass of Steradent.

The lights going out in India is not an especially big event - Calcutta is routinely plunged into darkness when someone pops the kettle on - but in terms of the lights going out on India's 1999 World Cup campaign, as they probably have after yesterday's defeat, it is nothing short of a national catastrophe.

It is not unknown for previous World Cup defeats to result in suicide and domestic homicide, and during the 1992 tournament in Australia, Ravi Shastri's house in Bombay had most of its windows smashed by an indignant mob. If Mohammad Azharuddin had been taken into custody last night and allowed one phone call, he'd have been straight on to the glaziers.

Steve Waugh doesn't have to reach for the Yellow Pages every time his team suffer a setback, though they'd have been pretty hyped up about this game in Australia as well. His is a country which so craves international sporting recognition that it has only just stopped calling a triangular tournament the World Series of cricket - an event of such global magnitude the final was once played between Australia and Australia's second XI.

It was a bad day for only one Australian, India's coaching advisor Bobby Simpson, who had curiously been asked whether he intended to stay away from his adopted team's dressing-room out of respect for his roots. Australians have an impressive vocabulary in some of the shorter-syllabled words, and Simpson would have been entitled to use a few given that he only stopped working for Australia when he got the sack.

If the match made grim viewing back in India, spare a thought also for those Indian supporters without tickets yesterday, who were being asked to pay up to £600 for a seat by the touts. The Surrey constabulary did everything that is within their powers, namely - touting not being illegal as it is at football matches - nothing. "Hello, hello, hello, what's all this then? Two together in the Peter May Stand? OK, I'll take one each for me and PC 49. Now then, sir, kindly move along."

Once inside the ground, India's fans were lighter in pocket than they were in heart, even though there was plenty of ECB officially disapproved klaxon hooting and horn blowing when Shane Warne was being tonked all over the ground. Warne holds no mystery for Indian batsmen, who are brought up on a diet of twiddle and twirl, and, post shoulder-op, it is beginning to look as though Warne holds no mystery for anyone any more.

However, there was no way back for India from 17 for four, which, with due respect to the excellent Glenn McGrath, was another triumph for the ECB's decision to play this World Cup with a white ball. When the shine has gone, the crowd can't see it, and when the shine is on, the batsmen can't see it. In fact, it is so close to being a boomerang Australia could happily open the bowling with Rolf Harris.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph