Leg Side Filth

Mohali, India v Australia. Day 5, India on 122-7 and needing 94 runs to win.

Harbhajan Singh comes to the crease on a king pair.

2 balls later, having managed to get off the mark, he fends a short ball from Doug Bollinger off his glove through to Ricky Ponting at slip.

At 124 for 8 and still needing 92 to win, that looked like it was pretty much curtains for India.

In the book Pundits From Pakistan, Rahul Bhattacharya writes that when VVS Laxman is batting, the window of the comm box turns “a delicate shade of rose”. Today he was less the rose and more the thorn, rigid with back pain and grim determination and spiky of temper, screaming with fury at Pragyan Ojha for not taking a single during their last wicket partnership. India were 76-5 when he came out to bat with Suresh Raina as his runner and he proceeded to work his way deep into Australia’s twitching hide.

Wincing with pain after twisting to put away a Mitchell Johnson delivery during his 81-run partnership with Ishant Sharma, he kept his head while at the other end his partners were losing theirs (Dhoni’s demise in particular being down to the almost inevitable confusion caused by the combination of a runner and a sense of desperation).

Sharma seems to have rediscovered the fact he can take wickets, and now he was showing he could wield a bat as well. India were 162-8 at lunch and needed 54 more runs to win; Sharma was on 14, Laxman 2 away from his half century, though for him physiotherapy and painkillers would probably have taken precedence over food.

A gloriously swivel-wristed pull off Ben Hilfenhaus brought up Laxman’s 50, and by the time Sharma perished for 31 to an lbw shout that looked plumb in real time but on replay seemed to be going down leg (another argument for UDRS at all Test matches, surely), only 11 more were required.

11 runs, 1 wicket. A simple equation, a task still verging on the impossible. Laxman had understandably little confidence in Ojha’s ability with the bat and so singles were turned down, hurry-ups issued, obscenities yelled in shrieking desperation. Mid-pitch conferences were held after every ball and 3 sets of gloves punched.

The ending came amid frantic chaos as a result of 2 leg-byes with 3 results possible. Laxman, surely now running on adrenaline alone, ran cheering towards coach Gary Kirsten as the rest of the India team charged onto the field to congratulate and celebrate with their wounded, conquering hero.

Laxman has done this sort of thing before, carrying the burden of rescuing his team like a fire-fighter with a smoke victim over his shoulder fighting his way out of a burning building, but unlike Eden Gardens in 2001 the stadium at Mohali was almost empty. If ever an occasion demanded a raucous, gladiatorial crowd cheering their team on to victory it was surely this one.

Given such great drama, it is a shame that this is only a 2-match series and that the Border Gavaskar Trophy has already been decided. The two teams meet next at Bangalore two days hence.

So Tim Paine missed out narrowly on his maiden Test ton.

It doesn’t matter.

Australia’s young backup keeper, filling in since May while Brad Haddin is injured, not only did himself proud, he did it in a way that ensured his team are in a comfortable position at the end of Day 2 against India at Mohali.

Watchful when he needed to be, content to let centurion Shane Watson do the bulk of the scoring and then to let Mitchell Johnson display his usual brand of unfettered hitting, he anchored Australia’s innings and helped them to a total of 428 after they started the day on 224 for 5.

By the end of Day 1 he had scored a single run off 14 balls. He made the most of a couple of moments of luck – dropped by Dhoni on 0; a thick edge that went between keeper and slip when he was on 86 – but by the time he went for 92, edging Zaheer Khan to VVS Laxman at second slip, he looked a different batsman from the nervous young man who took guard at Lord’s against Pakistan back in July in his first Test appearance with his family watching, so over-awed by the occasion that he himself admitted, “I couldn’t feel my feet”. Fluent and assured, he took a particular liking to the left arm spin of Pragyan Ojha, stroking him for two successive boundaries.

Brad Haddin’s rehab continues and he is set to appear for the New South Wales Second XI this coming Monday, with a view to achieving full fitness in time for the first Ashes clash at Brisbane on November 25th. Already though, there are those talking of the feasibility of a woefully out of form Marcus North being dropped; whether Australia would ever decide to play an additional keeper as specialist batsman, who knows. I have been singing the praises of Tim Paine for a while now, as I believe he is Haddin’s natural successor, with bat and gloves.

After an initial period furiously debating each man’s respective value to the Australian team, it seems we all have a collective hard-on for Tim Paine now. And this pleases me.