da prosport bet： Considering how new entrants to the Test arena had fared,Zimbabwe’s performance in their inaugural Test against India atHarare in October, 1992 was quite heart-warming
Partab Ramchand15-Feb-2002Considering how new entrants to the Test arena had fared,Zimbabwe’s performance in their inaugural Test against India atHarare in October, 1992 was quite heart-warming. They not onlyhad the better of a drawn game but also displayed many of thequalities required to succeed in Test cricket. Given thisbackground, it was a fairly confident Zimbabwe side that came toIndia for a return visit a few months later. But they soondiscovered that tackling India on the designer home pitches wasgoing to be anything but a breeze. The Indians, always formidableat home and then in the midst of their remarkable run of tenconsecutive victories in this country, won the one-off Test andall the three one-day internationals and at the end of it all,the Zimbabwe players must have learnt a few lessons.All the same it must be said that given their limited experienceof Test cricket and the fact that they were playing in alienconditions, Zimbabwe did not go down tamely in the big game atNew Delhi. The scorebook may show that India won by an inningsand 13 runs but till about half-an-hour after lunch on the fourthday, the match was virtually written off as a draw.
© AFPFor, in reply to India’s 536 for seven declared, Zimbabwe were275 for three with the Flower brothers well-entrenched in a neardouble-century partnership. Indeed, they were well set to joinIan and Greg Chappell and Mushtaq and Sadiq Mohammed as the thirdpair of brothers to make centuries in the same Test innings. Butat this stage, a sudden rush of blood saw Andy Flower give leftarm spinner Maninder Singh the charge only for debutant VijayYadav to effect an easy stumping. In Maninder’s next over, GrantFlower was leg-before and Zimbabwe’s defiance against the spintrio of Maninder, Anil Kumble and Rajesh Chauhan, was well andtruly at an end. So sharp was the collapse that by tea thevisitors were following on.The first two days had been dominated by the Indian batsmen, ormore specifically by Vinod Kambli. In hitting 227, the lefthander, then 21 and playing in only his fourth Test, joinedlegends Bradman and Hammond in making double centuries in twosuccessive Tests. Just three weeks earlier, the gifted, freestroking batsman had made 224 against England. Kambli wasinvolved in successive century stands for the second, third andfourth wickets with Navjot Sidhu, Sachin Tendulkar and MohammadAzharuddin. He came threateningly close to surpassing SunilGavaskar’s 236 not out – the highest individual score for Indiain Tests before giving a return catch to 45-year-old spinnerJohn Traicos.By the time Azharuddin declared, it was already lunch on thethird day; there being very little play on the second day, thanksto primitive covers which a minor shower penetrated to reach thepitch and render the run-ups soggy. Zimbabwe lost three wicketsfor 83 before the Flower brothers took centrestage with theirlong partnership. Andy was out for 115 and Grant for 96 and therest of the batting offered little resistance as Chauhan (2),Kumble (3) and Maninder (3) took quick wickets.With the pitch deteriorating, Zimbabwe had little chance oncethey had failed to avoid the follow-on by 15 runs. And midwaythrough the final afternoon, they were all out for 201 in thesecond innings to leave India comfortable winners, after all theanxious moments they had faced. Alistair Campbell scored 61 andAndy Flower again defied the spinners in making an unbeaten 62, asubdued innings that lasted 214 minutes and 191 balls. In all,the pugnacious left-hander spent more than eight hours at thecrease to ensure that Zimbabwe, though beaten, were far fromdisgraced. This time Maninder (4) and Kumble (5) hastened theend. The leg-spinner’s haul brought his career tally to 53 fromten Tests, making him the quickest Indian bowler to reach the 50-Test wickets landmark.After this engrossing encounter, the one-dayers were quite anticlimactic with India underlining their overwhelming superiority,the margins of victory being 67 runs, seven wickets and eightwickets.By the time Zimbabwe next visited India early in the 2000-2001season, they had gained enough international experience and hadrun up a fairly good record which included a victory over Indiaat Harare in 1998. But again they found that taking on India inIndia was a very different proposition.They lost the first Test at New Delhi by seven wickets and drewthe second at Nagpur after being obliged to follow-on. They alsolost the five match one-day series by four matches to one. Itbecame quickly obvious that whatever the batting strength of thevisiting side, the bowling was very weak. The fact that Indianotched up totals of 458 for four declared, 190 for three and 609for six declared in the Tests underlines this fact. Rahul Dravidand Sachin Tendulkar got a century and double century each.Dravid in fact headed the Test figures with a freakish average of432.00 for as many runs. Tendulkar, for his part, averaged181.00.The Zimbabwe bowlers finished with the kind of figures they wouldsee in their worst nightmares. The visiting batsmen, however,showed why they made distinct progress since the early days andnone symbolised this more than Andy Flower. The wicket-keeperbatsman was a veritable thorn in the flesh for the Indian bowlersas his scores in the two match series will indicate 183 notout, 70, 55 and 232 not out. An aggregate of 540 runs at anaverage of 270.00 brought out the concentration and insatiableappetite for runs that has characterised Flower’s batting. Hebatted for a total of 1331 minutes and faced 1021 deliveries -all quite mind-boggling.
© CricInfoIndeed, it was just one batting collapse that cost Zimbabwe theseries. They led off with 422 at New Delhi and after India took afirst innings lead of 36, they were dismissed for 225 in thesecond innings. India then raced to victory with Dravid andSourav Ganguly sharing an unbroken 110-run stand for the fourthwicket. Dravid incidentally had scores of 200 not out and 70 notout. But the man-of-the-match award went to Javagal Srinath whohad a haul of nine wickets.In the second Test, the Indian batsmen made merry at the expenseof some innocuous Zimbabwe bowling and Shiv Sundar Das (110) andDravid (162) got hundreds while Tendulkar got his second doublecentury in Tests. Grant Flower with an unbeaten 106 shone asZimbabwe replied with 382.Following on, Zimbabwe were in trouble at 61 for three. But afourth wicket partnership of 209 runs between Alistair Campbell(102) and Andy Flower put them in safe waters and Zimbabwe atclose were 503 for six.In the one-day internationals, India’s superiority was quitemarked. The margins of victory were by three wickets, 61 runs,nine wickets and 39 runs while Zimbabwe’s lone win was in thethird game in which they squeaked home by one wicket.