Good fielding can win matches

As the Friendship Series moves to Peshawar, I can’t help but think of my experience there in 1976. It was when I was trying to reach Pe...

As the Friendship Series moves to Peshawar, I can’t help but think of my experience there in 1976. It was when I was trying to reach Peshawar as captain of a Rest of the World XI participating in the seven ODI Quaid-e-Azam trophy. My flight from India was delayed and I couldn’t catch the connecting flight from Karachi. As a result, I missed the match. But because I was captain, the organisers wanted me to reach anyway and deliver a speech.

I reached Peshawar to find a massive crowd at the airport. Thinking that it was there to welcome me — a senior

cricketer, that too an Indian — I was thrilled, but that wasn’t the case. My ego took a beating as I figured they were off to the Haj, and the rest of the people there were seeing the pilgrims off.

The whole story, with a few more twists and turns, is quite a long one, and one that this is not the right space for…. Suffice to say that Peshawar, more than a cricketing centre, reminds me of this incident each time I hear the name.

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How times change! The Indian team today is getting the best hospitality the country can provide, their President is part of the fan-base. And all this less than a year after the two countries seemed set to go to war. Nothing so far seen in this series would make anyone think that was the case. The spectators have been beautiful and Saurav Ganguly’s team have been accorded the status of heroes everywhere they have been.

I think the credit for all this should go only to the two heads of state: India Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. The two of them seem genuinely interested in improving relations between the two countries, and going by the cricketing example, it appears that the two of them have their fingers on the nations’ pulse better than most before them.

With this feeling of goodwill in the air, I don’t think it was appropriate on Ganguly’s part to suggest what he did about Shoaib Akhtar’s bowling. Yes, these are Australian tactics and Ganguly has been a great student of the Australian ways and might only have tried to rattle Shoaib a bit. But that’s another matter. Under the circumstances, it appears a bit unnecessary and provocative.

The wicket in Peshawar cannot be different from Karachi and Rawalpindi. It has a reputation of being a perfect graveyard for bowlers and I won’t be surprised if we see 700 runs being scored with the side batting second putting up a good fight in chasing 350 or so.

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But most importantly, the fielding has to be spruced up. Both the sides have given away 20-25 runs in the field and significantly, that’s the margin within which both the matches were decided.