Time for India to get on the front foot

In every war movie, book or mythological story the first thing rulers are rumoured to do, is get on the highest balcony, address a gathering of teeming masses and cry out "People unite!" War or not, that is the approximate slogan doing the rounds these days. The mighty Australians are here and India is quaking in her very boots. One thing was certain long before the men from Down Under landed on Indian soil. There would be very few people involved in cricket or interested in cricket who could afford to be indifferent to the series and indeed events surrounding it.

Steve Waugh fired the first salvo in the media long before their arrival in India. Sourav Ganguly countered it with his own words. After a few scrummy exchanges, Ganguly decided to call it quits and declared "I've already said enough about the Australians." That certainly is a start. It's one thing for school children to resort to abuse and backchat when dealing with a bully. For Ganguly to get entangled in something as futile as a slanging match through the media was unfortunate to say the least.

The fact that the Australians have won 15 Test matches on the trot is not something to be sneezed at. The fact that India have not been beaten by Australia in a Test series at home for 31 years is a statistic as daunting. At home India is at liberty to prepare any sort of pitch that suits them and pick players who are completely accustomed to the conditions. Yet there seems to be strong, if sometimes unsaid, suggestions that Australia have the edge in this series.

Shane Warne will tell you how easy it is to play in India. "I still have nightmares about bowling to Tendulkar," said the leggie months after he had been flogged by the Indian batting maestro. Hit out of the attack till his confidence and morale reached rock bottom, the sting was taken out of Warne's tail in the very first tour game - against Mumbai at the Brabourne Stadium - when he returned figures of 16-1-111-0. That was all it took. One session of old fashioned hard hitting.

Why isn't Ganguly telling his men that it is that simple? The strategy that is, not the execution. Instead of saying that he and his men were going to take the attack to the Aussies as soon they got here, Ganguly is discussing the kind of pitches, the team composition and various other factors. The Prince of Kolkata has been India's most forthright captain since Krishnamachari Srikkanth, more than a decade ago. It's time to shift up one gear.

One should also not forget the inordinate fuss the Australian team made when they were last here in India. Every visiting team acts with abundant caution when they visit the subcontinent. There is nothing either new or wrong with that. However, not too many players bring a month and a half worth of baked beans with them like Warne did. You might ask what is wrong with that. Nothing at all. Except the fact that Steve Waugh has gone on record to say "We're going with an open mind to accept the different conditions and the culture and different food and I believe we'll be a lot more settled nad happy on this tour of India."

Let's hope so skipper. The cricket isn't going to be any easier than it was the last time around.

What's also especially curious is the way the media has gone about the whole affair thus far. As is often the case, a lot of people have taken stances long before the cricket began in right earnest. Some are pro Australia and others anti Australia. That's it. It's ironic that this tour has become more about Australia than India.

The first day of the first Test will sort all that out.