There are times in sport when teams decide that the best course of action is to go on the defensive and wait out the storm. It is a legitim...
There are times in sport when teams decide that the best course of action is to go on the defensive and wait out the storm. It is a legitimate tactic if the goal is to eventually win. After all, it doesn’t make sense to wildly attack when the game situation demands a different approach.
But on the third morning of the Test match between India and England in Bangalore (now Bengaluru) in 2001, Nasser Hussain’s team employed a leg-side tactic that in the eyes of many watching was an affront to the spirit of the game.
First, right-arm pacer Andrew Flintoff started by banging the ball in short from round the wicket. Then, left-arm orthodox spinner Ashley Giles started landing his deliveries a foot outside leg stump with wicket-keeper James Foster standing in readiness. Scoring proved to be almost impossible even though the batsman in the middle was Sachin Tendulkar.
“If Sehwag and Tendulkar are smashing you everywhere and the crowd going ballistic, ‘Sachin, Sachin!’ echoing around the ground, I would look into my bowlers’ eyes and they would be a little bit gone. So I knew the key was to silence the crowd, take the crowd out of the equation. And the only...
