A couple of days before our historic one day win at the MCG Veerendra Sehwag was handling a media conference in Australia as he is known to handle bowlers. Sehawag has an astute cricketing brain, though one wonders whether he leaves it behind in the dressing room when he goes out to bat on occasion. He certainly made ripples in the conference saying that India is the only team that can beat Australia and that if we won at Melbourne we are through to the finals! Of course he was partly right as India beat Australia at the MCG after 22 years and even if they are not already in the finals, they have made strong strides forward. The Indian cricket fan though went through every possible emotion in watching a low scoring game that we should have won by a mile but ended up winning with just a couple of overs to spare.
The highs and the lows
When Ishant Sharma got Ricky Ponting (again) our feelings were of exaltation, when India crawled in the middle our feelings were of despondency which had been preceded by overconfidence, when Sachin was batting and we thought our bonus point was assured and finally the feeling was just pure relief when Symonds bowled a wide! Beating Australia has not been easy for us, more so in important games .In 1996 we lost to Australia narrowly in a world cup match at Bombay, and if my memory serves me right the margin was one run .In 1999 Australia beat us comfortably at the Oval as we did not make it to the semi finals of the World Cup. In 2003 at South Africa we played wonderfully well till the finals where we again ran into Australia and lost by a mile. In 2007 at the West Indies we played so badly that we did not even get a chance to play Australia. Although we have won the odd Champions trophy game against Australia, last time around they won that too even as they shoved Sharad Pawar off the stage. In fact we have not won a major final or tournament against Australia recently in the one day version of the game .Our win now must and should pave the way for getting the monkey off the backs of the men in blue once and for all, as what would be better than winning the tri series final in Australia against Australia. In this tri- series we seem to have a funny situation amongst the three teams. Sri Lanka has been consistently psyched against Australia over the last several games and Australia too seems to be psyched by India to a lesser extent maybe. The match between Sri Lanka and India did not reveal too much and the one at Canberra on Tuesday could well hold the future to the finals.
Too early to celebrate
Let us not get carried away by our success though it is historic enough .Australia started badly thanks to Rudi Koertzen who if he continues the way he is presently doing should be penciled down for all India matches! Poor Gilly had a baffled look on his face as he was given out leg before after a huge inside edge. Gilly continued to have a baffled look as his confident appeal for a caught behind against Sachin was turned down. Sachin seemed bothered about that as he played distractedly after that and eventually got out. In a close match all these might have mattered but Ponting played it down in the media interaction saying it was the rub of the green something that our Indian commentators might wish to reflect on. I was just wondering what might have been the reaction of Gavaskar if Sachin had been given out wrongly in the first over as Gilly was! But it was wonderful to see Simon Taufel officiating wonderfully in the same game. His positioning of himself for a run out appeal was amazing and his judging brilliant.What a pity that India Australia test matches will never have him and will only have the likes of Steve Bucknor and Rudy Koertzen! But back to the game, while we have two fast bowlers who are bowling brilliantly in conditions that suit them much better than our dust bowls, our batting is still suspect. It was agonizing to watch the chase and Yuvaraj is going through the horrors much as Ricky Ponting is, though Ponting is facing much better bowling. Dhoni is like a rock guiding this team through thick and thin and keeping brilliantly as well, but what about the rest and when will Dinesh Kartick and Suresh Raina ever get a look in?
On to the finals
I do not have the same unreasonable optimism of Sehawag though I am quite confident that we can make it. Australia will be hard pressed to chase any total against us, the way they are batting now. Sri Lanka, however, are a very unpredictable team and must be smarting at the lack of attention their team is getting and their own indifferent start to the series. Yes we have some great contests at hand over the next few weeks and I hope that our form and fitness can once and for all rid the Australian monkey off our backs!
The highs and the lows
When Ishant Sharma got Ricky Ponting (again) our feelings were of exaltation, when India crawled in the middle our feelings were of despondency which had been preceded by overconfidence, when Sachin was batting and we thought our bonus point was assured and finally the feeling was just pure relief when Symonds bowled a wide! Beating Australia has not been easy for us, more so in important games .In 1996 we lost to Australia narrowly in a world cup match at Bombay, and if my memory serves me right the margin was one run .In 1999 Australia beat us comfortably at the Oval as we did not make it to the semi finals of the World Cup. In 2003 at South Africa we played wonderfully well till the finals where we again ran into Australia and lost by a mile. In 2007 at the West Indies we played so badly that we did not even get a chance to play Australia. Although we have won the odd Champions trophy game against Australia, last time around they won that too even as they shoved Sharad Pawar off the stage. In fact we have not won a major final or tournament against Australia recently in the one day version of the game .Our win now must and should pave the way for getting the monkey off the backs of the men in blue once and for all, as what would be better than winning the tri series final in Australia against Australia. In this tri- series we seem to have a funny situation amongst the three teams. Sri Lanka has been consistently psyched against Australia over the last several games and Australia too seems to be psyched by India to a lesser extent maybe. The match between Sri Lanka and India did not reveal too much and the one at Canberra on Tuesday could well hold the future to the finals.
Too early to celebrate
Let us not get carried away by our success though it is historic enough .Australia started badly thanks to Rudi Koertzen who if he continues the way he is presently doing should be penciled down for all India matches! Poor Gilly had a baffled look on his face as he was given out leg before after a huge inside edge. Gilly continued to have a baffled look as his confident appeal for a caught behind against Sachin was turned down. Sachin seemed bothered about that as he played distractedly after that and eventually got out. In a close match all these might have mattered but Ponting played it down in the media interaction saying it was the rub of the green something that our Indian commentators might wish to reflect on. I was just wondering what might have been the reaction of Gavaskar if Sachin had been given out wrongly in the first over as Gilly was! But it was wonderful to see Simon Taufel officiating wonderfully in the same game. His positioning of himself for a run out appeal was amazing and his judging brilliant.What a pity that India Australia test matches will never have him and will only have the likes of Steve Bucknor and Rudy Koertzen! But back to the game, while we have two fast bowlers who are bowling brilliantly in conditions that suit them much better than our dust bowls, our batting is still suspect. It was agonizing to watch the chase and Yuvaraj is going through the horrors much as Ricky Ponting is, though Ponting is facing much better bowling. Dhoni is like a rock guiding this team through thick and thin and keeping brilliantly as well, but what about the rest and when will Dinesh Kartick and Suresh Raina ever get a look in?
On to the finals
I do not have the same unreasonable optimism of Sehawag though I am quite confident that we can make it. Australia will be hard pressed to chase any total against us, the way they are batting now. Sri Lanka, however, are a very unpredictable team and must be smarting at the lack of attention their team is getting and their own indifferent start to the series. Yes we have some great contests at hand over the next few weeks and I hope that our form and fitness can once and for all rid the Australian monkey off our backs!
(The author is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of One Land, One Billion Minds.)
2 comments:
India lost by 16 runs in Bombay in 1996 but they did lose by one run in Madras in 1987 in the opening game of the Reliance World Cup.
Nice piece Sridhar. Yuvraj is a match winner - we have seen it during many matches. However he is completely out of sorts and better we rest him for few matches. It will be good to check out Raina, who is also a very good fielder.
It was great to see our opening bowlers bowling at lively pace, consistently close to 140 KmPH. They also touched 150 kmph. Later Ponting termed Ishant as 'dangerous'. We took early wickets and bundled the aussies for a low score. What was icing on the cake was we made the aussies hop like kangaroo. The bounce opened up their defenses.
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