Monday, December 04, 2006
First Round Of Misery Over
The India-South Africa one-day series has come to an end, with a result on the expected lines. India, totally ill-prepared to handle the bounce and off-the-pitch movement that the South African pitches confronted them with, buckled under the onslaught by the Springboks. Its batsmen who failed to make the necessary but difficult adjustments to deal with the bounce perished meekly. The bowlers who were happier than their fellow batsmen, fared well except in the last match but showed that they needed much more exposure to such pitches to get anywhere near their counterparts.
Indian batting often projected a picture of haphazard planning. South African bowlers on their home pitches had to be taken much more seriously. Instead the usual take-advantage-of –the- initial-fifteen-overs strategy was attempted in a very inept way. India always started with a bundle of losses that made any realistic hopes of a competitive score impossible. And such a disastrous start also neutralized the good work done by Zaheer Khan for India. Indian batsmen’s inadequate technique against the spongy bounce-most of the sharply climbing deliveries ended up at a comfortable height when they reached Boucher- should have convinced the think tank that an early exploitation of the open country yet to be populated as a strategy was not just on. But it took three defeats and a mountain of criticism which drowned them in despair for them to implement a different approach to its innings. In the last match at Super Sports, they, inserted by the hosts on a lively track, decided to forget that the bat is given to create runs and not to block the ball with great stubbornness. But they hardly realized that success of a horse depends on the course also. How can you ever hope to open with someone like Sehwag and attempt to block your way out of trouble? Someone like Jaffer should have been there with Tendulkar to execute that idea. Laxman should have been held back at least when India lost a wicket so early as he hardly had any opportunity to have a knock up on South African soil. Sehwag and Laxman gone for peanuts meant a timid approach for such a long while which nipped India’s chances of an upset win. Gradually 150 looked good and 200 became an exotic score. But all such calculations became irrelevant when the Indian bowlers became totally ineffective for the first time in the series.
The misery continues with a narrow win against a second grade team in the Twenty-20 match as a consolation. Now they have more than ten days to prepare for the next round of struggle against the same adversaries-the South African pace and the more
spiteful adversary the pitches.
Tags: ODI series for SA
