Cricket India

India could not overcome the setback of the third innings of the Cape Town test. The way Indian batsmen played as if they had forgotten their brief affected the team’s confidence to such an extent that most of their plans and their execution went awry quite miserably. The fifth day was a disaster for India. First, they were simply outmaneuvered by South African captain who sent in Pollock. That was a gamble, but an astute one. That was all Smith could have done. Its effectiveness was to be decided by several factors. It clicked and India was promptly put on the defensive from which they never recovered.  

There were quite a few mistakes in India’s strategies, besides the methodology adopted by the Indian batsmen in the second innings. Of them, the first and very important error was sending Sehwag to open in the second innings. The main reason why he was retained in the team was because of his match winning capabilities, the other being lack of bench strength. Once selected, his obvious place in the batting order was way down. He came at five down and contributed handsomely. Overwhelmed by the possibilities a good Sehwag knock would provide the team with, the think tank went overboard and did the foolish thing of sending him in as an opener in the second innings. What they forgot was they themselves were worried about Sehwag’s inability to handle the new ball in the South African conditions. Inspired by his first innings effort, they should have lent substance to their experiment by sending him in three or four down ie after the ball had lost its shine and perhaps some hardness. Had they sent him then, he might have put up a cameo knock enough in size to make the Indian score significantly bigger. Moreover another very important offshoot of that move would have been an, efficient, repeat performance by Dinesh Karthik at the top which also would have helped the Indian cause. That move alone would have made South Africa’s job all the more difficult.

Next was Dravid’s reluctance to hand the ball over to Tendulkar. Let us make one thing clear. Tendulkar always is a gamble. But on this pitch he with his deep leg breaks should have been worth a try. And he proved to be a success in the first innings by removing Kallis from the crease which ultimately gave India a tidy first innings lead. When he threw the ball to Tendulkar, the test had reached a stage of a no contest. They were away from a win by just a few runs. Even then he showed enough skill to remind everybody that things could have been different had he been brought in much earlier. Sachin Tendulkar is certainly better than a partnership breaker especially on such tracks. That obviously was a folly on Dravid’s part.

But more crucial than that was Kumble’s approach to his bowling. He tried for quite some time to spin the ball from the rough and quite obvious to all that strategy failed. In fact the pitch though it favored spinners did not add spite to the line Kumble persisted with. A finger spinner as was shown by Harris was able to turn it more disconcertingly. For Kumble who has built his bowling on his subtle variations on the foundation of accuracy, the rough patches were far too wide of the stumps. Harris could pitch the ball on them and make them whiz across. So could Tendulkar. But not Kumble. But that is not my point. After trying the round the wicket –behind the batsmen line, he should have, being a vastly experienced bowler realized that the conventional over-the wicket on the stumps line was worth trying for a few overs. There were rough patches in that area also.  Kumble could have got purchase from those areas and made the batsmen’s lives miserable. Instead like a man devoid of creativity or experience, he kept plugging on, pitching far outside the leg stump with little success. The Indian captain has to explain why such a change in line was not attempted. The South Africans who gave India a New Year gift in the form of the toss should be grateful that the Indians gave it back though in a different but much more gratifying way.

# posted by Upendra Varma @ 9:03 AM