BackIndia’s dismal show in South Africa raises pertinent questions
If this is how the Indian cricket team plays with bowling and fielding restrictions on, what will it do in the Test matches?
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The Indian cricket team must be thanking its stars that the state elections have been on while it’s been floundering around pathetically in South Africa. So the media hasn’t had the time and space to tear into them with all their claws and fangs. Two of the three slated one-dayers are over, and India has lost both comprehensively. They have been clobbered with the bat and intimidated by the ball. The debacle has been total.
Sure, the Indian team had no time to acclimatize, playing their first match barely 48 hours after they landed on South African shores. Yes, the Wanderers at Johannesburg had a fast bouncy pitch, unlike the flat batsmen’s paradises of the sub-continent where a score of 300 is no longer even a faint assurance of victory. But remember that all of India’s batsmen, other than Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Virat Kohli, visited the country just a few months ago as part for the India A team, so it’s not like they have been teleported from the Starship Enterprise onto some unknown planet.
Opener Rohit Sharma not being able to touch a single delivery from Dale Steyn’s first two overs was, well, let’s just say a sight to watch. Six of these deliveries he let go to the wicketkeeper, the other six he missed. Actually, it was good that he missed, since if he had managed to touch bat to ball on any of those, he would have surely have been caught behind the stumps. It was aggressive fast bowling at its most competent and beautiful: the ball curving in slightly to pitch on the middle and off, and then swinging majestically away from the batsman, at between waist and shoulder height. Sharma looked like a student who’d suddenly found himself in the wrong examination hall. The questions being asked were all Greek to him.
Before India began the tour, its bowling line-up was supposed to be its weak link. But the two matches played till now have exposed the batting top order rather ruthlessly. It is time to give a gracious farewell to Yuvraj Singh. He has contributed much to Indian cricket, his courage and spirit will remain inspirational, and we would possibly not have won the World Cup in 2011 had it not been for him. But that was two years ago, and there comes a point in every man’s life when you have to let him go.
It’s also high time someone sat down Suresh Raina and asked him if he’s ever going to score higher than 36, which is what he got in the second one-dayer at Durban. This man has a career average of 35.5 and has got beyond this magic 36 barrier only thrice in the last 26 matches he has played. What is it about this number?
Which brings us to the terrible burden that Dhoni carries. He is undoubtedly the best finisher of the game of his generation, and perhaps of all generations, but a finisher needs something to finish. When Dhoni is forced to come in to bat in the 9th over, with the scoreboard reading 34 for 4, he would have to be a combination of Don Bradman and Chulbul Pandey to be able to do anything about the matter at hand. In the first match, the Indian top order was skittled out by brilliant bowling aided by the pitch. In the second match, the pitch was sedate, so the Indians decided to play rash shots and hurry back to the pavilion. In both cases, there was Dhoni, left high and dry, expected to now do something out of Marvel comics. One can imagine how furious he must be feeling right now, and it is a well-deserved fury.
It may not be entirely heartless to ask whether the Indians have already lost the series in their minds.
Television experts have started hinting at this, but I would think that men like Shikhar Dhawan, Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja, R. Ashwin and Dhoni have a resilience that’s quite extraordinary. The way Dhawan and Jadeja play indicates a cheerful ability to live in the present and not dwell on the past. Kohli, on the other hand, takes defeats and failures personally, and becomes even more fiercely resolved to do nasty things to the opposition. Ashwin exhibits the remarkable grace under pressure that was the hallmark of Anil Kumble (I am not comparing their talents, only talking about their attitude). And Dhoni has seen it all. Yes, I’ve been hearing friends say: If this is how they play with bowling and fielding restrictions on, what’ll they do in the Test matches? That’s surely a very worrying concern, and a definitely valid question.
But I haven’t lost hope yet.
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