On form there is little to separate Ashish Nehra and Irfan Pathan; if anything, Pathan is a notch above Nehra, but what worked in Nehra’s favour on Saturday was his one-match experience against Pakistan at the World Cup. It must have been a tough decision to include him at Irfan’s expense; he’d just come back from injury, the fiery Barodian possessed the aggro everyone said India would need. And when Nehra came on to bowl the last over, the hosts needed nine runs off six balls. They managed just three as the Delhi bowler held his nerve and bowled out, without much fuss, the last over of an enthralling match that fully lived up to its hype. And no, there was no reference to, or thought of, Javed Miandad and Sharjah. ‘‘I don’t believe in what happened in the past. Anyway, Javed (Miandad) was not batting in the middle,’’ said a relaxed Ganguly. In the final analysis, India’s gamble paid off as Nehra raised his arms in triumph, he’d proved once again that he needs to be pushed to a corner to give of his best. And Saurav Ganguly proved that when it comes to instinct in backing a player, he has few peers in today’s cricket. ‘‘He has done the job before and he is showed that he is a very capable bowler,’’ the captain said at the end of a satisfying day. As the match progressed, though, it appeared that Ganguly’s problems with his bowlers would continue for one more day when the home team fought back brilliantly after losing two early wickets. The middle-overs was especially a problem as his opposite number and man of the match Inzamam Ul Haq played the sort of innings he’d been threatening for a while. ‘‘This was an innings only Inzy could play. He has so much more time than the others’’, said an appreciative Imran Khan. Inzamam’s could have been the defining innings in this rollercoaster match, his two crucial partnerships — with deputy Yousuf Youhana (135 off 120 balls for the third wicket) and Younis Khan (109) threatening to take the game away from India. But the match was lost in the morning itself when Inzamam’s bowlers failed to back his decision to bowl first. The opening bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Sami — around whom much of the pre-series hype was created — were disappointing and indisciplined. Even after the loss, Inzamam was adamant that he was right and said his ‘‘bowlers did not exploit the freshness of the wicket.’’ So bad was the start, that Indian openers Sachin and Sehwag did not have much to do as they just helped the ball along. Sehwag, in particular, should be kicking himself for getting out when a century was his for taking. Indeed, the Indian batting on the whole should have scored another 30-40 runs, given that they’d reached 164/1 in just 17 overs. Vice-captain Rahul Dravid struggled initially but gathered momentum in the slog. In fact this is the new Dravid who doesn’t mind being aggressive and stepped up the scoring just when it seemed India would fall below the 300 mark. With senior batsman VVS Laxman missing out due to a strained left knee at practice late in the evening, Dravid’s controlled innings did the trick for the visitors. But there is just yet no one who is exulting or getting disappointed at the result and the common message from both camps is this is ‘‘just the first match of the series’’.
