Tags:
Journalism of Courage
With the team still warm from the afterglow of Tuesday8217;s massive win, the talk here on the eve of the second India-Sri Lanka encounter was all about experimentation. Rahul Dravid would prefer to call it 8216;8216;well thought-out strategy8217;8217; but the net result is the same: Anything the team did today was subjected to a thousand different interpretations.
As if they weren8217;t under the microscope already!
There was enough for the rumour mills to work over today, from Harbhajan Singh padding up first at the nets along with JP Yadav to Gautam Gambhir turning his arm over to bowl a few leg-breaks. Each raised the big question, What8217;s next on the menu?
Dravid explained Gambhir8217;s actions, saying he8217;d been drafted into the final 13 8212; which saw RP Singh and Suresh Raina excluded. That itself was open to many conclusions: Would Gambhir, a specialist opener, open? And if yes, with whom? Or was he a red herring?
The captain said the team composition and the 8216;surprise factor8217; would be decided just before the match.
This is, in a way, an extension of Ganguly8217;s habit of keeping his cards close to his chest 8212; but with one difference: Dravid seems to have shown his hand to his teammates. The team itself seemed relatively unaffected by the speculation, going about their tasks with the buoyancy of a side that has done will in its most recent outing.
Yuvraj, here on his home ground, knocked a few balls around with Greg Chappell, trying to get his feet moving against the spinners. 8216;8216;You must reach the pitch of the ball so that it doesn8217;t go in the air while you play your shot8217;8217;, Chappell advised the flamboyant middle-order bat.
Tendulkar appeared rejuvenated, 32 going on 22, his form and experience having a ripple effect on his captain and coach. The spotlight has moved on to others; maybe its Yuvraj8217;s turn to get cracking or, as Dravid believes, 8216;8216;time for Sehwag to deliver a big one8217;8217;.
There are plenty of options when the confidence is high and the runs are flowing. Jaded, predictable and despondent just five weeks ago, this has been an almost-miraculous makeover.
Yet this team knows, as well as any other, that it is only as good as its last performance. And that all it needs is for Sri Lanka to find its own form for the game to turn.
