Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Over the last 10 days, India, West Indies and Australia have seen the Kinrara Oval as a lab for experiments of the cricketing kind. As India failed to win their 8216;must win8217; game against Australia, skipper Rahul Dravid8217;s face said that the results were not quite encouraging. And as West Indies and Australia clash in Sunday8217;s final, all the chopping and changing seems to have put those two in shape for the Champions Trophy.
With their 195 all out today, chasing Australia8217;s modest score of 213, added to a scoring sequence of 35/5 and 162 in the earlier two games, batting is one area where India seem unsure. With India8217;s top two batsmen 8212; Virender Sehwag and Dravid 8212; not among runs and not sure of their positions in the line-up, the Malaysian experiment has made the top order debate more complicated.
Skipper Dravid summed up the batting collapse as he called the 18-run loss a 8220;hard one to stomach8217;8217; and something that hurt. Asked if the youngsters in the batting line-up had not delivered, Dravid didn8217;t get into a blame game. 8220;It8217;s important for all of us to be counted, consistently. It includes me, I haven8217;t had a very good tournament and I should be the first one to put my hand up and say I should8217;ve done a lot better,8217;8217; he said.
The few plusses that India got from the tournament was Dinesh Mongia as an option in the middle and as Dravid said, 8220;bowling and fielding.8217;8217; Munaf Patel and Harbhajan Singh head home as Indian bowling mainstays with an exemplary average of less than four and about 2 wickets per game. And Suresh Raina8217;s spectacular catch to dismiss Simon Katich, plus the three runouts prove that the ground fielding was okay, too. But the basic rule of cricket says that the team that scores more wins; there8217;s also that often repeated statement of the game being dominated by batsmen. India were found lacking in this important aspect of the game.
In contrast, the Aussies were on a high as they survived the tournament despite the experiments. And skipper Ponting sounded very confident about the final. 8220;We picked only four teams before we came here, we didn8217;t pick one for the final. Tonight we8217;ll talk about what we want to do. I think whatever team we put on the park will be very competitive,8217;8217; he said.
Lee lethal, McGrath consistent, Hayden in-form, Clarke returning to form, Hogg on the spot, Symonds striking at the right time, Haddin worthy enough to replace Gilchrist and Hussey a worthy captain in waiting.
After spoiling India8217;s experiments, it seems the test tubes and burettes in the West Indies lab are under threat, too. Maybe, it is a nice idea to have the Aussies as guinea pigs this time.
