Serious work starts now: Ganguly

Despite the loss in the one-day series to West Indies, Indian skipper Saurav Ganguly thinks India’s preparations for the World Cup are ...

Written by Press Trust Of India

Mumbai | November 27, 2002 12:00 AM IST

4 min read

Despite the loss in the one-day series to West Indies, Indian skipper Saurav Ganguly thinks India’s preparations for the World Cup are on the right track and the upcoming tour of New Zealand would be the proper build-up for the big event.

“We have a balanced side and with two Test matches and seven one-dayers to follow it should be the right kind of a build-up for next year’s World Cup in South Africa,” Ganguly said last night at a function here.

Sehwag gets a pat from tendulkar

Chennai: Sachin Tendulkar today showered praise on attacking Indian opener Virender Sehwag, saying it was a treat to be on the other end of the wicket when he plays. “It is a treat to watch him. I like players who play big shots.
It is an understatement that he plays big shots. We are all proud of his ablities. The whole world has seen what he is capable of,” the batting mastero said when asked about the rise of Sehwag at the international level.
“As a team member, I appreciate him. I will be happy to watch him bat like that and it will be treat to be on the other end of the wicket,” Tendulkar, himself a master of big strokeplay, said.
“In course of time, Sehwag will be in my shoes and tell others about his feelings, as it all starts grass root level.”
Asked whether he would open with Sehwag, Tendulkar said it was not possible for him to answer since the team management decided these factors.”It is not an individual’s decision. It is going to be a team decision.” (PTI)

Asked whether the 3-4 loss to the Windies in the one-day series had hurt the team’s preparation for the World Cup, Ganguly said, “I don’t think so”.

“We are playing seven one-dayers in New Zealand and I hope we do well there so that we can be confident of good performance during World Cup”. He said the team was not concerned about the fast and bouncy tracks in South Africa since it has done well on foreign tours in the last year and a half.

“However, it is good to start as underdogs as there will be no extra pressure. We have done well in England, West Indies and Sri Lanka and how well we adapt ourselves during the World Cup will count in the end,” he said.

The Indian team leaves on December 1 for a 47-day tour of New Zealand. Coming back to the series against West Indies, Ganguly said he was satisfied with the team’s performance even though India lost the one-day series in the final match.

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“It was a very close series. I think we did pretty well to win the three-match Test series 2-0. We lost the one-dayers 3-4 as we just did not play well in the final match and also some of our players missed the one-day series due to injuries,” Ganguly said.

He said injuries continued to remain India’s biggest concern before the World Cup.

“That is a major fear for us. Our trainer Adrian le Roux has worked hard with the players and I hope we will be lucky enough to go without injuries till the end of the World Cup.”

Ganguly said the absence of left-arm seamer Zaheer Khan due to injury had affected the team’s bowling department during the series against West Indies.

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“Zaheer is a strength to our side. His spell with the new ball and also during the death overs would have saved us loss of runs and once we get together to full strength, we should be doing better,” he said.

Ganguly released miniature figurines of 11 Indian cricketers at a function organised by Colgate. Also present during the ‘collect your cricketer’ promotion campaign were vice-captain Rahul Dravid, leg-spinner Anil Kumble, Virender Sehwag, Ashish Nehra, Mohammed Kaif, Zaheer Khan, Yuvraj Singh, Ajit Agarkar and Dinesh Mongia.

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