So near yet so far for Yuvraj and India

“Yuvraj has taken his batting to another level. It’s just a pity that he couldn’t finish it off. He deserved to finish it off.”

Two balls, two runs and one wicket to go, captain Brian Lara and Chris Gayle walked up to young West Indian pace bowler Dwayne Bravo. Yuvraj Singh had just smashed two fours, the weekend crowd was roaring and Gayle had an idea.

“At that point, I must say that I was looking for a tie,” said Lara. “I was thinking that if Yuvraj gets a single I am going to put pressure on Munaf Patel. But Bravo, Chris Gayle, we all got together and Gayle told us that a slower ball might be able to do it.” Well, it did and India’s incredible string of 17 one-day chases was broken.

For the West Indians, it was really their first big one-day win after the Champions Trophy final of 2004 — they even went on a victory lap — and for Team India it was a valuable wake-up call with the series 1-1, three matches to go and St Kitts coming up on May 23.

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“It was a gettable target. It’s just that we didn’t play very many good shots in the middle of the innings,” said Dravid. “We lost wickets early, then we set up a bit of a partnership in the middle and lost three or four wickets again. It sort of stopped and stuttered a bit.”

For once, the Indian batting never really got going on a pitch that got slower as the sun crossed over the Sabina Park. At least six batsmen fell to false shots, though the pitch had nothing to do with Kaif’s decision to pull a ball from outside off and Suresh Raina’s thoughtless loft to Shivnarine Chanderpaul at long-on almost immediately after keeper Carlton Baugh had muffed a stumping off Gayle.

Except for Yuvraj’s 64 run tie-up with Raina and a 43-run partnership with the gutsy Ramesh Powar, the team didn’t have much to bank on. “The shot selection was bad,” admitted Dravid. “Perhaps, there was no need to hit so many shots in the air at that stage. We played a lot of wrong shots. It would have been better today if they had played more along the ground.”

The standout moment, of course, was Yuvraj’s 93 (122 balls, 8 fours, 1 six) which saved the side from an embarrassing rout till that Bravo ball sneaked past the bat on to the stumps and brought the left-hander down to his knees in despair.

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“One of the finest innings I have seen from him, chasing a target under pressure,” said Dravid. “He has taken his batting to another level. It’s just a pity that he couldn’t finish it off. He deserved to finish it off.”

For the West Indies, it was “a very, very important win”, fashioned by one of the most stylish batsmen in the team — Ramnaresh Sarwan, with the other 90 of the match (98 off 138 balls, 7 fours, 1 six). With Ajit Agarkar bowling brilliantly early on and Powar chipping in brilliantly on his 28th birthday with 2 for 38 from his 10 overs, at 43/4, Sarwan was “telling myself that I need to bat through the 50 overs”.

Known to be a compulsive hooker of the ball, the 25-year-old from Guyana buckled down to the repair job in the beginning, freeing his arms only in the final overs.

As Lara put it, “It was an extraordinary innings, seeing wickets falling at one end and holding his head.” (See Reuters picture on the right).

ajay.s.shankar@expressindia.com