Even in this fast and furious world of Twenty20 cricket, there are a few good men who believe in the dictum of ‘slow and steady wins the race.’ On Sunday, Daniel Vettori and Harbhajan Singh showed how intelligent spin bowling can spoil somebody’s party and bring down the biggest of assaults to their knees. And one of them also proved that it can win matches as well.Harbhajan came in the ninth over of the New Zealand innings and Vettori two overs earlier in the Indian chase. Harbhajan bowled four in a row and Vettori, as skipper, had the liberty to hold himself on for four spells of one over each. But both returned the most economical figures for their respective sides. Pity though, one of them went home empty-handed, a shade disappointed. “I have enjoyed Twenty20 so far. You do so when you win and perform well. It’s a responsibility that I enjoy and wanted. When it’s going well, you enjoy it and make the most of it. A lot of the Twenty20 game is about backing instincts and hunches and, I think, it worked particularly well today, especially with swapping myself and Jeetan Patel around, mixing it up to their (India’s) left and right hand combinations,” said Vettori in a post-match media conference. Rival skipper MS Dhoni blamed India’s 10-run defeat on his bowlers’ weakness to bowl in the death overs today. “Death bowling has been an area of concern. Both in England and here. It is very important to bowl well at the death, especially in Twenty20. If you look at New Zealand, they made almost 80 in the last five overs. It becomes very crucial,” Dhoni said after the match. Dhoni also rued losing regular wickets in the middle overs which took away the game from them despite getting a flying start.Dhoni was right, but one has to give credit to the way Vettori bowled today. He bowled many good balls, including a few unplayable ones in his 4-0-20-4, but his most classic delivery was the one that forced Robin Uthappa play back at the bowler for a return catch. It was a typical left-arm spinner’s wicket of a flighted delivery that was held back a bit. Then he got the big wicket of Gautam Gambhir in almost a similar fashion — the batsman caught in two minds and having to change his shot. The ball bounced off Gambhir’s gloves and the wicketkeeper completed the catch. Meanwhile, Harbhajan got the wicket of Peter Fulton just when he was looking to get dangerous. The off-spinner varied his flight, got the doosra going to make the sweep shot dangerous. He bowled three dot balls and anticipating a big shot from Fulton, fired one in the block hole to trap him in front. Then Brendon McCullum, who took the shine off the new ball by ramming it repeatedly through point and cover boundary, was lured into an attempted aerial shot and Gambhir took a comfortable catch at widish long on. His figures of 4-0-24-0 told the story of how Harbhajan managed the middle overs with perfection.
