India now are a top one-day team
It was such a crying shame that the rain robbed India of a great chance to win the ICC Champions Trophy
EAS Prasanna
03-Oct-2002
It was such a crying shame that the rain robbed India of a great
chance to win the ICC Champions Trophy. With the rub of the green on
their side, I am certain that the Indians, who had put on a string of
commanding performances with the bat and ball during the course of the
tournament, had a good chance of emerging victorious if either the
final or the replay had gone the full distance.
© Reuters |
I felt the pitches that had been laid out for the semi-final against
Australia and for the final were nowhere near ideal for one-day
cricket. Spinners do not need such dust bowls to be champions. With a
capacity crowd watching the game, a true wicket was what was required
as this would have helped both the batsmen and the bowlers and made
the game an engaging spectacle.
I thought the Indian bowlers bowled well in restricting Sri Lankan
batsmen to a score below 250 in both the matches. Zaheer Khan, who was
the standout bowler as far as India were concerned, bowled a couple of
great opening spells and his dramatic first-ball dismissal of
Jayasuriya on Monday was one of the moments of the final. The left-arm
quick has turned out to be a revelation and the way he performed was
indeed most heartening.
Javagal Srinath being rushed in from England to partner Zaheer in the
final was meanwhile an unnecessary step. It was never going to be easy for him to fly into a hot and humid Colombo and get acclimatised for the final in the space of a few hours. I thought that the Indians would have been much better off playing Anil Kumble instead. True, the team management admitted their error and brought in the experienced leggie for the second game but then again how many times does a team get a second chance?
Though Srinath has stated that he wants to play one-dayers until the
end of the World Cup next year, I think the the experienced bowler now
has to prove that he can compete with the young fast bowlers in the
country. It certainly will be a difficult situation for the selectors
when Nehra becomes fit to play again.
As for the spinners, both Kumble and Harbhajan bowled well in the
finals. It was heartening to see Harbhajan giving the ball a lot more
air and trying to turn the ball. This is something he has to do
consistently on any type of pitch. Harbhajan is undeniably our main
strike bowler, and I am sure by the time the West Indian team leaves India, he would have picked a bagful of wickets.
Another man who bowled impressively was Virender Sehwag. His
disciplined bowling and explosive batting made him the player of the
tournament.
I must say that it was certainly a remarkable performance by the
Indian team, who it must be remembered confirmed participation only
after a last-minute resolution of the contracts row. It was
encouraging to see the likes of Sehwag, Mohammad Kaif and Yuvraj Singh
delivering under pressure. This shall now help the experienced players
like Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid to play with much more
freedom.
© CricInfo |
Ganguly and coach John Wright should also focus on the fielding. Even
the spectacular efforts of youngsters like Yuvraj and Kaif cannot
gloss over the fact that we remain a poor fielding side. The team
certainly cannot afford to drop sitters like those dropped by Sachin
Tendulkar on Sunday. This might have a lot to with a sense of overconfidence creeping in after a string of great performances.
To nip this bad habit in the bud, the current team only needs to go back to the Indian teams that had won the World Cup in 1983 and the Benson & Hedges World
Championship in 1985. Both of them had to pay a heavy price for turning over-confident as the drubbing at the hands of the West Indies at home in '83 and the
unsuccessful World Cup '87 campaign testify.
All said, let me congratulate them once again for their success in England and now in Sri Lanka. They now are the favourites to demolish a West Indian team sans Lara. And as far as one-day cricket goes, they are not anymore the under-dogs but front-runners for winning the World Cup in 2003.