Sourav Ganguly's suggestion for a best-of-three finals in one-day
competitions betrays the depths to which his confidence levels have
plunged. A final offers the most capable assessment of the mental
toughness of a team and how they react under pressure, because there
is no second chance. The ability to raise one's game to suit the
occasion and peak at just the right time, is an essential ingredient
of a good team. Ganguly's remarks are a telltale sign that he knows
the team is simply not good enough at the crunch. Rather then doing
his damnedest to resolve the problem, he's suggesting means to
avoid dealing with it. "We have to learn to win under pressure" he
admitted immediately after the final, but that can be done only by
playing when the pressure is the maximum, not by diffusing it across
three matches.
The defeat at the Harare Sports Club last Saturday was India's seventh
loss in a row in a tournament final. It all began with the Pepsi Cup
against Pakistan at Bangalore in April 1999. The Indian bowlers let
the game slip away in the first session by allowing Pakistan to hoist
291. Any hopes of making a match of it hinged on getting a decent
start but when the Indian top order collapsed to 63/5, there was no
escape route. Against the same opponents in the Coca-Cola Cup in
Sharjah less than two weeks later, India won a useful toss but lost
two wickets in the first over without a run on board and were rolled
over for 125 to gift the match on a platter.
In the Coca-Cola Cup in Singapore in September the same year, India
posted a challenging 254 despite losing Tendulkar for a duck in the
first over. The bowlers had West Indies on the mat at 67/4 and later
128/5 but were clueless in the face of a ferocious assault by Ricardo
Powell. Precisely one month later India entered the LG Cup final in
Nairobi having swept all their matches in the round-robin league.
After restricting South Africa to just 235, the batsmen fumbled a
great opportunity to succumb by 26 runs with two and a half overs left
unused.
The next episode in the gloomy sequence also occurred at Nairobi's
Gymkhana Club Ground in October 2000. It was the climax of the ICC
KnockOut and India were delighted to be inserted after losing the
toss. Ganguly and Tendulkar added 141 for the opening wicket but the
middle order lost its way. Still, 264 was a competitive score and when
New Zealand slumped to 132/5, the signs were propitious. A crucial
run-out miss relieved Chris Cairns who proceeded to shut India out
with a marvellously paced effort. Later in the same month, a 245-run
thumping ensued at Sri Lanka's hands in the Champions Trophy in
Sharjah, a collective abdication of duty of monstrous proportion.
Looking at the pattern, India have conceded 290 or more on three of
four occasions they've bowled first which puts the batsmen under
enormous pressure rightaway. To have a ghost of chance, the cardinal
rule is to keep wickets in hand even at the risk of falling behind the
asking rate early on. But the top order has usually tried to do too
much too soon, with negative results. This was exemplified against
a West Indies attack last week having just three specialist bowlers.
The Indians had a gilt-edged chance to step up the ante in 20
remaining overs of part time spin bowling but Sodhi and Dighe were
left high and dry and just failed to close it on their own.
Batting first, India erected the foundations of victory with 250 plus
scores two out of three times. In each instance, they quickly prised
out the opponent's upper half but threw it away in the last 25 overs
with a combination of loose bowling, lax fielding and unimaginative
captaincy. It's been suggested that one reason the Indians freeze in
live match situations is because they don't simulate situations of
comparable pressure in the nets. But more alarmingly the Indians seem
to be using defeat as a stepping stone for further defeat. Perhaps
they ought to take a leaf out of author Richard Bach: "That's what
learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose
and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that
we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious
way, is winning."