Brought to earth with a bang
If India are to seriously build they have to put the win in the World Twenty20, and the attendant clamour over youth, in perspective
11-Oct-2007
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Someone once said that if hangovers preceded the act of drinking, far less
people would drink to excess. Similarly, had India known the pain likely to follow in one-day cricket against a team like Australia,
they might not have been so euphoric over their success in the ICC World
Twenty20. After five one-dayers in varied conditions and different
climates, on myriad surfaces, the Indian team has been brought rudely back
to terra firma, most clinically and emphatically in the fifth one-dayer in
Vadodara.
While you can hardly expect any team to steamroll the
Australians, a team with a batting line-up like India's should not
fall so flat on their faces, especially on a surface that turned
square and should have suited their bowlers more than the opposition's.
Even given that the Indians were unlucky to lose Sourav Ganguly to a
run out early on, and Yuvraj Singh to an inside edge that was well caught,
and Dhoni to a flick down the leg side, there was no justifying the first
nine wickets managing only 107 between them before being saved from
absolute embarrassment by a 41-run last-wicket stand.
The easy thing to do would be to pan the Indian team, but that would be
futile. Ganguly fell early, and Rahul Dravid - who now has 44 runs from
five knocks in this series - was out first ball to a peach from Brett Lee. Had it
not been for Sachin Tendulkar batting ominously well in his 400th outing,
Australia's rout would have been even more complete. This only underscores
how much this team still depends on at least two of these three to fire if
they are to succeed, especially in big matches, against tough opposition.
Sure, India went all the way in the World Twenty20 without its
illustrious trio, but the celebrations that followed, with phrases like
"fearlessness of youth" and "great spirit in the dressing room" being
dished out with greater regularity than the cash awards that politicians
within and outside the Indian board offered, revealed the possibility that India
might have lost touch with reality. The likes of Robin Uthappa, Gautam
Gambhir and Rohit Sharma put in sterling performances but you need more
than cameos in 50-over cricket.
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That's where the class of someone like a Tendulkar comes to play. Even in
Chandigarh, when he was struggling to hit the ball as well he could,
he ensured he put the highest possible price on his wicket,
and 79 runs materialised from somewhere. More importantly, in starting the
way he did, with Ganguly, the innings had backbone, a solid structure
around which other freer spirits with lighter hearts could express
themselves. On Thursday, once that safety net was gone, with Ganguly and Dravid both
out for ducks, it was left to Tendulkar to plough a lone furrow, and it was
never going to be enough.
The one person whose role is most critical in Indian cricket's
ever-changing scenario is Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Batting where he does,
sandwiched between the bankable seniors and the booming juniors, he has to
be the glue that binds the innings, in the literal sense. He should be
able to build an innings, beginning solidly and ending explosively. But,
equally important, as captain of the team and the strongest link between
the side that played such inspired cricket to win the World Twenty20
and the one that has hit an abrupt low in the ODIs against Australia, he has to
ensure that good sense prevails.
Fortunately for Dhoni the selectors - some of whom are not averse to
making public statements that put their own players under pressure - have
resisted the temptation to ring in sweeping changes. But that's just for
now. Pakistan will be no pushovers, and then India travel to Australia for the toughest of all assignments. And, while Australia brush off their Twenty20 loss, almost
pretending it never happened, you can be sure they'll be reviving memories of this series when India land on their shores in December.
If India are to seriously build, and play with purpose over the next few
months, they have to put the win in the World Twenty20, and the
attendant clamour over youth, in perspective. Otherwise, more such rude
shocks are in the pipeline.
Anand Vasu is an associate editor on Cricinfo