da pinnacle： Another abject surrender by India saw them slump to their ninthconsecutive one-day final loss at Kingsmead, Durban, on Friday
Krishnamachari Srikkanth28-Oct-2001Another abject surrender by India saw them slump to their ninthconsecutive one-day final loss at Kingsmead, Durban, on Friday. ShaunPollock’s men, in sharp contrast, were magnificent in carrying outtheir game plan on the field and they rightfully walked away withevery award on offer.
© AFPI would lay the blame for this defeat squarely on the shoulders of theIndian batsmen. The overnight rain in Durban had meant that there wasdampness in the pitch and the ball was stopping with disconcertingregularity on its way to the batsmen. I felt then that a score of 230to 240 would have proved a challenging target for the South Africans,who had decided to chase. The Indian middle-order, however, for theumpteenth time failed to rise to the occasion following the earlydismissals of Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly, and our final scoreof 183 was always going to be inadequate.The defeat has proved yet again our almost absolute reliance on Sachinand Sourav. Let me place a few facts to drive home the obvious. It wasSachin’s unbeaten 124 and Sourav’s unbeaten 63 that sealed India’slast win in a one-day final on 13 November 1998 against Zimbabwe inSharjah. India’s failure to win a one-day trophy since then has a lotto do with the fact that the two premier batsmen have managed to scoreonly a little over 350 runs among them in the last nine finals. This,incidentally, includes the ICC KnockOut final at Nairobi in October2000 when Ganguly made a brilliant hundred only to see Chris Cairnscome up with an equally superlative effort to guide New Zealand to afamous win.In all fairness to Sachin and Sourav though we cannot expect them todeliver on every occasion. The rest of the batting too has to pulltheir collective weight whenever the magnificent duo fails. The highsuccess percentage of top teams like South Africa and Australia has alot to do with the fact that their middleand late-order deliver evenwhen their openers fail. But sadly this has never been the case withIndia.
© CricInfoOn Friday, all we needed was for someone to give Rahul Dravid company.Virender Sehwag looked good while making 34 but he perished when Indiawere expecting a long innings from him. Reetinder Sodhi also showedattitude while making a gutsy 22 but the others seemed to have thrownin the towel even before they made their way out to the middle. Theirbody language showed that they had no stomach for a fight and thismeant India couldn’t even play out the allotted 50 overs.What the performance proves is that we have not yet learnt to play asa team. If you ask me, unless that happens, we cannot seize the bigmoment and make it our own. Our batsmen will also have to learn toplay international-level fast bowling. As of now, with the honourableexception of Sachin, Rahul and VVS Laxman, I don’t see any of thecurrent lot succeeding against the South African quicks in the Tests.Our willow-wielders must also master the art of running between thewickets. On Friday, almost all of our batsmen ran at a pace that wouldhave been more in keeping with an early morning jog by the beach. Theymust also learn when to run and when not to, ensuring that they avoidthe kind of dismissal that befell Javagal Srinath. Every wicket andevery run counts in the international arena and this sort of laxrunning is truly unpardonable.I have held for long that the lack of a quality all-rounder has beenanother major reason for India’s poor performance in recent times. Ifyou look back, a lot of our success in our golden era in one-daycricket, the early 1980s, was due to the fact that we had quite a fewquality all-rounders. Reetinder Singh Sodhi, who currently fills theslot, has loads of attitude but he has to improve his batting andbowling in a big way if he is to be classed in the same bracket asthose fine cricketers with whom I had the honour of playing.It might be stating the obvious again but the fielding too has toimprove by leaps and bounds (tongue-firmly-in-cheek). At Durban, wesaw Laxman dropping Kirsten when the latter was on 23 and later Kumbledropping Kallis at third man. No team can afford such mistakes even inthe normal run of play leave alone when they are defending what was atbest a modest target.The Indian skipper has said in the post-match press conference that heis still looking for solutions that would end the almost three-yearlong one-day title drought. I can only empathise with Sourav. WhatDurban has shown is that even the darkest of clouds might suddenlydisappear; Indian cricket’s worries though will not.