The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Indian line-up has to have a `mental download'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 13, 2004

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Sport - Cricket

Indian line-up has to have a `mental download'

Australia was better than India in all departments in the first Test. They batted better, bowled better, fielded better and ran better between the wickets. They were also better organised and, most importantly, better prepared to win. It came as no surprise then when they did win, and win comfortably.

The worrying signs for India are that they may not get a better chance than this to beat Australia in this series. Ponting was out injured. Clarke was making his debut on a wicket on which batting for a young Australian may have been considered to be as strange to him as reading the local language newspaper. And India had Kumble and Harbhajan bowling together for the first time in a series in India, against Australia, for some time. And on a wicket that was groomed for them.

It was no fault of the Indian spin twins that India lost. They bowled beautifully in the match. It was the Indian batting that let them down this time. And, of course, the one thing that was not in the control of mere mortals was the fall of the coin. Had Ganguly won the toss the story could have been different.

Play by the sword...

Here lies the rub. If you are going to play by the sword, you are likely to die by the sword. The sort of mentality that allows you to think that you need some extra help to get the conditions perfect for your bowlers may, in the end, catch your own batsmen out.

India has been in this position before in a series at home against Australia and has got out of it. They also picked themselves off the floor after the loss in the Melbourne Test last December to outplay Australia in the Sydney Test the following week.

The comparisons between the Melbourne Test and here were similar in another way as well. In Melbourne, Ganguly and his men were distracted by the undercurrent of unrest that was eddying around the team over the proposed tour of Pakistan. The preparation for this Test was disrupted by all the histrionics surrounding the television rights and the presidential election. It is hard to imagine that some of that did not rub off on the senior players at least.

Biggest differences

The biggest differences between Sydney in January and now is that Tendulkar is missing, and likely to be so for longer than suggested, and the rest of the line-up were batting better then than they are now. Chopra, Sehwag and Laxman are all out of sorts and Yuvraj is not Tendulkar, so the batting is looking decidedly shaky.

Unless the whole Indian line-up has a mental download and gets rid of the negativity that is pervading much of what they are doing at present, the series could disintegrate quite quickly for them from here. The selectors need to consider whether this line-up is the best that they can muster at the moment and Ganguly and Wright need to pull the group together.

Gameplan

The Australian gameplan worked a treat in this Test and nothing suggests that they are going to let India off the floor this time. Thankfully the Australians returned to good, old fashioned, batting against the quality of spin that was on display here.

Gone were the speculative cross bat shots for most of them as they got back to basics and got the feet moving. It may seem risky to leave the crease to good spin bowlers but, in fact, it is often riskier not to.

Katich and Clarke, in particular, showed just how well spin can be played by either getting to the ball on the full or getting well back to make the room to cut and pull. Old fashioned maybe, but it works.

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