A Move Too Early

The ambience of a Mexican pub where some of us had gathered on Tuesday nightto bid a senior colleague farewell was lovely. Yet, hard as one tried to glossover gathering gloom, it has never been fun watching the Indian cricket teamlose another final.

Long before I got home, some websites provoked disappointed fans by askingthem to send hate mail to key personnel in the Indian team. While that may be anextreme reaction, it will only be fair to analyse the reasons for India's lackof success against Sri Lanka without making it sound like we are conducting apost-mortem.

My own belief is that the new coach Greg Chappell got India into anexperimental mode too soon. It did not seem to occur to him that he was takingover a team that had won but four one-day international matches againsthigher-ranked teams last season. With wins against Sri Lanka, England andPakistan (twice), India was a side that was searching for its identity. Ideally,the process of experimentation should have waited until India found itsmoorings, getting back to winning ways.

In the first match against Sri Lanka, Yuvraj Singh was pencilled in to bat atthe fall of the first wicket, ostensibly to protect him from off-spinner MuttiahMuralitharan's wiles and also to shake him out of the comfort zone that he hadgot into. The team then sent Mohammed Kaif to open the innings against the WestIndies in Dambulla.

It is clear that the team went into the tournament with the idea of playingV.V.S. Laxman or Mahendra Singh Dhoni as opener and was caught napping when theformer reported a back spasm before the first game. Apparently, Kaif was toldduring the break between innings that he would partner Sehwag at the start ofthe innings. It was some way of shaking him up too!

From the distance, it seemed as if the two young batsmen had been singled outfor being moved from the comfort zone. If one has oodles of talent, the otherraises his value to the team by backing his skills with sheer perseverance. Andwhen they did come back to the lower order, they shared a fine partnership topull India out of the woods in the final league match against the West Indies.

From another perspective, it was disappointing to see the team managementshow little faith in the all-round skills of J.P. Yadav (not played in anygame), Venugopal Rao (not bowled in either game he played) and Suresh Raina(afforded four overs in one match). It does look like that the tour selectorshave not worked in sync with the national selectors.

Dhoni's work behind the stumps has to be rated as shoddy. His primary task inthe team is to keep wickets and he cannot be dropping catches if India are toaspire to win big games. Sanath Jayasuriya is not the sort who looks to gifthorses in the mouth and he did make India pay a heavy price for Dhoni's largessewith the gloves.

Time was when India was frustrated by Parthiv Patel's inefficient methodswhen keeping wickets to the spinners but Dhoni seems to be struggling evenagainst the quicker bowlers. That cannot be good news at all.

The five-bowler policy was right, especially since Virender Sehwag wasconsistently falling short in his role as off-spinner, but then the men chosenfor the task needed to be at their best too. There was no way India was going tomake an impact when Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh went wicketless in their 20overs and conceded 104 runs between them.

Yet, after Sehwag's blitz at the start of the chase of 5.64 runs an over,Rahul Dravid and Yuvraj had set the stage well. It was up to the batsmen at thecrease to carry on the good work but both left the scene at critical stages,leaving India to flounder amidst a comic-tragic riot.

Yet, the selectors must resist the temptation to make too many changes to thesquad when they pick the team to tour Zimbabwe.