'Chasing A Dream, One Needs To Be Bold'

The debate whether India should have asked Australia to follow-on will linger.

Fourth afternoon of the match, India had a chance to give Australia nearly five sessions to bat out the match. They chose not to do it. Were they defensive? Did they fear they would not be able to counter anytarget Australia might ask them to chase on the final day? Did they lose faith in the batsmen who had served so wonderfullyin the series? Did they forget the maxim in order to win you should be prepared to lose?

There are no easy answers.

I can see for and against point of views. India might have been struggling with freshbowlers. Anil Kumble had bowled a lot many overs in the match and must have been tired. Australia could have quickly got abouttheir second innings and set up the game.

May be any hard-nosed captain would have done what Saurav Ganguly chose to do on the fourth day. But when you arechasing a dream, you need to be bold. The history of over half a century waited to be revised.

Sachin Tendulkar gave a hard-nosed performance of a modern icon. There was an inevitability about his success inthis game. We knew it was coming. He failed in the first three Tests and he was not going to add another one to that list.

To me this innings could be the defining moment of the rest of Tendulkar's career. The bowlers have been warned the littlemaster is willing to play within his limitations.

In the past, he has been exuberant and victim of his own eagerness. Now he is willing to harness strike, bide his timeand play only when the possibility of dismissal has been eliminated. He is set to conquer new peaks.

Kumble to me was the key man. He has proven wrong a lot of detractors, those who believed he was no force on foreignsoil. His confidence was amazing and his intensity immense. He is a born-again bowler and given himself a new lease of life.

He now has good years ahead as a spin bowler. He has done it on wickets which were true and against aline-up which can reduce a bowler to nervous wreck with their attacking brand of batting. He has been derided as a badwicket bowler. But not here in Australia this time.

The conditions were awesome for batting. Yet he took 24 wickets, most of them top order. He relied on variations ofpace and bounce and his leg-spinners and wrong 'uns worked as well. With Kumble's revival, India's bowling can only look upin coming years.

Zaheer Khan can be a force once he is fit. Irfan Pathan showed he has a fantastic future. He was outstanding for a19-year-old. He took three big wickets in the match.

Left-arm spinner Murali Kartik could not find his bearing but these are tough, unforgiving conditions. The Australianbatsmen, once they know there is little turn from a bowler, like to really turn on the heat.

Have the Australians declined? Well we have been hearing this talk for a while now. There have been people who arewilling it to happen. But it is actually an over-reaching opinion held by some.

Glenn McGrath was missed in the series and at various times, Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie too played a staggeredpart. But there is some good young talent in Australia and McGrath and Shane Warne are going to be back in near future.They would kick on and the team should not find it difficult to maintain their reputation.

I am also not worried on Lee. It is just a patch in his career where things have gone astray. He is a class performer.He is fantastic and a strike weapon. He just has had two bad games but he is coming back from injury. He would be requiredto serve Australian cricket, that's for sure.

Our fielding in this series was not up to our high standards. It is one of those areas where we didn't do well.

In the past, we did those little things really good which put together made a huge difference tothe team's results. But this was one series when little things did not go our way. 

We certainly though are suffering in the slip cordon in the absence of Mark Waugh andWarne. Matthew Hayden is not in the same league yet. This is a critical area forAustralians' success and must come right. But comments on our decline are premature.

And then there was the final day. Completely enthralling as Australia seemed to go for a total which has not beensupported by history or evidence and then all those emotions which got built up aroundSteve Waugh, doing his last hard stand in the middle.

He was hitting through the gaps and sweep-slogging effectively. When he and Adam Gilchrist got out, there was abit of a stir. But it was draw alright and then the fitting farewell to one of the legends of the game.

PTI