India’s embarrassing capitulation to the South African pace attack does bring into question if the one-day series is going to be totally one-sided. Yes, the Indians are slow starters and do pick up after a few games, but it may well be too late by then, at least as far as the one-day series is concerned. More than the defeat, it was the complete lack of resistance that was disappointing, and apart from Tendulkar and Dravid, all the other batsmen looked completely out of their depth. The Indians have gone on record that they should have had more preparation for this tour, and so should have had a few more warm-up games. But why was it not done? Is there a lack of communication between the team, management and the officials of the BCCI? There’s no doubt that the BCCI has gone out of its way to concede to almost every wish of the team coach, and perhaps the officials were never asked if the team could go early as well and have a few extra practice games. There was no camp before the team left, which is what happened when the team left for the West Indies, and where too, they lost the one-day series, and while camps by themselves are not the answer since the pitches will be totally different than the ones at home, it’s the fact that the players start thinking about the game than other things that can help at these camps. They don’t have to be physical conditioning camps, because in the middle of the season, you need less of that than practicing and honing cricketing skills, but surely the team getting together barely hours before they leave for an important overseas tour is not the ideal way to prepare for the tour.
There was a silver lining of sorts in the return to form of Zaheer Khan, who was making a comeback to the Indian team and even when he was brought back for another spell, he was quickly into his stride and not stiff as he was prone to be in the past. He has certainly worked hard on his fitness and while it may be too late to add the incoming ball to his repertoire, he will be a more lethal bowler if he even manages to straighten it more often as he did to get Bosman out LBW. The dropping of Pathan makes little sense, especially on pitches where the seam bowlers are always going to get some more assistance than in India. What is the point in playing a batsman at No. 7 when Irfan Pathan can do the same job at the same number or above and get more runs? He had batted well in the warm-up game and so was confident. Dropping him was no way to help that confidence.
Tendulkar’s spell in the middle overs was a great help in putting pressure on the South Africans and he made up for Harbhajan’s expensiveness. Here again, it makes little sense to take such an experienced player like Anil Kumble and keep him in the reserves, but with the team management playing its cards close to their chest, it’s hard to know what the action plan is, if indeed there’s one in place.
There are few batting options too, since the replacement for Yuvraj Singh is Dinesh Kartick and he won’t seriously come into the equation unless there’s an injury to Dhoni, so in effect India may have come with a squad of 16, but are one short.
These are early days admittedly, but even then there was hopelessness to the team’s body language that doesn’t bode well for the future. Hope I am proved wrong.
