Cricket: From the Far End

Chappell should have waited four - or at least two - more matches before reminding Lara & Co that they had forgotten how to win. That remark had really made me wonder how Lara would respond (http://www.indospectrum.com/cricket/blog/?p=19), and Lara has now confirmed that that remark fired them up (http://ia.rediff.com/cricket/2006/may/27lara.htm). People who talked too much before a series have been made to regret their words before and Chappell surely would know this.

It is hard to dissect this performance. The good old story of tigers at home? You could call that if all the earlier victories this season were achieved at home. But these guys won in Pakistan and Indian teams in the past (except 2004) gave an impression that they could win everywhere but in Pakistan. So how different is this team from any other Indian team that lost the moment they had to play in unfamiliar conditions? Hard to say before the test series. Unfortunately many of these players will not be there for the tests and their next assignments are again in the subcontinent. May be that tri-series in Sri Lanka (isn’t there one? it seems those are everywhere this year) or the series later in South Africa will really tell us whether this team is really any different, or it just won better in familiar conditions than any other team before it.

But all the talk about 35 years without a series win has been about the test series - India had anyway won the ODI series the last time in WI - and that will be the real test for Chappell and Dravid to show whether this team and team management is different from those in the past.  

Strong comments made at the start of a series are dangerous, Chappell probably has realized by now (see earlier blog posts just before this one). From being strong favorites, India now are under pressure to win both the remaining games to win the series. This time it was the middle order who failed, which can be a one-off thing. It’s difficult to write-off their earlier success as something they did on home pitches mainly because they had repeated that in Pakistan under pressure. So this middle order has passed the pressure test in Pakistan already. Now this is surely not beyond them.

I haven’t seen any of the matches yet but from the scorecards and reports it looks like West Indies is using Sri Lankan tactics of slow bowling that doesn’t let you get away scoring fast. So what Lara is using is sort of opposite of Lloyd’s strategy - a battery of slow bowlers. It will be interesting to see what Dravid does to overcome this. Finally Sehwag played some real good innings. Hope that is the return to form and not just one flash.  

“West Indies have forgotten how to win” Chappell said after the first match. Can Lara & co make this comment sound like what Nasser Hussain said (see point 11 in http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/wisdencricketer/content/story/138835.html) before the 2003 series against RSA? Or it will turn out that the first game was the closest the West Indies could ever go to beating India in this series? The first glimpse will be tomorrow.

Dravid and a few other Indian players were seen playing in water in photo that will surely be completely misunderstood in USA! See it http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/ci/content/image/247907.html