Australians add insult to India's injuries
Uncharitably, it could be said that India's cricketers came to and saw Australia but abjectly failed to conquer in this 1999/2000 season. And at its very end (today's last preliminary round match of the Carlton and United Series resulting in a loss to the home team by four wickets and with three balls to spare at the WACA ground in Perth), there came no revision to that narrative; the Indians' misery compounded by another unsuccessful effort.
Injury problems compelled the tourists to effect wholesale changes to their line up today - Sourav Ganguly (knee), Anil Kumble (thigh) and Jacob Martin (knee) replaced by batsmen VVS Laxman, Hrishikesh Kanitkar and Devang Gandhi. But even such fundamental alterations to the configuration of their team failed to initiate a corresponding reversal of fortune on the heels of their six previous losses in the tournament.
After they had won the toss and elected to bat in suffocatingly hot conditions, the Indians began the game by illustrating the sort of due care and restraint that might have been more applicable to a Test match, labouring for seventeen balls over their first run. Against an attack which exhibited exactly the same sense of rhythm and ruthless control which it has applied against them all summer, the Indians illustrated serious frailties outside the line of off stump and played and missed repeatedly. That they surrendered the wickets of Sachin Tendulkar (3) and Laxman (3) inside the first ten overs only underlined the general inadequacy of their beginning.
It did seem, for once, that their middle order's repeated inability to conceive a meaningful performance was on the point of solution when a stern association for the third wicket between Rahul Dravid (65) and Kanitkar (30) reached the mark of eighty-one runs. But a lapse of concentration from the latter (allied to a brilliant catch from Ricky Ponting in running forward and diving full stretch along the ground at cover) in the twenty-fourth over duly ensured a swift return to normality.
While Dravid bravely forged an innings in which he played a number of outstanding strokes and was particularly strong square of the wicket, and the likes of Robin Singh (45), Sameer Dighe (36*) offered admirable support, it was indeed never a wholly convincing effort. As it has done in so many matches on this tour, the unproductive nature of their start cost them dearly; a full and complete recovery from a score of 2/11 in the ninth over never a realistic outcome. But the work of Singh and Dighe in adding seventy-three together in a mere sixty balls did nevertheless give enough late impetus to the innings to afford their team some hope of securing the consolation two points.
The Australians themselves were not at their sharpest through the morning either; profligate bowling from Shane Lee (1/38 off eight overs) and a rusty Shane Warne (1/57 off nine) in particular allowing Dravid to get himself started and the Indians' collective confidence to rise significantly as a result. They also committed several errors in the field; the concession of numerous overthrows highlighted by an act of near comedy in the forty-fifth over, when each of two fielders completely over shot the stumps at respective ends to allow two easy extra runs. Notwithstanding the fact that the heat was clearly a mitigating factor, it was also strange that they did not receive some form of penalty for completing their overs some twelve minutes after the scheduled finishing time.
When the action resumed after the much shortened change of innings break, the visitors' bowlers then added to their team's sense of malaise by failing to heed the lesson delivered to them by Pakistan on Friday - namely, that the secret of success on the WACA is to pitch the ball up and not to drop short. Accordingly, Mark Waugh (40) and Ponting (33) set the Australian response off to a rollicking start. The score reached the mark of 2/136 by the end of thirty overs and the match was as good as won by that point. And, although Sunil Joshi (2/33 off ten overs) and Robin Singh (2/37 off ten) prompted a late collapse which rendered the victory margin much narrower than originally anticipated, that start and an innings of uncharacteristic aggression from Michael Bevan (71) was indeed satisfactory enough to ensure that the locals ended the preliminary round with as many wins as their opponents did losses.
Around a thirty-four minute delay generated in mid-afternoon by the assembly of a series of thick storm clouds, Bevan played some tremendous strokes - a sweep at Joshi in the thirty-first; a pull at Javagal Srinath in the thirty-fourth; a square drive at the same bowler in the thirty-sixth; and a scorching off drive at Venkatesh Prasad in the thirty-eighth, all eminently capable of earning the description of delightful. It was a measure of how well he had played that his team's effort careered off the rails once he was brilliantly caught by Tendulkar at mid wicket in the forty-third over; some late heroics from Warne (16* off 11 deliveries) ultimately needed to repair the damage.
At the end of this match, at least two inescapable realities loom large. The first is that this Australian side is a superb unit. Furthermore, even in spite the suspicion that potential chinks in its armour might be revealed if ever it is to be subjected to the sort of competitive pressure which has been sadly lacking this summer, it will deservedly enter the Finals of this competition (which commence against Pakistan in three days' time) a raging hot favourite.
The other reality of course is that the Indians have consistently looked completely out of place in international company on this tour. It is possible to excuse them to some extent on the basis that only two of them had ever visited Australia before - and that this is never the easiest country for players familiar with less bouncy pitches on which to play - but theirs was a truly unedifying and unsatisfactory performance throughout.
