India v England, Match 1
Saturday, January 19, 2002

Sourav Ganguly and John Wright will be ecstatic to have won this match, but they won it in spite of the team they chose. This was a fine pitch, nice and dry, and Ganguly made a good decision to bat first, but he really should not have entered the game with just the four bowlers. India really struggled to find a fifth bowler, and that very nearly lost them the game.

Kumble and Harbhajan have not been consistent of late, and I would have liked to have seen Zaheer Khan playing. He bowls a nice full length, which is just what is needed at the end of an innings when batsmen are looking for runs, and he is always likely to pick up wickets. Harbhajan, in particular, was poor in the recent Challenger series.

India went into the match with six batsmen, which encouraged a carefree approach to the innings - there was always someone else to do the job. I would have gone in with just the five batsmen, a keeper and five bowlers. At least Ajay Ratra played, who is a better bet than Deep Dasgupta. He is always quick off the blocks around the wicket and is likely to pick up the odd run out.

Nasser Hussain missed a trick by not attacking Ganguly enough with the new ball. There wasn't a lot in the pitch for Gough and Hoggard, but they weren't fired up enough either. Last year the Australians played it to perfection against Ganguly. He is easily intimidated, and he'll feel he got off the hook today.

Fortunately for England, Ganguly and Tendulkar didn't go on from the start they got, and so a lot of credit has to go to Mongia and Badani for the way they held together the middle order. There is a lot of inexperience and uncertainty about India's tail, and at one stage 280 didn't look remotely possible. India were helped when the dew started to appear as the floodlights came on. It has always been prominent at Calcutta, but tonight you could almost see it settling in a haze. The ball started to slip, England started to slip as well, and for the first time in the innings it began to come on nicely for the Indian batsmen.

The dew helped England out as well, as India's fielders found it hard to grip the ball. But England had two crucial factors against them today, the most important being the umpiring. SK Sharma had a very poor night indeed - that lbw decision was dreadful and he had some bad calls with no-balls and sixes that were fours as well. Umpires, just as players, must be judged by their performance at the highest level, and Mr Sharma should not officiate in an international again.

The uniqueness of Eden Gardens played a huge part as well. The atmosphere is amazing, with such enormous, passionate crowds. Apart from Trescothick, who played a fantastic, almost risk-free innings, none of England's batsmen got to grips with it. If a couple more players could have settled like he did, then England would have cruised.

Sanjay Manjrekar, mainstay of the Indian batting in the late '80s and early '90s, was talking to Andrew Miller.

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