India succumb to Magnificent McGrath

Arjun Raja is a NRIOL featured sports columnist. To read about Arjun Raja, please Know more.

An absolutely top draw bowling effort from Glen McGrath saw him break the backbone of India's batting and set up a famous Aussie win at the Oval on Friday.

How often do you see a side with two middle order batsmen scoring 100 n.o. and 75 end up on the losing side? But this is exactly what happened to India in their first match in the Super Sixes against Australia - a side against which India backed itself to win, especially as they had won the last three matches against them. And a certain Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar had blasted scores of 143,139 and 146 in those matches.

A totally different script was written this time, and the writer was an Australian. How else can you explain a batting side being hailed as the best in the tournament (and the record proves it as well with 5 hundreds so far) finding themselves tottering at 17 for 4 in 6.2 overs? The same side had blasted 373 against Sri Lanka only a week ago.

But that is what makes cricket such a fantastic game. Glen McGrath bowled three unplayable balls as India started chasing Australia's 282, lesser batsman would have missed the first two of them but Tendulkar and Dravid were good enough to get the edge to keeper Gilchrist and India quickly found themselves 10 for 2. A couple of overs later skipper Azharuddin got another beauty which climbed to his throat while seaming away. Azhar played a horrible looking shot- he looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car and the ball lobbed to Steve Waugh in the gully -17 for 4.

Prior to his dismissal, Saurav Ganguly had played on to Fleming to... leave India struggling. But Azhar's wicket was the final blow and the rest of the batting was left with the difficult task of reaching a respectable score, not only to save some pride but to maintain a healthy net run rate which could prove crucial at the time of deciding the semi-finalists.

None of India's batsmen got to double figures, barring Ajay Jadeja, who scored a great hundred under the circumstances and Robin Singh who played equally well for 75. India's sorry batting card looked more like a long distance telephone number - 8,0,2,100,3,75,2,0,3,2,0. The much touted "Simpson Theory" of team work quite invisible!

Extras, which totalled 10, was the third highest score which proves what a disaster the batting was, and the pitch itself was a beauty so no blame could be attached to it.

In the morning however, with a lot of rain having fallen in the previous two days and the pitch looking seamer friendly, Azhar felt he had a good chance of getting some early wickets and chose to field on winning the toss. But his bowlers let him down. I also feel he should have opened the bowling with Venkatesh Prasad instead of Mohanty who bowled poorly to ease the pressure that Srinath was building up at the other end.

Prasad also was sadly off colour and Mark Waugh is too good a player to miss out on wayward bowling. He made a superb 83, and all the other Aussie batsman passed twenty and kept the scoreboard moving all the time.

Too many bad balls were bowled in between good ones, and Australia totalled a very good 282 for 6 in 50 overs. The Aussie card read 83, 31, 23, 26, 36, 22, 26, 0. The definition of good teamwork wouldn't you say?

Added to this were 35 extras -10 wides and 14 no balls - a criminal gift of 21 runs plus 21 extra balls that definitely went for more runs. Considering Australia made 40 plus in the last four overs, it shows how crucial those extra balls were. India lost to Zimbabwe in an earlier game because they bowled too many wides and no balls and today was no different. Poor fielding, especially on the fence allowed Australia at east 20 runs extra and this led to greater pressure on the bowlers.

A point I have to make was the baffling unwillingness of Mongia to stand up to the stumps when Saurav and Robin were bowling. This allowed Mark Waugh and Ponting to use their feet consistently and use the momentum gained in moving forward to smash the ball all over the field and sometimes over the boundary as well. Bad wicket-keeping for sure but that's when the captain should have asked his keeper to do what is best for the team. No action was taken and the game ran away from India.

India needing a fine start were undone by a brilliant spell of fast bowling by McGrath who knocked the stuffing out of the batting and only a superb partnership between Jadeja and Robin of 141 runs gave the team a respectable total today.

As a parting note it must be said that the people who had slogans which said "Jeetna hai Today" better change it to "Jeetna hai Tuesday" as India play Pakistan in the next match on Tuesday at Old Trafford. India is in another familiar "must win to stay in the cup" situation.......who said history doesn't repeat itself ?  Read more 

- Arjun Raja in Dubai, UAE
1999

The views of this column are the author's own, and do not necessarily represent the views of NRI Online.

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