the india-australia odi series (future cup) finished yesterday; once more, it was a non-cricketing issue that made the headlines. the monkey chants directed at andrew symonds have become the main talking point of the cricketing world.
it initially began in vadodara, a match that symonds single-handedly dominated. the australians, after raising the allegations of racist crowd behaviour bizarrely decided not to pursue the issue and instead stated that they were confident that the indians would "deal with it". the bcci and vadodara cricket officials, basically washed their hands clean of the whole affair by saying that either it didnt really happen, it was a misunderstanding on the part of symonds or in fact, monkey chants in india are not derogotary. whilst i do feel that the icc's stance that all cricket boards must appoint anti-racism officers is misconceived, the bcci's reaction was appallingly inappropriate. it vindicated those people who were involved in the chanting and all but provided official encouragement for that sort of behaviour in future matches. and sure enough, the mumbai crowd obliged.
the bcci has its hands tied now- they have to act. i hope that rather than rhetoric and token gestures, some serious action is taken. now that photo evidence is available, life bans for those involved are a must. also, i believe that the culprit cities (mumbai and vadodara) should be given lengthy international bans of at least 3-4 years. the bcci will no doubt point fingers at australian cities where black south african cricketers were subjected to similar racial abuse in 2005/06 and escaped any real punishment. but that is a pockmark on the australian authorities, who have almost always supported their own regardless of right or wrong. india should not try and emulate australia in this particular regard, especially when australian cricket has so much to offer as they demonstrated in this series.
in any case, focussing on the cricket, the 4-2 scoreline really flatterred india, i felt. in fact, a 6-0 scoreline not only would've been more in accordance with the quality of cricket played, but it also would've given india a much needed reality check. as such, the indians are probably thinking that a little bit of luck in nagpur or hyderabad and the series would've been a draw. in reality, the contest was nowhere near that close. india came into the tournament thinking that they were playing against a team who were their equals, in light of their recent T20 success. but clearly there was nothing equal about the teams. there are some serious concerns for this indian team, especially with the imminent retirements of sachin tendulkar, rahul dravid and anil kumble. the batsman, buoyed by their T20 exploits, crashed down to earth spectacularly. major technical flaws were exposed in yuvraj singh, robin uthappa and ms dhoni. they only have a short time to rectify these faults before the australia tour, where any weakness will be ruthlessly exploited on fast pitches. the bowling was atrocious, especially the spinners. all the pitches used in the future cup (maybe except the bangalore pitch) were spinner-friendly yet only in mumbai did an indian spinner dominate- compare this to the performances of brad hogg and andrew symonds with the ball. the pace bowlers were equally poor. sreesanth and rp singh were profligate with wides and loose deliveries, more than erasing any credits they earnt with some superb wickettaking deliveries. zaheer khan was a lone ranger with his accuracy, but more will be needed from him in australia. pathan made a strong comeback, but has lost his wickettaking edge in a quest for control (this is understandable but one wonders how much of that is reversible). and the worst aspect of the indian performance was fielding. easy catches were dropped in every game; there were frequent misfields and poor throws; and runout opportunities were fumbled at crucial stages. much of the good work in the leadup to the T20 world cup has apparently been undone. how often can it be said that sourav ganguly was one of the most mistake-free fielders in the indian team???
so there is a tremendous amount of work to be done if india are to repeat their 2003/04 performance where they matched australia in all aspects of the game and denied steve waugh a farewell victory with that famous 705 in the first innings of the sydney test match.
No comments:
Post a Comment