India begin season with comfortable win

September 12, 2009 at 9:13 am · By staff

Colombo: India’s coach Gary Kirsten is not one to make rash predictions. If a team wants to win any game on a tricky pitch and plant the nation’s tricolour on the ODI summit, it has to show world-class ability.

When you have Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid involved in a stabilising partnership, what follows depends on the inspiration given by these two classical quality players whose second wicket partnership did so much to enable India to beat an outplayed New Zealand on a steamy night at Premadasa Stadium.

What we now have is a double-headed India-Sri Lanka outing on Saturday and in the final on Monday, as New Zealand’s defeat by six wickets means their elimination from the series.

The victory with 57 balls remaining and means that India have moved ahead of South Africa in the ICC limited overs international rankings, as the Kirsten comments about overcoming conditions and tenacious bowling explained how important it is to maintain momentum at this level.

“Sure we have set our goals, and I have to say this again: one of them is to be the best team in the world,” he said earlier this week. “Our ranking shows that we are heading in that direction way and we are very excited by the challenges. But we also have to perform well as we continue the quest to be the best.

“Look, if you want to be a world-class team you need to win from any situation or condition,” were his prophetic words before the start of the Compaq Cup as a 72-runs partnership between Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Suresh Raina steered India to 156 for four in reply to New Zealand’s struggling 155 in 46.3 overs.

Yet it still required the Tendulkar-Dravid partnership of 60 for the second wicket to establish a platform in front of a near deserted stadium to give India the confidence to work their way towards achieving their goal with more than enough time on their side. On a pitch so slow, a snail might just do enough, given a head start to beat a tortoise in a metaphorical race for line honours, the partnership at least gave India the confidence of overhauling New Zealand’s total.

The Kiwis are used to batting on far quicker surfaces that they have found in Sri Lanka and have not adjusted well to the stodgy Premadasa Stadium surface. Their strokemakers were could not unfold ant of their stylish efforts and whoever has been responsible for providing such surfaces needs to understand how they could add fuel to an already rumbling argument of why the 50 over game is in trouble.

Sure the Kiwis would have loved to have put a more competitive total on the board than 155, but with three wickets gone inside six overs, you are up against it if those wickets are your better ODI batsmen: Jessie Ryder, Brendon McCullum and Ross Taylor. They will be all disappointed they didn’t do more.

Maybe the slowness of the pitch is to blame for some untidy batting and the bowlers making the most of dodgy conditions.

There was an initial faltering by India after Dravid and Tendulkar were dismissed by the 20th over and Yuvraj Singh followed at the end of the 24th to put them under a little pressure as the three quick wickets gave the Kiwis a sniff at doing something special.

Yuvraj going for an impetuous slog-sweep and top-edging a catch, also made you wonder what he was trying to achieve, or the selectors by persisting with Dinesh Karthik, whose ‘selectors’ pet tag has left him embarrassed by becoming the only failure in the Indian side in the game. It follows on from Karthik’s shabby tour of Sri Lanka last year, and no protection mafia is going to be able to hide his deficiencies.

Tendulkar’s innings was full of entertainment and occasional misjudgement, the latter of which cost him his wicket as the New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori collected the Mumbai Master’s wicket with a when inducing the batsman into making a false stroke and chipping the ball to Martin Guptill. It was clever bowling from Vettori.

If the Tendulkar innings of 46 was a minor engineering marvel in such conditions, the pace of the pitch an it easing out the way it did helped Raina put the winning runs together with MS Dhoni while Vettori did what he could to be as flexible in manipulating the bowling attack the way he did.

Now India face a tougher challenge when they meet Sri Lanka in the second of the back-to-back games. As they have shown, teams batting second can win, yet Sri Lanka’s pave trio of Nuwan Kalusekara, Thushara Mirando and Lasith Malinger are highly competitive as they showed with their game against New Zealand on Tuesday.

To be honest, New Zealand have not played to their ability or their ODI ranking in this series while India, as Kirsten has suggested, need to show consistency to maintain their position at the top of the ICC rankings.

source:cricketnext

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