After a long time, I kind of got hooked on to following the test series in England.. may be because these days I am almost always on a computer during day times... and seeing Dhoni blast off and Kumble inch towards his maiden test century, I even started following cricinfo... the li'l score window will be open as I did my work on the comp...
The third day as I saw the Indian team almost wrap up England with more that 300 runs lead, I was hoping that indeed, 60 years after their colonial rule, we could give England a fitting 2-0 test series victory two days before the I-day....
ney.. that was not to be.. even though we won the series 1-0, I am pretty sure, lot of Indian fans would be struggling to come to terms with - why din't we make england follow on ? no explanations so far has satisfied me, it defies any logic.. except - we Indians lack the killer instinct.. one victory, and we want to just bask in its glory for a long time, not-bothered about winning the next one
in fact this point was raised by an Indian friend of mine who works in the US .. "it looks like as a race, we Indians lack that 'go for the kill' attitude"..... may be true.... ne comments from readers?
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meantime, I have also been surprised, how come after a Kapil Dev (or even say Ravi shastri, even though the time I started following him, he was the - backfoot defend on a full toss and sixes for his leg spin kind) India never produced all rounders ?! wikiedia list has no Indians among the 8 batting all rounders, Irfan Pathan (Oh come on, update the list folksssss) among the 10 bowling all rounders and Mahendra Dhoni among the 4 WK batsmen ... some solace, but I still feel that the Haryana express was the last of the all rounders we produced so far..
any reasons ?!
oh well, i better get back to my work :-) .. once again cricket has been dissappointing enough for me to not get re-addicted !!
3 comments:
I understand the follow-on decision completely.
It was not because of the lack of killer instinct
or anything. The decision reflects Dravids willingness
to learn from history and experience (unlike many others
in india!). Dravid has more killer instinct than anyone
else. But he has learned that no point being agressive
with no brain. Let me explain. If you look back and study
our history of test series matches in the recent past
you will find that
we have been winning test matches against every nation
to take a 1-0 lead (e.g. Australia, South Africa, Pakistan,
England-touring-India.. ). And every time
we get a lead Dravid has been going for the kill (eg
playing 5 bowlers). But the result, in each of those
occasions, was that we ended up losing and we were
forced to draw the series. Why was that ? Because
we forgot our limitation. It is a fact is our bowling
attack is *not* among the best in the world. That
is one of our limitations. We have to understand
that and act cleverly. It is easy for us to romanticize
and talk about going for the kill! but going there
and doing it is completely different. For that we have
to have a great attack. And also it is very risky to
bat on the 5th day. We have been having umpteen number
of fifth day (or 4th innings) collapses.
Enough is enough. Dravid, Tendulkar, and Ganguly
will *never* forget those two matches in 1998. India-Australia
in Kolkotta and India-Pakistan in Chennai. It is said
that if you don't learn from history you are condemned
to repeat it! Dravid learned from history and we have
a series victory now to talk about!
विषयान्तरस्य प्रश्नाय क्षम्यताम्-
लोकः dr^श्यः लोचनम् dr^क्।
लोचनम् dr^श्यम् ; मानसम् dr^क्।
पुनः धीः द्रष्टा, साक्षिरूपः 'अहम्' द्रष्टा....
एवम् खलु? कोहम् इति भवतः निर्वचनम् एतदेव कथयति किम् इति ज्ञातुम् अयम् प्रश्नः।
ജ്യോതിര്മയി
Ranjith,
I think I will leave it at that :-) , for once ...
ज्यॊतिर्मयीमहॊदयॆ - यत् भव्तया उक्तम् सम्यक् ऎव ।
अत्र अपि पश्यतु http://drisyadrisya.blogspot.com/2006/01/for-those-who-wanted-to-know.html
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