Sunday, April 1, 2007

The Australian Juggernaut Marches On

ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 :: Australia Vs Bangladesh :: 31st March 2007

As i sit in front of my workstation blogging this away, all the news channels in India are beaming pictures of an Australian win over a hapless Bangladesh cricket team. No matter how much Dav Whatmore and all Bangladesh fans would have wanted their team to repeat what happened on that day at Cardiff when Bangladesh defeated the mighty Australians, the defeat that Bangladesh faced was as inevitable as the fact that their will be a certain winner of 2007 edition of ICC Cricket World Cup, when this tournament ends.

Being an Indian their are bound to be some comparisons in this blog to the way India played against Bangladesh and i will try to find out where exactly did India falter. And what a blunder it proved to be in the end. The Indian cricket team would be watching all the games sitting in their homes on TV. As a famous Bollywood personality so emphatically says in one of the advertisements running these days "Cricket ka asli mazaa to ussey TV par dekhney mein hai" (The real fun of watching cricket is in watching it on TV). Nobody would have imagined that this is what the Indian cricket team would be doing after the initial round of this huge tournament.

Well as far as the match played yesterday b/w Australia and Bangladesh is concerned Australia once again proved how mighty they are in terms of their batting coming into this tournament (they had posted 6 totals of 300+ coming into this game in consecutive innings) as they romped home without losing a wicket, and some overs to spare! It was a rain affected match and had to be reduced to a 22 over match which i think reduced the margin b/w the two teams. Because its very difficult for a team to sustain good performance for a longer duration than for a shorter one. But this leveling out of the two teams because of a shortened game, dint actually come into play once Australia took to the field.

Being a 22 overs a side match, it was very much like a 20-20 match between the two sides. As soon as Bangladesh started their innings first on the pitch that looked good for strokeplay they started in a whirlwind fashion as if they wanted to post a total of around 180-200, which they eventually fell short of in a big way managing only 104 in 22 overs and losing 6 wickets in the process. Major contribution coming only from the captain and a couple of others. Their very promising young guns failing to deliver in the big game. Now i have to mention this one thing for sure, McGrath becoming the highest wicket taker in World Cup games surpassing the Great Wasim Akram a.k.a 'Sultan of Swing'. When he was bowling he was using all his experience to make the Bangladesh batsmen trying to induce a false shot from their blades. How beautifully he bowled was also evident from the fact that he got wickets despite the Bangladesh top order batsmen (to their credit) were trying to hit 'pigeon' out of the park and succeeded too in doing it to some extent. He smartly varied his deliveries and importantly the pace after he got hit a couple of times. But each time he was eventually able to induce a false shot from the batsmen and end their short stay at the crease. The weapon McGrath uses all the time is of course his immaculate line and length but the skill that he possesses which is the BIG difference between him and the ordinary is his ability to think ahead of the batsmen. He beats the batsmen in thinking ahead of him and that the mark of a genius and it applies to a batsmen in exactly the same way.

To compare his bowling performance to how Indian bowlers bowled at Bangladesh's top order, its all to evident that though both Zaheer and McGrath were attacked by the batsmen it was McGrath who used his thought process to outwit the batsmen. The perfect example was Ashraful's wicket. The first delivery that Ashraful played, he tried to play it towards the fine leg from outside the off stump and trying to scoop it above the fielder at fine leg for a four. It was a funny shot and certainly in his entire career McGrath wouldn't have seen any batsmen play that kind of a short to the first delivery he faced. It was as if he was continuing from where he had left in Cardiff (he had got a 100 in that game). In the next couple of deliveries McGrath got spanked with one sweetly timed horizontal bat shot from Ashraful in the midwicket region. It looked like the young Ashraful had got stuck into McGrath but in the the very next delivery, the Australian great rolled his fingers and made the ball loose a couple of miles which was enough for Ashraful to mistime the short and gave a high catch to Ponting at mid-on. I cannot understand why a similar approach of varying pace/ length was not taken up by Zaheer what with all his experience playing international cricket for 7 years now.

Sticking to this game i think the Bangladesh approach was good and the correct one in the circumstances but their implementation had a far too visible inexperience at its core. As Dav Whatmore has been saying what he demands from his team is that "they go out in the middle and enjoy playing the game as they are learning with each outing", i thinks that exactly they were trying to do and feel short in their implementation. When i compare this to an Indian side, i always feel that they fall short of even the fact that, whatever they decided in the team meetings sitting in the dressing room, they simply forget trying to implement what they had decided so it doesn't even come to a level where they fail in trying to implement a strategy but they seem to forget what it was in the first place! That's why i advocate that all the team members should carry a copy of the plan on a piece of paper in their [pockets and refer it to at times on field to stick to what they had planned. A simple remedy i guess for the forgetfulness syndrome with the Indian team. Remember how Bob and Hansie Cronje tried to do the same by having Cronje's being plugged into a walkie talkie type of a device so that they communicate when on field and stick to what they decided in the dressing room and also vary the strategy as the situation demanded.

Coming back to this game, when Australia came into bat they proved yet again why they are referred to as being the mighty ones as the two openers showed how exactly to take care of a smallish total and at the same time rub it into the opponents. They did it in style chasing the paltry total in quick time with their trade mark style and confidence which seems to rub off on to every player like a infection generating from that great captain Ricky Ponting. I have never seen a more confident cricketer than him in whatever cricket i have watched to this day, also someone like a Gilchrist would only come closer to him. The way he conducts himself not showing emotions (mark of a true leader) at all in case of adversity or in case of his team doing well is just amazing. Compare this to a Dravid or a Ganguly for that matter, who would show emotions at the drop of a hat and wouldn't really concentrate on what needs to be done on the field to get the team into the right situation, they just linger on with the thought of defeat in their minds till the fat lady sings and its all over. While a Ricky Ponting would always be worried from inside at his team being under pressure but would always seem to be thinking all the time about what needs to be done to get into the right situation, whether its batting or bowling.

While India's batting and bowling both were in shambles against Bangladesh, the Australians didn't budge at all from their approach that they take of showing to the world "how its done". They look like the one team that cannot put a foot wrong in this age of aggressive cricket. The only team(s) that comes close to them in that matter is probably the New Zealand or a South African team.

I think i have spoken enough on the Australians and i seriously think that they will go all the way to create history own the prized trophy, third time in a row.

Now, i am itching to write something on the Sachin Tendulkar 'The Master', what with everybody in India asking for his retirement. After Ian Chappell also commented on him "that he should look into the mirror and find a honest answer: which would definitely be that he hang up his boots", i will probably write my next blog on this topic which is grabbing the headlines in Indian newspapers.

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