Consistency is the Key
Saturday April 05, 2008
Stunned by India's amazing comeback at Perth after being down 0-2 in the Test series down under, most of us, cricket analysts *** Indian cricket patriots, had made a prediction. We were confident that Anil Kumble's men had it in them to stake a claim to being the world's best. With a captain as fiercely competitive as one can ever aspire to be in cricket, the Indian Test team had a stable look to it. While I still hold on to what I had said and written, I do that with a difference.
While India can, on their day, stun the world's best and give their fans much to cheer about, they still have much to do to replace Australia as the numero uno cricket team in the world. To be the world's best, you need to be consistent. And as Ahmedabad has shown us, India continues to be consistently inconsistent. How can a team that has recently handled Brett Lee at his best and scored a mammoth 600 plus against Dale Steyn and company at Chennai (agreed it was a comatose pitch) get bowled out in 20 overs will continue to baffle us in the days ahead. Leave alone the meager 76 that India scored, getting out in a little more than an hour, in 20 overs, is criminal. It is just the thing a team aspiring to be the world's best cannot afford to do.
While Anil Kumble has reasons to feel upset at not being given a pitch of his choice, while the track did suit the South Africans more than the Indians and while Steyn bowled remarkably well, none of these explain a tale of surrender in 120 balls. Each batsman, going by this statistic, was at the crease for some 12 deliveries, a pathetic display by any stretch of imagination. As I write, India still has her second innings to play. It might well be a classic recovery with most of the leading guns firing to the hilt. However, such a performance will hardly do a thing to convince me that we have achieved the consistency essential to topple Australia.
The question then is: why does the Indian batting order, justifiably one of the best in the business, have these freakish moments of underperformance? Some people have suggested that with the IPL round the corner, the Indians have shifted to T-20 mode. That is, I can add with certainty, one of the most banal of answers. A replay of most of the dismissals and we understand why this explanation holds little water. Rather, it will be useful to suggest that Tendulkar’s absence, which forced Laxman up the batting order is a more plausible explanation for a collapse. However, none of these help explain a 20 over surrender. What they do, however, is once again bring to focus the senior versus junior debate. If juniors can be pulled up for being inconsistent and if that can be an argument to bring back some of the seniors in the 50 over version, a few more Ahmedabad’s can well see some of them sidelined forever. There's little doubt that an unpredictable but talented junior is preferable to an inconsistent, ageing senior.
The battlelines for the seniors have thus been drawn. For their own sake they need to ensure that the first innings at Ahmedabad, well and truly, was an aberration. With T-20 already beyond them, IPL icon status notwithstanding, and with Dhoni’s young turks winning the CB series down under, legends like Laxman, Dravid and Ganguly will soon be playing for survival, a situation alien to them. The next fortnight, second innings at Ahmedabad and then Kanpur, promises to be really exciting. As a matter of fact Indian cricket always is.
)
