tooextracool
International Coach
Cant really agree with the logic here. Teams almost always lose a load of wickets in the last 10 overs because they are going for quick runs. In India's case they threw everything including the kitchen sink in the hopes of getting 400 and then realized that they were down to the bare bones and tailenders.I guess I find the two different because wickets are finite whereas runs aren't - technically. I can see a team conceding a ridiculous amount of runs in the last few overs but that in itself is not likely to lose you a game. Whilst 29/9 is not going to lose you a game in itself either, it is probably far more likely to. The former has 45 overs left to balance against whereas the latter has 1 wicket to salvage a match. The former also rests on the performance of a handful of players (2-3) whereas the latter takes place because of the underperformance of almost an entire team.
To suggest that they lost 9/29 seems to take no account of the match situation because the fact of the matter is that
a) The batsmen weren't bowled out, they threw their wickets away
b) The batsmen would not have batted with such a carefree mindset given a different match situation.
The other problem with your logic is that, as I mentioned earlier, Tendulkar and Gambhir got a bucket load of runs so they were not so much part of the collapse as they had already scored plenty of runs and were more than likely to get out eventually given the (perhaps faulty) objective of 400. Hence, the 7 players who got out after were the ones that deserve full criticism and given that 4 of them were tailenders it makes the situation far less inept than the cream of the crop of Pakistani bowlers conceding 100 runs in 5 overs whilst bowling full tosses. One situation was a complete misjudgment of the match situation, another was just plain ineptitude.