It's weekend so there is some time for brainstorming and looking back at the series.
With the game tantalizingly poised, I can't help but wonder that do we [India] deserve to win this game and thus level the series?
Apart from the loss to SA in the early 2000 and to the Australia in 2004, I haven't seen an Indian team play so badly in a series at home. Strategically too we have been poor.
Let's analyze the batting:
The two best batsmen of India in the squad have played just one good innings of note and that too in the first test where Sehwag hit that triple and Dravid made use of the flow to scratch to a 100. They both have failed since then. Of the support batsmen, only Ganguly has shown some resistance with two good back to back innings, Laxman has failed apart from the first inning in this test, while Jaffar has been a waste of space
bowling:
The pacers has had a nightmare of a series, the spinners hardly effective .... Kumble has come out a cropper [though he has been suffering from injury since Chennai] and Bhajji has been at his restrictive best. Less said about the pacers the better [except Ishant]
India has not been helped by the injuries to its key players so has not been able to field a full strength squad in any of the games but you have to take that in the stride and move on
Before an important series like this one, you expect all departments of cricket right from the team management, the selectors and the administrators to be in sync. But that doesn't seem to be the case as the administrators were busy with the IPL, the selectors did little brainstorming and selected the same team that played in Australia thus giving more chances to the failures of that tour and allow things to go from bad to worse, the pitch committee prepared bad pitches right from a flat bed at Chennai to the green top at A'bad. Clearly the best chance to beat the opposition is in the first test so it's absolutely necessary to prepare a pitch that suits the home side but we get a flat bed that allows the visitors to practice and get into the groove, then we offer a pitch that suits the visitors at A'bad
Strategically too the team composition lacked sense. At Chennai, we played 7 batsmen, while on the green top at A'bad, we played 6
In a few hours from now the action will begin, the team has not played great cricket so far bar a few individual performances, it's time for the lazy asses to pick up their games and give their best performance of the series and get from bad to good OR come out cropper and go from bad to worse .... the stage is set for them