Deep Point: West Indies – The Dark Horse

B D Narayankar

Despite being famous for its unpredictable and inconsistent performance in the past, West Indies is undoubtedly the dark horse of World Cup 2007. The Windies gave enough hints of winning the World Cup when it convincingly thrashed Pakistan in the tournament opener. It has potential to upset the applecart of the best of the sides on its given day.

It not only has good fielders, but also a good mix of youth and experienced players who can handle pressure situations. This World Cup will be a great spectacle as there are so many different grounds and wickets. Some wickets will help swing\spin, some will be uneven\flat. Hence the team that assesses the conditions well will have greater chance of winning the Cup. And no other team can do this better than the hosts West Indies.

Chris Gayle and Shivnaraine Chanderpaul are the most devastating opening pair in the World and most under-rated too. Gayle, known for his power play, has the potential to change the complexion of the game at his will and Chanderpaul is a busy batsman who values his wicket. One should not, however, under-estimate his explosive nature. He is as belligerent as Gayle.

The best bet for Windies, off course is Brian Lara and he is in awesome form. If he gets his act together, this World Cup will be the most memorable one for him, as he knows the conditions in West Indies much better than anyone else in the tournament.

Ramnaresh Sarawan, Marlon Samuels and Dwayne Smith are tremendous batsmen too. Sarawan is an elegant little batsman who paces his innings according to the situation. It is a treat to watch him bat and has all the shots in his book. Samuels is in great touch. His 63-runs innings against Pakistan was simply superb. It looked he had been given a specific task in this World Cup. Smith is a tonker and can change the match in just five to six deliveries!

And there is the fantastic Bravo. He can bowl and bat and what distinguishes him with others is that he is a thinking-cricketer. He is a cany customer. Any captain will love to have him in the side.

Given the resources it has with it, it remains to be seen whether this dark horse gallops to victory and lifts the World Cup, thus reviving its glorious days of cricket that had given players like Vivian Richards, Clive Lloyd, Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Gary Sobers and the lots.

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Deep Point: Dravid is the key

World Cup

B D Narayankar

It is not Sachin Tendulkar, Virendra Sehwag or Mahendra Singh Dhoni as vital as Rahul Dravid is to the Indian cricket team. He is one player who believes in building an innings and his performance would be vital for Team India’s success in the World Cup.

It always have been the batsmen who had built their innings had made a tremendous difference in their sides. The shorter version of the game is not all about going bang-bang. It also requires players like Sunil Gavaskar, Javed Miandad, Graham Thorpe, Yusuf Khan and Arajuna Ranatunga to make it exciting in their own inimitable style.

One should not take the credit away from Mushfiqur Rahim who scored an unbeaten 59 of 107 balls that brought victory to Bangladesh against India in Port-of-Spain on March 17. He held the Bangladesh’s innings together till the end.

Such players are required in a team and we have Dravid. It could be a folly to draw comparisons between Dravid and Gavaskar, but certainly he is greater than Sachin because of a simple reason that when he carries his innings it means he is carrying his team’s fortunes too.

One can be jittery about Sachin when he is batting, but not with Dravid. Every time he goes out to bat there is an inimitable feeling in millions of Indians that ‘Mr Dependable’ will deliver. And how many times he has done it for India before. Even his paltry 30-odd runs would mean so much to India as he would have made it without building partnerships with his colleagues.

If Dravid fails, most of the times India doesn’t do well, and that exactly happened when India lost to Bangladesh. He is the key player.

We sincerely hope Dravid delivers and shuts some of the irresponsible media who are carrying negative stories interviewing fans, most of whom do not know the changing factors of the seven-hour extravaganza.

Among everyone, I blame the media first for creating so much pressure around a team, that took the life of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer in Jamaica after his team was knocked out of the World Cup.

For God sake stop this non-sense. My only advise, especially to electronic media is that they should hire sportsmen as sports editor and leave it to them to bring professionalism in covering sports events. I think ESPN-Star Sports is the only channel which has that pool of resources which believes in professionalism.


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The Fall of Wall

World Cup

India-Bangladesh match comments

B D Narayankar

Rahul Dravid has bumbled. He has got it wrong. Instead of giving too many overs to slow bowlers, he depended heavily upon medium fast Ajit Agarkar and Zaheer Khan when they were not required the most in India’s opening match against Bangladesh in the 2007 World Cup played at Port-of-Spain which the latter won by 5 wickets.

Dravid could have taken a leaf out of the way Bangladesh captain Habib ul Bashar introduced and maintained pressure with his slow left-arm bowlers Abdur Razzak, S Hasan and Mohammad Rafique, after he had given a decent spell to his fast medium pacers. They bowled their hearts out and maintained exquisite line and length, giving little room to the Indian batsmen to score runs of.

Dravid made a mistake in not giving as many overs as possible to slow bowlers Sehwag, Yuvraj, Sachin and Sourav Ganguly. They could have been devastating as Bangladesh spinners, who exploited the slowness in the pitch to their advantage.

Instead of bringing in Sachin, Dravid should have brought in left-arm spinner Yuvraj and Sehwag from both ends when Bangladesh’s left-handed opener Tamim Igbal teared apart the bowling of Munaf Patel, Agarkar and Zaheer with sheer arrogance. When Sehwag was brought on, it was too late. He struck a couple of blows though but was not enough.

Yuvraj’s dead pace could well have been very much handy if Dravid could have reposed faith in him say from the 25th overs onwards. Instead of mounting pressure on the batsmen, he preferred to defend the flow of Bangladeshi run chase. Harbhajan bowled well.

And why on earth Ganguly was not brought on at all! He could have been devastating, given the fact that Bangladesh scored the winning runs in its 49th over, indicating run getting was not an easy task.

Blaming Indian team is not to take the credit away from the fantastic performance of Bangladeshi batsmen and bowlers. It no more is a minnow and if someone considers it, they are not less than fools.

Scorecard

India 191-10 (49.3) Runs Balls 4s 6s SR

S Ganguly c Razzak b Rafique 66 129 4 0 51.16

V Sehwag b Mortaza 2 6 0 0 33.33

R Uthappa c Ahmed b Mortaza 9 17 1 0 52.94

S Tendulkar c Rahim b Razzak 7 26 1 0 26.92

*R Dravid lbw b Rafique 14 28 0 0 50.00

Y Singh c Bashar b Razzak 47 58 3 1 81.03

MS Dhoni c Ahmed b Rafique 0 3 0 0 0.00

Harbhajan Singh b Razzak 0 3 0 0 0.00

A Agarkar c Rahim b Mortaza 0 2 0 0 0.00

Z Khan not out 15 17 2 0 88.24

M Patel c Razzak b Mortaza 15 15 2 0 100.00

Extras: 16 ( b:0 lb:5 nb:8 w:3)

Total: 191-10 (49.3) | Curr. RR: 3.86

FOW: V Sehwag (6-1, 2.1), R Uthappa (21-2, 6.4), S Tendulkar (40-3, 15), *R Dravid (72-4, 24.1), Y Singh (157-5, 42.4), S Ganguly (158-6, 43.2), MS Dhoni (159-7, 43.5), Harbhajan Singh (159-8, 44.2), A Agarkar (159-9, 45.1), M Patel (191-10, 49.3)

Bangladesh O M R W Nb Wd RPO

M Mortaza 9.3 2 38 4 6 2 4.00

S Rasel 10 2 31 0 1 0 3.10

A Razzak 10 2 38 3 0 0 3.80

S Hasan 10 0 44 0 0 1 4.40

M Rafique 10 1 36 3 0 0 3.60

Bangladesh team: M Mortaza, S Rasel, A Razzak, S Hasan, M Rafique, *H Bashar , T Iqbal, M Ashraful, M Rahim, S Nafees, A Ahmed,

Powerplay 1: 1-10 ovs, 2: 11-15 ovs, 3: 16-20 ovs

Bangladesh 195-5 (48.3) Runs Balls 4s 6s SR

T Iqbal c Dhoni b Patel 51 53 7 2 96.23

S Nafees lbw b Zaheer 2 8 0 0 25.00

M Rahim not out 59 107 4 2 55.14

A Ahmed lbw b Patel 8 10 1 0 80.00

S Hasan st Dhoni b Sehwag 53 86 5 1 61.63

*H Bashar st Dhoni b Sehwag 1 8 0 0 12.50

M Ashraful not out 8 23 1 0 34.78

M Rafique

A Razzak

S Rasel

M Mortaza

Extras: 13 ( b:0 lb:1 nb:8 w:4)

Total: 195-5 (48.3) | Curr. RR: 4.02

FOW: S Nafees (24-1, 4.2), T Iqbal (69-2, 13.2), A Ahmed (79-3, 16), S Hasan (163-4, 38.4), *H Bashar (175-5, 42.2)

India O M R W Nb Wd RPO

Z Khan 9 2 41 1 2 1 4.56

A Agarkar 10 0 41 0 2 0 4.10

M Patel 8.3 1 42 2 0 1 4.94

Harbhajan Singh 10 1 30 0 0 0 3.00

S Tendulkar 3 0 8 0 0 1 2.67

Y Singh 3 0 15 0 0 0 5.00

V Sehwag 5 0 17 2 0 1 3.40

India team: Z Khan , A Agarkar , M Patel , Harbhajan Singh, S Tendulkar , Y Singh , V Sehwag , S Ganguly , R Uthappa , *R Dravid , MS Dhoni,

Powerplay 1: 1-10 ovs, 2: 11-15 ovs, 3: 16-20 ovs

Bangladesh vs India

March 17, 2007, 8th ODI

Venue: Port of Spain

Toss: India elected to bat

Bangladesh won by 5 wkts

Man of the match: M Mortaza