Dec 16 2008
India Got Back Into The Game At The Right Time
Well..after the first test between India and England in Chennai, which India won by 6 wickets, I wonder as to what would be the state of cricket in England, who is currently focusing on soccer rather that its own game cricket. It was evident from the match that England were least bothered about winning the test. Riding high from the one day series white wash that they imposed on England in the recently concluded one day series, in the initial stages of the test match, India were found to under-rate the England team. A victory was assumed before hand by the Indian players.
This was evident when the Indian bowlers in the beginning let the English batsmen cut loose, until finally Zaheer Khan realised and bought back India into the game. This was what happened on the first day. That was why England restricted their score to just 365 in the first innings despite a overnight score of 229/5. Meaning only an additional score of 136 runs with five wickets in hand. Since even the batsmen were overconfident of their powers, they had to pay the price for the same by losing 6 quick wickets on day 1 of their batting to find themselves reeling at 155/6.
Once the Indian batsmen became aware of what they were doing, they decided to take control of the match, in the end by falling just 15 runs short of the England’s first innings total of 365, which would have otherwise been a lag of some 150 runs or even a follow on. Who knows? And India finally realized the going, well before at was all but lost. Though England put up another 300+ score on the board in the second innings as well, this didn’t seem to bother the Indian players out there. All England could do was to make a fool out of themselves, by assuming that the match was well within their reach. The same thing what India did previously. But, England had no time to come back in the same like the Indians did.
I had witnessed similar situations before as well, one which I would intend in citing is the test series involving Australia and Sri Lanka in early 2004, wherein in all three matches, Sri Lanka had taken a first innings lead. And in one of the matches, Sri Lanka had bowled a strong Australian team to a low total of 120. Eventually, Sri Lanka lost all three matches. And in the test against Bangladesh, Australia lagged behind Bangladesh by more than 100 runs, until Adam Gilchrist decided to break free and Australia won the match by just three wickets. So, a bit of relaxation against a team that does not tak the advantage of being considerd underdogs s partly welcome. The point that could be derived is that the team once realising its bad going should shoot back and that too in the right time. And this is what team India did against England in the first test at Chennai.
