THIRD ONE-DAYER

NO NEW RESULT FROM NEWLANDS

Where is Mr. Jaywant Lele now?

Well as Secretary of the BCCI, he once famously predicted a loss for India with a scoreline of 4-0 in the test matches in Australia. Of course, like a true public figure, Mr.Lele had the temerity to deny the quote. Whether it was true or not, the Indian team could not disprove it. With the display so far in the two matches, the scoreline will be 4-0 for the home team.

The team under Dravid has proved that the defeat or rather the trashing at Durban was no aberration by putting up a spineless display under the tabletop mountain.

The start of the match was nothing short of a dream with Zaheer Khan picking up both Graeme Smith and Kallis for nought. The home team lost 6 wickets with not even 100 runs on the board. Sachin let go a caught bowled chance offered by Kemp and from then the whole complexion of the match changed. I wonder what would have been the reaction if another bowler grassed the catch.Of course, that was not the sole reason for the dismal show.

Dravid is shown reading Bill Bryson’s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ in an ad. But he looked completely lost when his bowlers fluffed their lines.. More than 100 runs were scored off the last 10 overs.

The batting effort was no less atrocious. The third man caught Sehwag brilliantly and Sachin went while playing a pull shot. It seems Kaif can do no right . What made the selectors go in for Dinesh Karthik in the first place. Karthik is a wicketkeeper and this begs the question. Is a wicketkeeper-batsman better qualified to play on the pacy wickets when there are specialist batsmen sitting on the bench?

The chief Selector, Dilip Vengsarkar justified the inclusion of Wasim Jaffer on the ground of his ‘superior technique’. Then what made the team management go in favour of Karthik ? What happened to Dinesh Mongia?

Dhoni struck the ball nicely for a 50 but that was not enough. The laboured effort of Dravid helped India go past 91.

Looks like the process and the experiments are finally showing results.