Price paid for yawning, napping...- Bob Woolmer too deserves some credit for SA win
LOKENDRA PRATAP SAHI
Calcutta: Minutes into Day II of the first Test, a TV camera caught an Indian bowler yawning. Minutes into Test No.2, our famed batting line-up was caught napping.
That encouraged speedster Dale Steyn to mock big: “They probably didn’t have a strategy… They were bowled out for 76 and I guess that happens when you don’t have a game plan…”
Few would disagree.
Team India’s fate in Motera, off Ahmedabad, was sealed before lunch on Day I itself, but few would’ve imagined a rout inside three days.
That too at the hands of South Africa, a team once regarded as very poor travellers to the subcontinent.
Up in heaven, Bob Woolmer (the first Protean coach to highlight the need to tackle spinners aggressively) must surely have smiled on Saturday evening.
Mickey Arthur deserves kudos, of course, but some of the credit for South Africa’s fantastic win has to go Woolmer’s way. The process of not getting psyched out in the subcontinent was, after all, initiated by him in the mid-Nineties.
As things stand, the South Africans can’t lose the series (Future Cup being the trophy) and many would be tempted to bet on Graeme Smith being the victorious captain, just like the late Hansie Cronje, eight years ago.
Much was made of a solitary warm-up match for India before the recent Test series in Australia, but it’s worth noting that Smith and Co. decided against even one. They preferred, instead, to spend a few days at home after a physically demanding tour of Bangladesh.
Bottomline is that the South Africans had confidence, driven by plenty of self-belief.
Also, in the lead-up to the series, the visitors’ No.1 concern was mental conditioning coach Paddy Upton’s presence in the Team India dressing room. They weren’t exactly that worried about the Anil Kumbles and the Sachin Tendulkars.
Again, the South Africans had the confidence to deal with the strictly on-field issues.
While captain Kumble and coach Gary Kirsten have plenty of work ahead of the third and final Test, in Kanpur from Friday, questions need to be fired at the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
For the past few months, its priority has been the Indian Premier League (IPL). That, to say the least, has been unfortunate.
Nobody will go on record, but the IPL has been a distraction — the headline-making February 20 auction in Mumbai, in fact, was held during the tri-series in Australia and in the middle of the Duleep final — and there’s been a push for the IPL to upstage everything.
Those promoting the Chennai Super Kings, for example, need to be asked why they scheduled the formal launch during the first Test. Moreover, incredibly, Virender Sehwag was in Delhi for the unveiling of the DareDevils in the short break before Test No.2.
Why all this in the middle of a series with three back-to-back Tests?
Contrast the officially-sanctioned tamasha in India with the approach of the South Africans, many of whom will also feature in the IPL.
According to well-placed sources of The Telegraph, a member of the team management made the IPL-related ground rules very clear within a day of landing in India. Specifically, that he didn’t want “anything to do with the IPL being discussed even at the breakfast table.”
Clearly, among the South Africans, there’s been clarity over priorities.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080406/jsp/sports/story_9101736.jsp
AuthorTopic: Ind vs SA- 2nd test Ahmedbad - reports+discussion+match thread (Read 11855 times)
