Once in a blue moon win!

[Zap_Brannigan]

The end result is great but the most surprising fact is that it came cos of unexpected events. 1.Sreesanths bowling ? Before this game, with munaf injured, we expected Zaheer to be the bowling spearhead. Considering that this is Zaheers 1st test after being dropped, tells a lot about our pace options. But though Zaheer bowled well,he was totally uprooted by Sreesanth, who in all reality, would be fighting for his spot with VRV and pathan had munaf been fit. A rookie Indian pacer rocking SA in SA. Never heard of tht before. 2.84 AO ? The lowest SA has ever made. 3. No drops in slips ? In the last 1 year, Dravid, our best slip fielder, alone, has dropped numerous catches. But this time they didn?t let slip even some hard ones. 4. Fielding ? Sehwag and Zaheer, the 2 of the laziest fielders in the side, contributing to 3 wickets which normally would have resulted in 2 drops and 1 missed runout chance. Before the start of the test,if someone had told us that India would win, we would have guessed that is possible had we got a huge 1st innings score thanks to sehwag,dravid, sachin and laxman and then kumble wreaking havoc on the 4th/5th days pitch. Something which was true in all our overseas wins like Adelaide, headingly, Pakistan. That is what we expect to happen to have any chance of winning. But winning on the back of unexpected events is not something we can expect to occur everytime. Sreesanth will not be able to get SA out for 84 with the likes of VRV in the side next time. We will field well but we cant expect great catches from sehwag/zaheer again. We cant expect our batsmen to get less than 250 in each innings(even on a crumbling pitch) and then hope to win on the backs of fielding and bowling again. So the batsmen have to bat better.

[yoda]

Re: Once in a blue moon win! Each test is going to be scripted differently. I would take any script as long as we win. On this pitch and against the quality of bowling, our batting did as best as it could. Regarding the fielding, yes Sehwag's catches were stunning. But Sehwag has always been a good catcher, although I have seldom seen him fielding at point. Talking about unexpected events, each of our recent overseas wins had unexpected events of their own, typically from batting: a) Sehwag's 300 b) Dravid's 270 c) Dravid's 230 How often are these events going to happen again? This time it was the bowling and it was about time. And this is the way to win on bouncy and pacy tracks.

[Zap_Brannigan]

Re: Once in a blue moon win! Lets not kid ourselves abt our bowling....Apart from kumble, we havent had a gd bowler for a long time.... We have seen a lot of bowlers who have 1 or 2 gd games and then a lot of bad games... Our strength has always been our batting and we have some of the best batsmen in the world..So sehwags 300 or dravids 200 supported by sachins 194 or laxmans 148 werent a big surprise at all...Infact we expected them get as much...The track,though not flat,wasnt as bad as our sub 250 scores suggested. PPl seems to forget tht we are still having the same pblm for the last 2 years....our batsmen are not performing well. Without sreesanths effort in the 1st innings,things cd have been very different.Its easy to overlook problems when we won but the batsmen still has a lot of work to do before the next test starts...I want to win the series not a single game like we did in Eng and Aus.

[Mandrake]

Re: Once in a blue moon win! What this win has shown is that we have the ability to beat the best when we play to potential...India as a team has mostly underachieved...now is the time to set bigger goals like series win since we know we can do it!

[yoda]

Re: Once in a blue moon win!

Lets not kid ourselves abt our bowling....Apart from kumble, we havent had a gd bowler for a long time.... We have seen a lot of bowlers who have 1 or 2 gd games and then a lot of bad games... Our strength has always been our batting and we have some of the best batsmen in the world..So sehwags 300 or dravids 200 supported by sachins 194 or laxmans 148 werent a big surprise at all...Infact we expected them get as much...The track,though not flat,wasnt as bad as our sub 250 scores suggested. PPl seems to forget tht we are still having the same pblm for the last 2 years....our batsmen are not performing well. Without sreesanths effort in the 1st innings,things cd have been very different.Its easy to overlook problems when we won but the batsmen still has a lot of work to do before the next test starts...I want to win the series not a single game like we did in Eng and Aus.

Our strength is no more our batting, apparently. Look at all our recent choke jobs. We are improving on the bowling front with new and upcoming seamers. I don't see a Dravid or a Sachin coming up. There is more likelyhood of a Munaf of a Sreesanth winning games for us going forward. And you are not going to win on these bouncy pitches with batting. Without Sreesanth's effort in the 1st innings we would have lost. Without Sehwag's and Sachin's and RD's efforts we would lost in the past. There are no problems with this test team currently except the form of Jaffer. With Munaf back in place of VRV, our bowling will be even better balanced. Yes, we are capable of easily going back to our choking ways. But our batting this test was excellent given the conditions. We don't always need a 200 from Dravid to call it a good batting performance. A 50 from ganguly a 40 from SRT and a 70 from Laxman on such a track is just as good.

[veer]

Re: Once in a blue moon win! you must be a very passimistic person in real.

[Zap_Brannigan]

Re: Once in a blue moon win! Not really...this is coming from a guy who thought India would win the CT...I have seen single test victories tht often drown the next tests and we end up not winning the series. its time we win the series and not a single test.

[King]

Re: Once in a blue moon win! Either way unless there are bowlers that are good enough to claim 20 wickets batters can do squat. There will be off days for the batters or even they may just get unlucky but that can't be the case with bowlers. The bowlers get more chances to come back in a game than the batters. I agree this test match had good ingredients for a test team. Most players chipped in bar one or two. As long as about 3-4 batters and 3 bowlers chip in a team, it will have more chances to win the test match. India clearly had the right personnel and most contributed hence the comfortable victory in the end.

[gator]

Re: Once in a blue moon win! ZAp.... it is never tht one bowler will keep winning u the matches.... a good bowler who takes 2 wkts in one match will take a 10'fer the next and the other way... so u dont have to fret, if Sree will repeat his show..... it could be ZAk, kumble or even VRV... u will never know...

[King Tendulkar]

Re: Once in a blue moon win! Bah humbug

[jf1gp_1]

Re: Once in a blue moon win! Yes it was a great win but it highlight one major problem. Till our middle order has fab 4 Rahul, Sachin, Ganguly, VVS one or the other will come to the rescue, with kumble as our spinner we look a formidable side. We have tried playing a few others and kaif did work in WI but looking at the larger picture we are going to struggle in a couple of years time when atleast 3 of these 4 will retire along with kumble.

[The Outsider]

Re: Once in a blue moon win! Good OP, Zap. I was trying to make a similar point in another thread "Lets not get carried away". There are still major flaws to iron out. International sides are not going to get rolled over in 25 overs everyday. Our second innings batting left much to be desired. 300+ was required to comfort me.