Sports
India warm up to World Cup's business-end (Column: Just Sport)
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By Veturi SrivatsaThe talk in television studios is already about India’s semifinal
opponents, hurdling over the quarterfinal against Bangladesh. That’s the
kind of confidence Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s boys have instilled.
Just
to jog the captain’s memory, the Bangladeshis might take him back to
2007 in the Caribbean. That was a World Cup wherein the Indians suffered
performance paralysis and they could not get the better of either of
their subcontinental neighbours, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, to crash out
of the tournament at the preliminary stage itself.
To be fair to Bangladesh, they have harassed India quite a few times but rarely got the measure of their Big Brother.
As
things stand Inda and New Zealand are the only teams to win their
preliminary stage roundrobin without losing a match. If New Zealand came
close to being beaten by Australia in a low-scoring match, the Indians
were severely tested by the West Indies and Zimbabwe, though in the end
they ran out comfortable winners.
India are playing Bangladesh at
the hallowed Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in quarterfinal 2 on
Thursday and on current form they should win that game. Likwewise, New
Zealand are expected to win their quarterfinal round at home to qualify
to meet India in the semifinals.
Curiously, the other three
quarterfinal matchups will be decided on Sunday after the matches
between the West Indies-UAE and Ireland-Pakistan in Group B. Only in
Group A have all four quarterfinalists been decided.
The
confidence of Dhoni is such that he said in his post-match remarks that
he would have liked Ravindra Jadeja to get a hit. This coming from a
captain whose team crossed the line in the penultimate over after the
Zimbabweans, or say their stand-in captain Brendan Taylor, posed quite a
few questions raising the highest total against the reigning champions.
In the end, the Zimbabwean bowling firepower was not good enough to bring India down, though they rattled them.
Dhoni
should be happy to have seen in a big partnership his blue-eyed boy
Suresh Raina hit a match-winning hundred. The most inspiring part of the
innings was the confidence level of the left-hander and his cricket
thinking in pacing his innings.
Raina did show a streak of
recklessness when he had a heave. He was on 47 and if Hamilton Masakadza
had pouched the sitter at backward square-leg the going could have been
much tougher for India. That apart, he showed a deft touch in dabbing
and flicking the ball for boundaries. Maybe, seeing Dhoni at the other
end, he had to curb his instincts.
There was a stage when the
asking rate had gone to nine and half runs an over but the T-20 cricket
made these high-risk rates meaningless when you have batters like Dhoni
and Raina at the crease.
India ran into to an in-form Taylor who
also had a hundred against Ireland in their last game and they will be
up against another batsman who has back-to-back hundreds, Mohammed
Mahmudullah Riyad.
Just like Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav and
Mohit Sharma carried the new ball load with fire, Bangaldesh’s two
lively pacemen Rubel Hossain and Taskin Ahmed are making experts to sit
up and take note of them.
Bangladesh have Shakib Al Hasan, for
quite some time ICC’s top-ranked all-rounder, to handle the spin like
Ravinchandran Ashwin does for India.
Don’t forget when Bangladesh
beat India only the second time at the 2007 World Cup, Mushfiqur Rahim
and Tamim Iqbal were brash youngsters and today they are the most
experienced along with Shakib.
If India got to the target of 288
set by Zimbabwe with eight balls to spare, Bangaldesh asked New Zealand
to score 289 which the Black Caps made it with seven balls remaining.
So,
both the unbeaten teams in the tournament were stretched just before
they got to the business end and that can give the unfancied
quarter-finalists a big hope.
The big question: Is India’s
ability to turn thing around even from desperate sitations that got them
victory or is it Zimbabwe’s lack of weaponry to fight. Bit of both,
perhaps.
The top-order of batting is fulfilling every wish of
Dhoni. In more than one match they returned with not much on the board
to test the middle and lower order.
India can satisfactorily look
at their unbeaten run. A critical factor is that they have bowled their
opposition out in all six matches. What’s more, like all major teams in
world cricket, they did it with their fast bowlers showing up. Shami,
Yadav and Mohit took three wickets each against Zimbabwe, coming back
strongly in the last 10 overs, last six wickets falling for 52 runs.
With
India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in the last eight and Pakistan looking
good to join them, there is balance in world cricket with the
subcontinental teams proving that they are among the best. In soccer
parlance, it is like Europe and Latin America sharing the spoils.
(Veturi Srivatsa is a senior journalist. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at [email protected])