By Arjun Singh, IANS
Johannesburg : Indians are rookies in the Twenty20 form of cricket and it showed Sunday. Otherwise, given the electric start to their run chase, they should have wrapped up the game against New Zealand quite easily in the Twenty20 World Championships here.
Also, most of the wisdom lies in hindsight and this says Indian skipper Mahednra Singh Dhoni should not have thrown the ball to Yuvraj Singh for his third over. That one yielded 25 and probably cost India the match.
The Indian team now travels to Durban to play their last two Group E matches at the Kingsmead and only an extremely brave man will put money on them reaching the last four stage from here on.
Dhoni was quite candid at the post match media conference and accepted his players still had a lot to learn about this new version of cricket.
“We need to learn how to bowl at the death. As the ball is not old it does not reverse swing and that creates a problem. Also we lost wickets at regular intervals otherwise the start provided by (Gautam) Gambhir and (Virender) Sehwag was great and we should have won,” the Indian captain conceded.
The Wanderers ground was bathed in sunshine and the aisles were full of Indian supporters as Dhoni opted to bowl first.
He wanted to exploit whatever moisture there was in the surface. But Jacob Oram and Craig Mcmillan targeted Yuvraj and helped New Zealand reach 190 and that was always going to be a competitive total.
In the end, India lost by only 10 runs but that is a big enough margin in this format.
Positives from the game were there. Gambhir was a revelation and Sehwag played a few audacious strokes. Harbhajan Singh bowled well and Indian fielders hit the stumps often enough.
It doesn’t help to dwell on the negatives but they cannot be wished away.
India bowled too many boundary and six balls. They squandered a great start given by Sehwag and Gambhir. By Dhoni’s own admission, they could not string together partnerships while chasing, etc., etc.
The remainder of the group league matches are against South Africa and England and India have to win both.
Some changes need to be made to the playing eleven. Not just for the sake of making changes but to induce some freshness in the thinking. There is no point in bringing players like Rohit Sharma, Yusuf Pathan and Piyush Chawla to the tournament and then leaving them out to warm the bench.
Dhoni has a different explanation though. After the match he said that the World Championships is not the place to be grooming players. Now that is a disappointing statement coming from an otherwise aggressive captain.
From what we have seen of Dhoni, he seems like a positive captain. But to be a successful captain he also needs to have that gambler’s instinct. Playing people like Chawla, Sharma and Pathan might seem like a gamble. But sometimes these gambles have to be made.
That’s how great battles are won. Or lost.