Of heroes and vultures
August 4th 2008 12:57
Fantastic win by India to square the series. The archtect of this victory was Virender Sehwag. Without his swashbuckling and magnificient unbeaten innings, we could have even been looking at a series loss.
However, in genuine team spirit, he could not have done this alone. Harbhajan Singh returned wonderfully back to form. The defining factor of his bowling was the presence of drift. Take the drift out - handling him is plenty easy. But with the drift, he takes the ball away from the batsman in the air, makes it dip and then after hitting the pitch, brings it back in. Now, thats a handful for any batsman - left or right. And this is what quality spinners strive for. Also on a side note this is exactly what Piyush Chawla is missing.
While Sehwag and Harbhajan could have been the boards which were used to shut Lanka out, they needed hammer and nails to securely shut them out. And that, fittingly, was provided by the faster bowlers and Ishant Sharma in particular.
Steaming in from one end, he put the batsmen into a lot of trouble and reaped rewards deservingly. Zaheer Khan's contribution in picking Sangakkara off is not to be forgotten. However, Zaheer's tendency to stretch over the front line could prove very costly. In the last innings he again got Vandort caught at gully by Dravid only to hear the dreaded call from the umpire. A job for Prasad, one feels.
Talking of Vandort, if there is one person who can compete on the worst match scales with Dinesh Karthik, it has to be the towering left handed opener. He really looks out of place at the international level. Even while fielding as was seen when he dropped a high ball hit by Zaheer Khan off Murali.
While commenting on our bowlers' performance it also has to be highlighted that the Sri Lankan batsmen tried to take a leaf out of Sehwag's book and go hammer and tongs at the bowling. Not a good idea at all. All the three major wickets - Warnapura, Sangakkara and Jayawardene succumbed to poor shot selection more than anything else. It was more of batting error than bowling brilliance. And this needs to be looked at very closely by Trevor Bayliss. In contrast one look at Tilakaratne Dilshan's wicket would show us what exactly bowling brilliance means. He was shot out by Ishant and there was very little he could do. And he was plenty positive during his stay too.
To sum it all up, after the loss in the first Test, a lot of vultures were out circling and calling out in their harsh, guttural voices in anticipation of carrion. But that was not to be. A volley of shots have been fired. Some of the vultures have been killed, some wounded and the rest have flown away - to hide wherever such creatures hide. But they are ready and armed and will be found circling again very soon if the gun is not reloaded properly again. Yes, the fingers loading the gun are not the youngest and they may not be able to perform the niftiest of tricks. But what they do know is when to shoot and when not to.
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