Published: Mar 26, 2015, 09:22 PM (IST)
Edited: Mar 26, 2015, 09:22 PM (IST)
India crashed to a 95-run defeat against Australia in the World Cup semi-finals played at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) on Thursday. Their unbeaten streak as well as their unbelievable run of bowling out all of their opponents was brought to a grinding halt by the formidable Aussies. The manner in which India’s dominating campaign went all pear-shaped in the crunch brought back memories of Eugenie Bouchard from last year’s Wimbledon women’s singles final. (READ: Australia vs India, second semi-final in Sydney in caricatures)
You may not remember much about Eugenie “Genie” Bouchard now, even if you watch tennis, considering she was last seen slumping to defeat against an unheralded opponent at the Indian Wells tournament. Yet, last Wimbledon, she was the hottest player on the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Tour, and widely fancied to win the title before bowing out rather timidly to Petra Kvitova in a terribly one-sided final. Since then, Bouchard has come to unfortunately epitomise how the best-laid plans may come to nought on the sporting arena. (Australia vs India: Pick of the tweets)
As in India’s case, Bouchard coasted through the matches leading up to the final in a fashion so smooth and nerveless that she practically had the commentators eating out of her hand. She also followed, religiously, a simple but effective gameplan that proved good enough to get her to the final — but not nearly enough in the final, as it turned out.
Likewise, India’s bowling attack, usually its weakest link, relied on the short-pitched stuff to dramatically raise its effectiveness. On the bouncy Australian pitches, India’s bowlers, sometimes derided as glorified ball boys, proved hard to get away. Attempts by the opposing teams’ batsmen to take on short-pitched deliveries with the pull shot more often than not backfired. And so it was that India attained the amazing feat of bowling out their opposition in every match they played in the tournament, right up to the quarter-finals. Nobody, not even the most diehard fan of the Indian team, had expected that. (READ: Michael Clarke: A World Cup win would be an icing on the cake for the summer that the Australian cricket team had)
And yet, the very strategy that proved so effective against earlier opponents came unstuck against the Aussies. For good measure, Australia had warned in the run-up to the match that the short- pitched stuff would not work against them. It was summarily dismissed as more of their trademark psychological warfare. And yet, Australia have usually proved able to live up to their boast. They were true to their word yet again. The Indian pace trio of Mohammad Shami, Umesh Yadav and Mohit Sharma kept pitching it short and the Australian batsmen kept pulling…without getting out. When Steve Smith pulled Yadav thrice for four in the 10th over, it was clear that India’s winning strategy for the tournament would not win them the semi-final.
It had the effect of throwing the Indian ranks into disarray, if not downright panic. This became painfully evident in the death overs as the Indian bowlers attempted, too late in the day, to bowl yorkers and sent down full tosses instead. Distraught, they followed these up with length balls which too got the treatment from the Aussies. The efforts of spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja to curtail Australia’s push towards a big total were negated as Mitchell Johnson scored 27 off just nine deliveries towards the end of the innings.
As he watched his carefully laid out plans go waste by the imperious co-hosts, Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, ever the picture of expressionless calm under intense pressure, shook his head in a very visible sign of worry. The tough-as-nails Bouchard, on that fateful Saturday at Wimbledon, too looked alarmed as Kvitova bashed her from corner to corner. It is all the more telling in Dhoni’s case as his reputation was built on a mountain of success and not mere hype. But all good things do eventually come to an end. (READ: MS Dhoni: There was pressure but we needed to bat well as our batsmen know how to chase over 300)
The ill-fated chase was another story. But India had already lost more than half the battle by conceding 329 runs. Impossible may be nothing, but nobody plans to win a semi-final by chasing down 330 against four time champions in their backyard.
On Thursday, India, like Bouchard, found that the sporting battlefield can be an unforgiving place when things don’t go according to the script. ‘Won’t give it back’ turned into ‘We’re going back’ in the space of a few hours.
(Madan Mohan is a chartered accountant from Mumbai. The writing bug bit him when he was eight and todate, he has not been cured of it. He loves music, cricket, tennis and cinema and writing on cricket is like the icing on the cake. He also writes a blog if he is not feeling too lazy at http://rothrocks.wordpress.com/)
