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Thanks for being
the real match winners! |
A Feature by Syed Ahsan Ali
on July 01, 2007
 Sports
writing is like that. It can make you
look the biggest fool on this living
planet on one day and on the next make
you feel as if you are know-all type
kind of genius. And it becomes more so
eating your words kind of business if
you write on the most unpredictable
creatures in the world, the cricketers.
The Second One Day International between
South Africa and India made my
misconceptions about the knowledge about
the game take a nosedive. And the people
who were on the tip of my fingers made
it happen for me, Sachin and Yuvraj who
obviously became the heroes of Friday’s
victory.
Both got the better of me and in deep
down somewhere it made me happy. Because
these two individuals can give you more
reasons for loving this game more than
ever. I wrote that Sachin has been slow
and tentative and Yuvraj has been
irresponsible when it really matters.
Both played brilliant innings to coast
India home serenely.
 Frankly,
it was overall an excellent team exhibition for
Ganguly’s 42, Karthik’s gritty 32 in a pressure
cooker situation and also for keeping South
Africa down to 226 and then Yuvraj and Sachin
made it more special in more than one ways. This
was because of Sachin’s irritatingly slow pace
approach that made it all flabbergasted
especially when it came against a lack-luster
South African attack. Questions that were mostly
ugly raised their heads about his effectiveness
in the game, but on Friday he cleared all those
doubts with one blistering knock embellished
with 13 boundaries and two sixes. His ability
was never under any scrutiny but his defensive
approach made all of us think otherwise about
his ideas about his game plan. An attackingly
dangerous Sachin can tear any bowling apart but
when he allows others to crawl all over him the
he leaves the whole Indian set up in a
misbalance. It has to be the only way a player
of Sachin’s class has to build his innings. His
aura, presence, magic has to be reflected in the
game and on Friday it did reflect and the result
is known to all and sundry.
The second best thing that has happened to
Indian cricket is a resurgent Yuvraj which was
needed most by the selectors who like to set up
a foundation with the team which holds a right
balance of youth and experience. Yuvraj plays
the key role in the build up to a team which can
take over from its senior pros. He is one man
who leads the Indian side to the winning podium
invariably when he tends to get his act right.
Well done on being the match winners which they
are and they can be on any given day and thanks
for making me realize that sports writing is a
serious business which carries in itself the
risk of eating words at any wrong turn.
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