|
They Came, They
Saw and They Finally Conquered |
- A Review
of the 3rd Test at Nagpur by Venkat
What Hitler could not do, Bradman did - subdued
England in England and today What Mark Taylor,
Steve Waugh etc could not do, Gilchrist did -
beat India in India. Yes folks, the Aussies have
eventually conquered what they termed it as "The
Final Frontier". If the great Greek conqueror
Alexander the Great would like to be reborn in
this world today, he would surely like to be a
cricketer and be a proud member of the Aussie
team, for they have repeated his feat of
Conquering the World by beating India in India
by a whooping margin of 342 runs. Its history
time in Australia, but unfortunately for Indian
fans, they were in the wrong end of history
being rewritten. Cricketfundas.com gives its
readers an exclusive review of the Historic 3rd
Test between India and Australia at Nagpur.
India:
The Indians were already up against before the
match began. Fitness problems beckoned the
Indians as Harbhajan Singh was forced out due to
viral fever and a last minute injury to the
Indian skipper Saurav Ganguly left them in the
comparatively weaker hands of Rahul Dravid. This
was the first blow to the Indians and the rest
was soon to follow. The bowling in this test
deserves a particular mention as it was all over
the place in the first innings and the pitch
that was supposedly tailor-made for bowling
proved to be something different when the
Indians had the ball in their hands. Zaheer Khan
and Murali Kartik were the only men who handled
the ball quite well by taking some wickets. Anil
Kumble wasn't upto the mark the way he was in
Chennai and he went for runs. The inexperience
showed in the bowling as they succumbed to the
pressures of the Aussie batsmen. The batting did
not respond either to the huge score set for
them by the Aussies. Mohammad Kaif, justified
his selection by providing some amount of
resistance but it was no roadblock for the
Aussies to gain a sizable lead. The second
innings bowling had spells of great bowling,
backed up by spells of bowling rubbish, where
runs were flowing freely. The batting went from
bad to worse in the second essay, with Sehwag
being the lone battler making a fifty. All is
not lost for the Indians, except the series.
They will have to redeem themselves in Mumbai,
if they have to provide a semblance of
competition to the next visitors, South Africa
soon. It will be an uphill task from here for
the Indians, but hope still remains and it'll be
left to see how much of that hope translates
into reality.
Australia:
It wont take words to describe what the Baggy
Greens might be feeling right now and will take
a while for the thought of winning in India to
sink in their minds. It was as though they wake
up on a morning, stride out to the field and see
things just happen for them. And indeed things
did happen for them as per the script set by
their injured skipper Ricky Ponting. Damien
Martyn showed India and the world his elegance,
class and style and proved his critics wrong
with close to 200 runs in the game. Every tour
in India produces someone special for Australia,
and this time it is Michael Clarke for sure. He
also made good scores in the chances he got in
the match. The batting was the driving force for
this historic win for Australia. The bowlers
bowled in a lot carefree manner than they did in
Chennai, and the results were there to see.
Jason Gillespie caused immense havoc to the much
talked about Indian batting order, and the
wickets he took were hard earned. Shane Warne
showed and proved to India what a world class
spinner he was. When every action seems to go
the right way, there can be only winner and in
this Test and Series, it has been a one team
show by the Australians. One feels they
thoroughly deserved this match and series win
simply because winning in India is something
that was only every member of the Australian
team dreamt of at the beginning of tour. At
last, a dream has come true. For the Aussies
though, the perfect finish to this series will
be one more win at Mumbai, just to make the
series win more sweeter and something to cherish
for a long
long time.
Its introspection time for the Indians, and one
could well see some drastic changes taking place
during the pre-fourth test days. Their
weakness have been exposed by the Aussies and it
will take some doing for the Indians if they
have to bounce back from this huge loss to
Australia. With a series against South Africa
coming up shortly, its time to take the
positives from this series and look forward and
hope to do well ! I think they can draw enough
inspiration from the Aussies as to how patient
one needs to be to convert a dream to reality
and some cricketing lessons from the Aussie
greats wont make them any worse !
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