4
The real World Cup has begun for India. Sachin, Sehwag seem to have set the tone for the final phase. India should have made it huge but they went off the radar during the batting power-play. It's not about scoring runs in power-play but about the manner in which one needs to bat during that period. It was a good toss to win and it just seems that Dhoni's luck with the toss has just got better in the premium tournament.
They say, come the big game and up stands the big man. Sachin did exactly that. The century from the little man would be one for the archives, a prime example of how to bat in one-day cricket and also how to pace an innings.The curator prepared an absolute belter and Indians made the most of it in the beginning. Sehwag's innings was that of brutal power mixed with a bit of luck. But on one end, when Sehwag was blazing around, the little man was scoring at a strike-rate of 145! That was the speciality of this knock.
Sachin was always in command of his innings, mixed aggression and control with exemplary sensibility. His shot-making, running between the wickets needs to be followed by any aspiring cricketer. You can't have a better example. Viru should have taken a leaf out of the great man and cashed on to his start because he can also be as dangerous in the shorter version. As long as the Sachin-Sehwag partnership was on song, the South Africans looked clueless. Actually, they were pretty ordinary in the fielding phase at the start. It was a big game for them and I just got a feeling that the atmosphere got the better of them. There were too many nerves in the first ten overs and it just showed the way the fast bowlers bowled with the new ball. They could pull the game back because Indian batting went haywire in the later phase.
Graeme Smith's captaincy will be really talked about after this match. He looked helpless under pressure and at one stage was setting the field for every ball! The question which will be asked is, whether he is going past his expiry date as captain, something which will be answered in the due course of the tournament.
Come Sunday, it will be interesting to watch Australia in action once again after their rain-washed Sri Lanka match. Since then Mike Hussey has joined in that middle-order and the Aussies surely look to be a more balanced side. Mike will be raring to go and would like to make full use of the remaining group matches before his team gets into business in the knock-out phase.
— The writer is a former Indian captain.
