Re: Australia | India: Dip in form or raising the bar?
thanks for stats golden asif
Re: Australia | India: Dip in form or raising the bar?
I really enjoyed matches between India & Australia, no matter who had better players are who was missing remember both teams were playing with 11 players and they was playing for Australia and India.
India definately made aussie sweat as no one else has done in recent years. And maybe it was pressure of India with batting and bowling performances which made them drop catches too.
Well done Indian team I hope Pakistan can do the same...and it was Indian Unity which turned the table on Aussie's who are so used to sledge asian teams..
Re: Australia | India: Dip in form or raising the bar?
Dr. Saad Shafqat, is a Neurologist at the Agha Khan University Hospital, Karachi...having returned from Boston in 2002.....after five years of stay and practice there. His love for cricket goes beyond imaginaton. **At my consistent approach and encouragement, he took up the huge task of writing Javed Miandad's biography...which was published by the Oxford University Press-Pakistan in 2004. The book has had three editions on great public demand. Saad and myself approached Inzamam for his book but Inzy preferred to look the other way. That was before the last World Cup.
*Saad is the son of Pakistan's famous cardiologist Prof. Hamid Shafqat. He has two sisters of which one is an Asst.Professor in USA and works on UN projects for Social Development...and the eldest is my younger brother Murad's wife..based in Islamabad. **Saad is the founder member of our cricket group Pakistani_Cricketwallas on yahoogroup...since 1999 (World Cup month)...I created. *
Here is a very interesting article by Saad Shafqat..published in THE MAGAZINE of DAWN..............of Sunday 3 Feb-08
*February 03, 2008 *
Analysis: India shining
By Saad Shafqat
Indians are basking in their newfound economic clout, but it is cricketing clout that they ultimately crave and find so satisfying.
Ask people across India if they would rather see Tata Motors buy out Land Rover and Jaguar or have India beat Australia in a cricket series on Australian home turf, and the answer overwhelmingly will be victory at cricket.
Business mergers and financial takeovers involve suited men and women in corner offices and boardrooms, but cricket’s symbolism is at an altogether different level. There is an opportunity to clearly vanquish your rival in an unambiguous calculus of victory and defeat. And if you feel like rubbing your opponent’s nose in it, well, that’s just considered eagerness.
This past week, the much-anticipated India-Australia Test series concluded after four intense matches that had the cricket world riveted. Australia emerged winners with a final tally of 2 Tests to 1, but that scoreline hardly tells the story.
At Melbourne, in the first Test, India were simply blown away. In response to Australian totals of 343 and 351 for 7 declared, they managed only 196 and 161, losing by the crushing margin of 337 runs. Indians managed only one fifty in the whole match, but for the opening day when both Zaheer Khan and Anil Kumble got among the wickets, their bowling never looked penetrative.
On their previous tour to Australia back in 2003-04 India had drawn the 4-Test series 1-1, becoming the only team to escape without a series defeat from a rubber in Australia in the last several years. Indian ambition of ultimate cricket glory demanded they do even better this time. The team went to Sydney, the venue for the second Test, determined to pull even.
Sydney, however, proved a disaster, and India lost a match that they didn’t really deserve to. Australia won the toss and batted but were soon pinned to the mat at 134 for 6. For India, a sizeable first innings lead looked inevitable. Then the tables turned as Andrew Symonds smashed 162 not out. The tail also wagged and Australia recovered to make 463. Even so, Indian batsmen were up to the task and went 69 runs ahead in the first innings. But the lead could easily have been much bigger than that -- by his own admission, Symonds was caught behind on 30 but given not out -- and it played upon the Indian psyche.
Australia’s professional cricket machine played a terrific second innings, leaving India an unrealistic target and a little over two sessions to bat out and save the game. It didn’t go well. Rahul Dravid was incorrectly given out at a crucial moment when he was looking well set to take India to safety. There had been acrimony on the field too and both teams accused each other of offensive behaviour and besmirching the spirit of the game.
In the immediate aftermath of the Sydney Test, all hell broke loose. India threatened to abandon the series and return home. Overnight, Cricket Australia found itself staring at losses in the millions. The atmosphere became taut with anger and anxiety. Tempers eventually cooled off on both sides and the rival captains, Anil Kumble and Ricky Ponting, made a public show of putting their differences aside and looking forward to the remaining Tests.
Perth, where the third Test was scheduled, is not an easy venue for visiting teams. The pitch is one of the fastest in the world, the bounce is unsettling and the Australians come out at you with overwhelming force right from the outset. (Pakistan, to give you some idea, have played 5 Tests at Perth and lost each one decisively.) In fact, Australia hadn’t lost there in 10 years and 5 of Australia’s 8 victories at Perth in the last decade were by an innings margin. This time the stakes were especially high because Australia had also equaled their record unbroken streak of 16 successive wins in the second Test at Sydney and were now within striking distance of history.
But fate had in mind another script. For India, if Sydney was a disaster, Perth became deliverance. In what must be regarded as one of the outstanding fight-backs of Indian Test history, they beat heavy odds to pull off a spectacular win. India seized the initiative right away by winning the toss and batting. Stalwarts like Rahul Dravid (93) and Sachin Tendulkar (71) dusted off the controversies of the preceding week to hold their nerve and help India post 330. Indian bowlers, led by the late swing of R.P. Singh, then demolished Australia and snatched a first innings lead of 118 that proved vital. Australia were eventually set 413 runs to win -- almost a record fourth innings target -- but never looked in command and fell short by 72.
The final Test, at Adelaide, was a tame draw with honours shared and both teams emerging with heads held high. Sachin Tendulkar notched his 39th career hundred and would have been the major news from this Test, but he was eclipsed by the shock retirement of Australia’s star wicket-keeper Adam Gilchrist.
India may have lost the series 2-1, but the manner in which they exorcised the demons of Sydney to claim a conquest at Perth has been exhilarating. Indeed, in retrospect, but for the umpiring gaffes in the second Test, the series result might well have been 2-1 in India’s favour.
For a while now, we have been hearing that India -- as a nation and a people -- is rising. Their emerging economic might and global influence has given them a spring in the national step, a buoyant self-assurance, a confident glint in the eye. Yet the one thing missing from India’s definition of its own success has been dominance in cricket. Now that, too, is being taken care of.
Indian cricket pundits are found saying that for them the marquee cricket series are always the contests against England, Pakistan and Australia. Well, they beat England in England last summer, defeated Pakistan at home in the fall and have now pulled off a miracle at Perth that has left them almost rubbing shoulders with Australia at the top of the ICC cricket rankings. Make no mistake about it. Indians are basking in their newfound economic clout, but it is cricketing clout that they ultimately crave and find so satisfying.
Legend: Innovator, fighter
During the 1999 World Cup in England, Adam Gilchrist was a rookie Australian wicket-keeper batsman eager to do well for his team and make his mark.
He was opening the batting and had a reputation for utilising the early overs with spirited hitting. In the group match against Pakistan at Leeds, he faced Wasim Akram but had his off-bail clipped on the third ball of the Australian innings, sending him back for a duck. Australia lost the match by 10 runs and Gilchrist took it personally. The next day, he accepted responsibility for his performance in a newspaper column, stating as a matter-of-fact that he had to perform at his level-best and deliver for his team, otherwise he didn’t deserve to be in the Australian side.
Last week, during the fourth Test against India at Adelaide, Gilchrist unexpectedly fumbled a catch. As he has always done, he took it personally and decided his performance, skills and reflexes were no longer at the peak he expected them to be. No one had really anticipated him to retire for the next couple of seasons, yet that is what his personal self-examination led him to do. The announcement spread like a shock wave across the world.
Accolades have since been coming thick and fast and they are every bit well-deserved. Adam Gilchrist distinguished himself by scaling unprecedented heights in the role of a wicketkeeper-batsman. He could have walked into the Australian side as either a wicket-keeper or a batsman alone, which made him two great players in one. In ODI cricket, he opened the batting and brutalised all attacks with fearless powerplay shots. In Test cricket, he batted at no.7, delivering surprise assaults when least expected. He walked in when the opposition was taking a breather having reduced Australia to 7 down and proceeded to smash the bowling all over the place. In both forms of cricket, he was as reliable a wicket-keeper as any -- a reality confirmed by his holding the world record for the highest number of wicket-keeping dismissals in both Tests and ODIs.
*Adam Gilchrist will go down in history as one of the key figures responsible for the Australian cricket dominance of this decade, alongside the likes of Shane Warne, Glen McGrath, Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh. *
He will also be remembered as one of the most exemplary characters in cricket. In an age of mounting deception and dishonesty, when even cheating is tacitly forgiven if no one is watching, Gilchrist continued to walk if he was out, deny catches if he thought he had floored them, be graceful in victory and composed in defeat. He will be remembered as a player and a gentleman in the truest cricketing traditions.— SS