The “battle of the World Cup winners” turned out to be a mismatch, after all. For all their bluster and bravado, India couldn’t follow up big talk and tall claims with commensurate performances. Australia, on the other hand, proved that they are masters at walking the talk, outclassing Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s men in every department.
The 4-2 scoreline Ricky Ponting’s men chalked up in the seven match one-day series was a perfect reflection of the gulf in class between the two teams. Not without good reason have the Australians won the World Cup three times in a row, or been ranked the number one team in the world for the better part of a decade now.
If India thought they could ride on the momentum generated by their Twenty20 triumph in South Africa last month, they were in for a rude shock as Australia demonstrated that one swallow does not make a summer.
Caught between their experiments with youth and their continued reliance on proven masters, India were punished for confusion in the minds leading to patchy, inconsistent displays on the park. Most of the stellar batting performances came from experienced men hardened by years of international battle.
Robin Uthappa fired the lone salvo for the young guns, but all too briefly. One-day cricket is not about the cute 30s or the bruising 40s that are the essence of the Twenty20 game. That was the message Andrew Symonds drove home in emphatic fashion, holding the Australians together in almost every game as he intelligently alternated between the composed and the furious with ridiculous ease.
The morale-boosting win in Mumbai on Wednesday apart, India’s biggest gain was the rediscovery of the left-arm spin of Murali Kartik. Forgotten for 20 months after going out with a shoulder surgery, the 31-year-old drove home the value of experience and perseverance.
Once again, it was clear that just as India’s bowlers need help from conditions to be effective in limited-overs cricket, talk of India’s dominance on home patch is no more than a carefully constructed myth. An acrimonious series that saw bad blood between teams ended with allegations of racist abuse against sections of the crowd in Vadodara, Nagpur and Mumbai.
It is a reprehensible trend that ought to be nipped in the bud, and it is the responsibility of the administrators, the players and the fans alike to ensure that cricket doesn’t degenerate into a farce in the absence of popular home victories.
