Sehwag an underachiever in one-dayers

The notable feature of this tri-series is that unlike in recent times, most of the games have been low scoring ones.

Other than the wicket at Sydney last Sunday, none of the wickets have been great batting tracks, and truth be told, none of the teams have batted to potential either. Hopefully that trend will turn during the finals.

I doubt whether a third final will be required because whoever wins the first of a best of three invariably wins 2-0. And needless to say, we back ourselves.

There is no arguing that we have eased our way into the finals entirely due to the efforts of our bowlers, Brett Lee has been outstanding so far, and I have never seen him perform so consistently for so long in his entire career.

The Allan Border Medal was a rich tribute to the way he has led the attack for the last year. He and Matthew Hayden were my best two players when I voted, and the results went exactly that way.

They have both been instrumental in many of the key successes we have had in 2007, and hopefully they will continue that form. Nathan Bracken and Mitchell Johnson have ably assisted Lee as well, and this trio has helped us defend really modest totals on many occasions in the tri-series.

I was not too upset after our defeat against Sri Lanka yesterday. It’s always tough to raise a team in a game once the finalists are decided. It was not a pretty sight to see the procession of wickets, but I hope that that was just a blip before the really big games.

For India too, batting would be a worry. There have been a couple of players who have impressed, but they still have not come up with a good batting effort that starts from the top of the order.

Sachin Tendulkar has been below par, and that invariably impacts the side. I have been very impressed with the young brigade, especially Gautam Gambhir, who seems to be maturing into a good opening bat.

Virender Sehwag has been an under-achiever in the one-dayers, and it will be interesting to see whether they play him tomorrow.

The Indians missed a fifth bowler last Sunday, and it remains to be seen whether they will go in with four bowlers again.

Munaf Patel was not playing in that game, and Sreesanth went for quite a few runs. Clearly, captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has quite a few selections to mull over tonight.

For us, there will be no change other than Matthew Hayden coming in for Brad Haddin. Hayden has not really fired in this tournament, so in many ways he is due for a big one.

I suspect that our batting will come good tomorrow as it always does in the big games.