Good Judgment | Vivek Atray
Team India turned the tables on old rivals England with an emphatic 5-0 win in the recently concluded ODI series. The totally one-sided nature of the contest meant that the treatment meted out to the Indians in England over the summer was paid back in the same manner by Team India.
MS Dhoni's team not only regained its number 3 status in the World ODI rankings after sliding to number 5 at the end of the England tour but also got back a large measure of pride that had been lost. Continue reading below
The Test series disaster and the loss of the number 1 ranking to England is still to be avenged though, and India would look forward to playing them on home pitches the next time round in the longer version of the game too.
India did lose the T-20 match to the visitors after the ODI series but that should not bother Dhoni too much, for a 5-0 result meant that England have now lost 14 of their last 15 ODIs against India in this country.
The English batting was the more obvious culprit than was their bowling in the series, with batsman after batsman failing to apply himself and holing out after settling in. On these pitches batsmen have to milk the bowling with singles and twos, because the boundaries are bound to come often enough to put up a sizeable total on the board. The Englishmen, with the notable exception of Jonathan Trott, showed no application at all.
England's bowling was totally ineffective against batsmen who are at home on these pitches. Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, Suresh Raina and most impressively, the skipper himself, were in full flow against the pedestrian fare dished out by the English bowlers.
India's bowling had a new look to it but the spinners R. Ashwin and Ravinder Jadeja instilled life into the attack and took wicket after wicket by stifling the opposition. The medium pacers were as ineffective as their English counterparts but Varun Aaron showed some pace and penetration towards the end of the series.
The problem for Indian cricket remains the tendency to overdo everything. Dhoni and Raina, for example, looked totally exhausted despite their sparkling performances.
The Indian think-tank needs to juggle its players in order to keep them fresh especially for the still-important Test matches. The Australian tour looms large over the winter and Indis would have to be at its very best against a resurgent home side in that series.
Before that, there is the not-so-small matter of hosting the West Indies in a Test and ODI series. Play on, Team India!
