It was a fine day’s cricket on a good pitch and Team India came off second best.
Given India’s ODI form this cricket season, to expect more would have been too fanciful. Even so, Rohit Sharma gave is reason to hope with a cultured innings in run-filled conditions at WACA where the famous bounce had been tamed by pitch preparation with limited-overs cricket in mind. And young Barinder Sran lit up those hopes even more by bagging the wickets of both big-hitting Aussie openers.
Would Team India defy the odds and pull off a win against the ODI world champions, that too at Perth? It was not to be but there was none to blame. The young quicks did their bit in tying down the run chase and the bowling began to wilt only in the face of the brilliance of Steve Smith and the well-known one-day abilities of George Bailey. The decision in his favour when he had not even opened his account may have had some effect on the end result, but then India cannot whine since they are the ‘Luddites’ who oppose the DRS.
The southerners seem to have taken aggressive batsmanship to a different level in their hemisphere where Australian and New Zealand batsmen, bred on true and sporting pitches with bounce calling for powerful stroke making square of the wicket, are setting new standards in which quick scoring records are being challenged almost routinely. The T-20 World Cup could slow things down because of Indian pitches which don’t always last the 40 overs uniformly. But, under the southern Sun, batsmen are really flourishing and it can’t be such a bad thing for the game.
Rohit’s innings, which set the tone for the high scoring game in Perth, was structured in the classic mould, unhurried in defence and well paced out with an accurate eye for the drivable ball. This was a knock Rohit can be proud of as he built it splendidly before stepping on the accelerator. The modern batsmen’s skills are such any time they size up a hittable ball they can deliver the knockout punch clearing the boundary, which these days are marked by shorter and shorter boundaries.
Spin cannot be too big a factor on true pitches, which is why Team India had no chance of containing the calculated onslaught of a very good Australian pair. They not only milked the spinners to the onside but also drove them straight at every given opportunity. It never did appear that India was in the game although they had piled on the pressure at the start. So well timed was the chase. There is very little the team can do unless it raises its limited-overs cricket a notch or two, particularly with the ball and on the field where they have to look sharper.
It is reassuring that there is less to worry about Indian batting. The quality supply chain is still in good shape as evidenced in another very young batsman showing signs of precocious talent. The world record breaking Pranav Dhanawade of KC Gandhi school’s Under-16 team may have played only the Under-14 team of the Gurukul school as their principal would not permit the senior boys to skip studying for the exams, but he certainly put his name way up in the stratosphere with an unbelievable 1009*, erasing along the way every individual batting record in the game.
Pranav is about the fourth youngster from Mumbai to show this Bradmanesque streak of compiling a gigantic score, the others in the last five years having been Sarfraz Khan who made 439, Armaan Jaffer who got into the nervous 490s up to 498 and Prithvi Shaw who went on to 546. Khan and Jaffer have made it to the Under-19 World Cup squad under coach Rahul Dravid. It can’t be long before Pranav also breaks into the big time like them and, maybe, some day challenge the records in T20 and ODI cricket, much like Rohit Sharma is doing while flying the Bombay batsmanship standard high in the air.
