There was a remarkably cool performance by the relative newcomer to Team India. The calm manner in which he handled the business end of the chase of a mountainous 330 on a large Australian ground suggested a competence far beyond a 4th ODI appearance player. But then whose fault is it that Manish Pandey has played only that few in his career?
He burst upon our cricket consciousness when he became the first Indian to score an IPL century, which was way back in 2009 in South Africa. It is a bit of a mystery why he was not tried or fast tracked at least into the T20 team after that revealing performance for the Bengaluru team. His ODI record is suggestive of selection prejudice having played a role in his exclusion up until a series against Zimbabwe, (71 in his first game), last year. He never got the kind of consideration reserved for a favoured few.
Years of honing his temperament as one of the consistent members of the Karnataka batting lineup who led to the team enjoying a couple of great years recently on the domestic circuit, Pandey seems the finished product now. His craftiness at the finish — that precise off glide for a boundary took the pressure off like air exiting a balloon after Dhoni had been dismissed — is indicative of a batsman who knows exactly what he is doing about what is needed in the end game.
It has been said somewhere that Pandey has had his brushes with authority. Do these things really matter or are we going back in time to an era when the administration was so supreme that players could not show any individualistic streak? Had he been a mean rebel, it would have been known by now. In fact, Team India encouraged some others who were considered far more rebellious than Pandey.
If Pandey had enjoyed half the openings that others got because they were considered close to the captain MS Dhoni, he would have been a settled member of the ODI and T20 team by now. But these are matters which should not cloud our judgment of his talent, which was there for all to see in the final ODI Down Under. Never mind if it was a dead rubber and Australia were leaking runs and missing catches in an unusually amateurish way.
It is remarkable how much confidence one win can inject into a team. Team India were transformed performers when going into the T20 series. From the start they looked a different combination from the team that fumbled the defence of all targets in the ODIs. There was a look of meanness to the batting thanks once again to the astonishing form Virat Kohli runs into on Australian pitches with their true bounce and propensity to allow the ball to come on to the bat.
The batsmen are certain to be the masters of the game when wickets are prepared as per the ICC manual asking for absolute true bounce and dry enough not to allow surprising bounce even early in the game. The bat must reign supreme if the television producers are to be given their full worth of 100-overs-in-a-day matches. After all, they pay for the tunes that the cricketers play.
Spectators wish to see the bat dominate too, which is why we see yesterday’s rare 300s becoming commonplace ODI totals today.
As a result of the showing in the opening T20 in Adelaide, it would be unwise to say Team India are the overwhelming favourites for the T20 worlds. But, at home, they will be really formidable and very hard to beat, what with effective spin bowling in the middle overs propping up the team that will run on its batting might. India lost the last T20 world held in Asia but the best chance of a repeat of the 2007 triumph may lie in the forthcoming final at the Eden Gardens in April.
