Thus the One Day series is over and Australia won it 4-2 and they really deserved it. Yesterday was Kartik’s (Murali) day. He bowled superbly and then batted sensibly to fetch runs from the track where Australian pacers were bowling superbly. Murali Kartik’s performance revived the memories of Sunil Joshi against South Africa (http://content-ind.cricinfo.com/indvaus/engine/match/66242.html). Sunil Joshi was also a left arm orthodox bowler. That was his day but unfortunately in next match, the South Africans took so many runs against his bowling that he could never come out of that psychological pressure. Hope history won’t repeat for Murali Kartik and he will be bowling at his best in coming future. In yesterday match, clearly the pitch was for bowlers. The pacers got the movement in the air and also the spinners had adequate help coming from the track. I believe Australia would not have even scored 160 if the India pacers would have bowled properly. They lacked accuracy and with the helping wickets they were getting all swings converted in wide. On other side, Australian bowlers read the track properly and bowled in right areas to expose the depth of India batting. Coming back to entire series, one thing which MS Dhoni and Indian management could not read was that the Australian bowling attack was almost ineffective against the Indian tail enders. They really didn’t have any plan to get out Harbhajan, Zaheer and Co. Have they (Indian Team Management) known that in 6th game at Nagpur, Uthappa and Dhoni would have charged Australian attack a couple of over early clearly thinking that the players like Zaheer, Harbhajan, Kartik can fetch runs in death overs against Australian attack. Look for the all One Day matches in these series and you will find that Australia always struggled to get out Indian tail Enders. In fact in every match Indian tail Enders had scored consistently. This is a fact which can give some advantage for Indian camp for the test series (in Australia) where usually the tail Enders also gets chance to bat for long.
This One Day series can see the demise of a talented pacer like S Sreesanth. He unnecessarily got himself involved in all useless controversies which affected his state of mind and that negative effect was seen in his bowling. He could never concentrate. Actually Australian team was successful in getting this bowler disturbed himself his rhythm and they did that in a much planned way. I remember an article written by Ponting in TOI during the final phase of 20-20 world cup even before the Australian arrived to India for the One Day cricket series. In his column he targeted Sreesanth and wrote his bowling figures are far better than the quality of his bowling. As I read the column I understood that the right hand Australian batsmen are getting difficulty in playing Sreesath. In fact that was seen in earlier 20-20 match. Ponting understood that this single guy can make difference and so he started targeting him. They used to target Sachin earlier when they thought Sachin plays like a match winner but now as they know that Sachin is not in same touch they pointed out Sreesatnth. Sreesanth had bowled some inspiring spells in earlier test matches where India won against West Indies and England. Ponting felt this guy can make the difference so he and his company started targeting him to disturb his state of mind. In the same way like they do with Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff knowing that these guys can change the result of ashes series. Dhoni, Sreesanth and Indian cricket management would have understood this tactic much earlier and would have avoided all on and off the field talking tactics. Hope Sreesanth will be back in the same rhythm to bowl well spells in incoming test series in Australia. Else it will be a victory for Ponting and Co in the mind game.
