Team India, believe!

The twelfth month, the last of the year and the month of rewinding the past memories, will commence and end with the African safari. In the last eleven months, we have won many battles and wars too. But most of the battles were fought on the home soil. “Apni gali me kutta bhi sher hota hai”, we have heard it so many times in the cricketing fraternity, especially in deshi discussion.  Now the onus lies with the young, high performing players to erase it with the same high profile performance on the pitch of Africans. Yes! The pitch, the razor sharp, green top, with abundant amount of bounce. And how much difficult it is to play on it can be elaborated with the two figures- 102 and 57 all out, in Durban, 1997, and the 4-0 defeat in ODI, year 2006.

The juggle and struggle

Poking out side the off stump, playing across the stumps, driving away from the body, these are the common and blessed (!) stroking habits of Indian players. Vacant mid-wicket region and open mid-off area add to the temptation of playing these strokes. The more danger is, the lion-alike bowlers in the form of Steyn, Morkel, and Philander supported by the sharp, and friendly 22-yard strip will make the job tougher. Consequently, the result could get described like this, edge… and taken in the slip, inside edge on to the stump, plum in front. Apart from it, the barrage of whirling bouncers will serve as complementary gift!

We have already seen in the just concluded one-day series, how our new lads struggled and juggled to face the Steyns, the Morkels. Considering that the test matches would be more hostile, and the host has cunningly planned it on pace tracks- the Wanderers and Durban. Thank god! Zaheer is in the team, at least for the test series. Hope, he along with Umesh Yadav and new swing Shami Ahmed, will form the formidable pace attack and give a neck to neck fight to S. African speed guns.

“It’s not about the runs, but how you run the game is important.” That is what Dhoni expressed while advertising for star sports. Now we can only say and hope, “Team India, believe!”