A price paid for complacency

Watched the match b/w India and the West Indies yesterday. Not a birthday surprise I would have wished for. The first news on June 13th, 2009 dealt with a way below par performance by the men in blue routed and outplayed completely by a determined Caribbean side.

Thanks to the half hour power cut, I missed the beginning of the match. By the time I switched the TV on, India were 37/3 after six overs. And I thought I would miss Rohit Sharma's onslaught just minutes before that! What I missed was a superb display by the West Indian quicks who bowled to a plan and with a purpose. They succeeded in bouncing out the in-form Rohit Sharma and Suresh Raina. After that we saw some t20 batsmanship display by the "big hitter" captain of India, a forgettable innings of which even Ishant Sharma won't be proud of. 11 of 23 bowls cannot be counted as a t20 innings by any stretch of imagination, and when it comes from a batsman who, four years ago, had hammered 183 runs in the second innings of a one-dayer, it is tough to swallow. I am sure I was not the only one who was shell shocked to see Dhoni presenting the full face of the bat to demonstrate his forward defense skills on more than one occasion.

At the other end, Yuvraj seemed to have hardly noticed what his partner was trying hard to achieve. He played an outstanding innings, just the kind that was expected of him, if not better, and scored 66 of 43 balls. After 14 overs, India were 82/4. Thanks to some late order hitting by Yusuf and Harbhajan India winded the innings on a respectable 153 of 20 overs.

During the late 90s and the early years of the 21st century, Jayasuriya built his reputation as a bowler-killer and many of his best one day innings were scored against India. This resulted in the Indian captains focussing largely on getting the Matara Marauder's wicket and they believed that if they got his wicket early, their job was half done. The Indians repeated the same mistake against the West Indies yesterday. Dhoni took an eternity to set the field when Gayle was on strike and formulated his plans around the scalping of the Gayle force. He hardly seemed to have taken into reckoning the powerful West Indian batting line up. The Indians were successful in getting their rival captain's wicket without much damage done to their chances. But Lendl Simmons played a good hand of 44 off 37 balls to support an immaculate innings from Dwayne Bravo. The all-rounder seemed to do nothing wrong on a day in which he picked a four-for and scored 66 off 36 balls and there wasn't a doubt in anyone's mind about who the man of the day was going to be. Things would have gone worse for Dhoni when he missed a simple chance to run Simmons out in the 15th over. But luckily for him, Simmons was dismissed two balls later. Chanderpaul, too, didn't make it easier for India when he hit three fours in the nine balls he faced to score eighteen runs. In the end Bravo finished the innings off in style by depositing a Zaheer Khan full toss over the long off fence, the shot summing up his team's performance.

The bottom line is that India was caught unawares by a red hot West Indies team who looked like they badly wanted to win this one. Maybe they took this one lightly and thought that it was a cake walk. While Indian team is left licking the wounds with probably no other option than to win their next two matches convincingly, a confident West Indies team would take on a strong South Africa today.