Dada dropped !! & Kotla win

The inevitable has happened. I mean, for both points in the head line. Dropping of Sourav and Indian victory at Kotla. I will address the 2^nd topic later in the post. I am pretty sure that we have already hit the record on the amount of news paper columns, air time in TV, blogs’s comments & postings, road side tea stall discussions on this very topic of Sourav Ganguly. There are passionate lovers of him on one side and on the other side, people who would want him go once and for all. Let me tell you, I am in neither group. I am very aware of what he has done over the years and also know pretty well on how he plays in the field.

I am going to disregard the Kiran More quotes that followed the decision to drop Dada since our selectors are not an eloquent bunch (remember the all rounder tag !!) and come out with vague, unconvincing reasons that are the butt of jokes at the next party.

In my own books, Sourav has been not in prime form and he himself will know that, heart of hearts. He has not played one fluent innings for several years now and he is not comparable to Yuvaraj, at least not in current form. Yuvaraj has still ways to go while playing spin bowling ( his true test is going to be against Kaneria later in the coming months) but in current form, he is streets ahead of Sourav and hence deserves the number 6 spot. I will say, Kiran More should have kept Ganguly in the 14, even if it meant that he will not be in the playing 11 and Gambhir should have got the boot. So much has happened so quickly for Sourav, one more indignity does not really matter. It is better than being given the sack (and heckled by the crowd).

Now, let us examine the two decent contributions of Sourav at Kotla. In both innings, he played a decent part in preventing a collapse but I felt that he was way too slow on the 4^th morning, when the match was well in the bag. The selectors had delayed their announcement for the 3^rd test till Wednesday (normally, I have seen them doing it in the 4^th day end) and all Sourav had to do was to hit a couple of pleasing 4s on the 4^th morning and coast to a 50+ score in double quick time. That would have kept the proverbial Damocles sword away. But, he choose to play in his somnolent ways and dragged his feat for an hour and did not win any admirers. That very approach pretty much sealed it (along with Yuvi’s 77 n.o). I just hope that the deep divide, we have seen in the cricket crazy nation, will not get any deeper after this. But, one never knows and perhaps the last word on this topic is yet to come.

The other inevitable happened at Kotla and ‘Jumbo’ once again proved that he is the sole match winner capable of repeating this act (he has done it now for over a decade) time in and time out. What was Attappattu doing by holding back Dilshan? Anyway, it was all over by the time Dilshan came in and he and Jaya delayed the inevitable a bit.

I would like to ask the hypothetical question - what if India had not succumbed to Murali on 2nd day morning? IMHO - this match would have ended in draw since India would have scored too slowly for any result other than a draw. Remember, even the 2nd innings change of tempo came only with Pathan and in normal proceedings, he wouldn't have opened. So, in my opinion, Murali's flurry of wickets on 2nd morning contributed to arriving at a result, albeit - the one which Lanka did not want. It might sound wierd but look at the scoring pattern of India in last 10 test matches and anyone can see this.

The positives in this game for India is their will to fight out of the adversary and also think out of the box (Irfan as opener). Question is – can they continue the trend long term and against more established opposition?