India vs England — Quick flicks of the day

Harbhajan’s performance brought collective relief

There’s something seriously wrong when a team which had won their previous match effortlessly goes down by 90 runs in their next. But England made a few wrong choices on the field and Indians were surprisingly as good as they ever were. With both the teams already into the next phase of the competition, Indians will take some sort of confidence going into their next crucial game.

In an otherwise nominal contest, here are some positives and negatives these teams are taking forward:

Under-appreciating the value of spin

Choosing Tim Bresnan over Samit Patel for this match wasn’t really a wise decision, as England found out when they were caught one spinner short.

On a pitch which was turning a lot, Graeme Swann was left totally without support from the other end. The disparity in their bowling chart stands proof for it, with the next most economical bowler Steven Finn conceding almost double of the 17 Swann had conceded in his quota of four overs.

England had two options in their spin department and two ways to go about it — either to go with the last match’s combination with Samit Patel in the eleven or bring Danny Briggs as replacement for one of the pacers. But they decided to rather strengthen their pace attack, which is somehow understandable considering India’s trouble against quality pace. But this way, underestimating an Asian team in their own backyard wasn’t too wise of Stuart Broad.

Rohit Sharma’s miraculous T20 outings

After a horrible ODI series against Sri Lanka, not much was expected from India’s so-called next superstar. There’s no doubting his talent and all those tales about his making his own dismissals looking poetic, but after a point, all that matters is result on the field.

After a series of 0, 0, 4, 4, 4* in his last five matches before flying to Sri Lanka for this tournament, he shouldn’t even have been considered for the squad. But it seems Rohit is finally looking to justify the selectors’ faith in him. In his four matches here, including the two warm-up games, he has managed 139 runs with two fifties at an average of 69.5.

His unbeaten 55 runs from 33 balls in this match and, especially his assault in the last few overs made a lot of difference to India’s total. Off the last four overs, India collected 51 runs and moved their score to a highly respectable position.

England batsmen looked clueless against spin

Harbhajan relieves us of many burdens

The off-spinner who had once championed these turfs started this tour unsure of even getting a game. But as it turns out to, Harbhajan has made another fine comeback. It’s not the number of wickets he took or England’s shoddy display with the bat that made it easier, but it was the way in which he was turning the ball and fooling the batsman with his guile.

While this stands nowhere near his comeback at Eden Gardens in 2001, this certainly was special for somewhere every cricket fan wanted this to happen. After all, India had lived too long without their premier spin bowler.

Pathan shows some spark in favourable conditions

India has been doing this since the Chappel-era, and this almost destroyed Irfan Pathan’s career. While keeping Sehwag out actually made sense, opening with Pathan reeked of desperation rather than having anything to do with flexibility. Pathan managed a run-a-ball eight. This kind of a thing early in the match does affect a player’s confidence.

But Dhoni made amends when he handed over the new ball to him, asking him to spearhead the bowling attack in absence of Zaheer Khan. Some years ago, we had seen this as a natural transition for the future. But that’s past now.

Though not exactly how we had wanted the fairytale to be, Pathan was still handy with the ball dismissing England’s most successful batsmen from the previous match, Alex Hales and Luke Wright off successive overs. He has extra flab, looks a pale shadow of his former self, but 19 wickets from his last seven matches shows he has learnt to perform within his limitations. There’s age still on his side and we wish he will be able to bring back the Pathan of the yore.

Acceptance will be better than denial for Broad

Stuart Broad’s statements after the match didn’t really impress. While there’s a visible deficiency of effort on the part of English batsmen while trying to learn to play spin bowling, Broad downplayed the importance of the match, instead conceding, “It is not like tomorrow is going to be a different day. It is not as if we have to go home or anything… we still hop on a bus to Kandy in the morning.”

This has stretched too far now. After a sorry display against Pakistan in UAE, when they were saving their faces against Saeed Ajmal, one must have expected them to have done some homework. But like the sub-continental teams’ inability to accept their failings against pace as reality, England also look happy in their own bubble.