da bet esporte： After the beating India took at Rajkot, I think the Indian team saidwhatever you can do we can do better
Geoffrey Boycott08-Nov-1999After the beating India took at Rajkot, I think the Indian team saidwhatever you can do we can do better! And they did with an awesomebatting display which was reminiscent of Ganguly and Dravid at Tauntonin the World Cup.This time it was Tendulkar who was determined to make up for his lastmatch dismissal and Dravid who looked in great touch from the firstball. The New Zealanders were stirred up with superb cricketing shotsand perfect placement. Both batsmen kept pace with each other and 300runs always looked on the cards. What we did not expect was thecarnage that took place once they had made centuries. Dravidaccelerated so quickly after reaching the milestone that he outscoredSachin plundering runs all over the park with effortless classicstrokes. Eventually he succumbed to a mistimed slog to mid-wicket.At the other end Sachin would not be outdone. He improvised with quickthinking and enormous power. Young bowlers like Chris Drum tried tostick it in the block hole but the master got his left leg quickly outof the way and kept smashing to and over mid-wicket. At one stage theyoung seamer bowled four full tosses and was hit in four differentplaces. He was trying for yorkers but by this time the brain wasscrambled. Nobody was queuing up to bowl as Sachin moved around thecrease. Sachin was awesome as he out thought, out hit and out battedthe bowling. They couldn’t live with his stroke play as he plunderedboundary after boundary beating and bashing the bowling intosubmission. By the time New Zealand walked off the field they musthave been shell shocked. Records came and went as Tendulkar and Dravidclaimed the highest partnership ever in one day cricket and Tendulkarthe highest score by an Indian. In years to come people will say I wasthere. I saw it and it was mind blowing.Once fielders and bowlers have had such a pounding and mauling itdepresses the dressing room. Nobody is in the right frame of mind tobat and batting is always the mental thing. Psychologically the NewZealanders would have to concentrate on scoring 7-1/2 runs an over for50 overs. That scoring rate plays on the mind as batsman after batsmanhas to keep up the run rate by playing chancy strokes. Sometimes therisky shots come off but more often than not when you are up againstit then your batsmen ‘hole out’ and so it proved as Tendulkar wasable to spread his men out immediately onto the 30 yards circle. Hecould give the batsmen singles but try and cut off the boundaries andwait for the New Zealand batsmen to commit harakiri. Spearman mis-hitto deepish mid-on, Astle mis-pulled to mid-wicket, Twose tried to workacross the line a straight ball and the captain Fleming tried a bighit into the deep. The match was over by the fifteenth over. Paroregot himself stumped off a wide and the dangerous Cairns was run outagain by a team mate. The whole innings was in shambles as wicketstumbled at regular intervals and lower down the order O’Connor andVettori got run out through bad calling. The pressure of the mammothtotal scored by India killed the New Zealand batting.India were outplayed in Rajkot but here in Hyderabad they got theirown back with interest. Whichever side bats first on these flatpitches has the best chances of batting the other team out of the gamebut even with changes to the Indian squad I think they will have thebetter of New Zealand in the 5 match series.