Hussey Cat and Billy Goat do India in!

If a cat has seven lives, Mike Hussey had at least 6 last night as the Indian cricket team drove itself to destruction last night during the 5th ODI match of the 2012 tri-series in Australia. The match started off on a promising note with the Aussie version of the Ws (Wade and Warner) extremely subdued. Rohit Sharma possibly playing his last game in the series (except for the lucky break with Dhoni's suspension) set the tone for India's game by unnecessarily getting between the ball and Sachin and dropping Wade on the second ball of the game. With the Aussies coming of a terrible loss to SL where they failed to score much, a second ball wicket would have hurt them badly especially with the stand-in captain and 1-down batsman Ponting in such a bad form. Despite that set back, the Indian team bowled fairly well and kept the run rate down. Dhoni taking a bold decision of dropping Ashwin on a pitch that had some grass and going with 4 fast bowlers, clearly missed his 'go to' off spinner. He then tried his best to recreate that with Sharma and Raina. This duo did fairly well but were given overs at the expense of Jadeja who usually bowls his quota of overs. This was just one of the many weird decisions by Dhoni all game. It was almost as if he wanted to get a suspension because he made Shewag sit this game out (official reason - back spasm). Here are some of the decisions that I question:

1. Not bowling Jadeja despite him having a great previous game with the ball
2. Opting for Praveen Kumar to be a substitute fielder despite having Manoj Tiwary and Parthiv Patel on the bench
3. Persisting with Tendulkar in the slips especially when he has a good arm from the deep and quick access to fluids
4. Keeping the live wire Kohli in Mid off/on and the boundary when he clearly has crowd issues
5. Taking incredibly long time between balls and overs to set fields for left and right handed batsmen

If these five decisions weren't enough to hurt India, the six lives they gave Hussey and four they gave Forrest did. Starting with the horrendous decision by the umpires to recall Hussey after being given out stumped, to the catches dropped by Sharma (yes, 2 catches) and Yadav, and the complete lack of ability to hit the stumps on numerous occasions from close (will Dhoni ever stand behind the stumps to gather a throw?), the Indians were a terrible unit on the field. To add to that umpire Billy Bowden did his part by calling chest high balls 'wides' which basically took the short ball out of the Indian bowling and helped Forrest a lot (Forrest seems uncomfortable facing the short ball into his body). Towards the end of the Aussie innings, the Indians lost the plot totally letting the opposition score 100 runs in the last 10 overs. This completely gave the momentum to the Aussie bowlers. With just 2 batsmen in form (Gambhir and Dhoni), chasing over 280 was never a possibility. Ben Hilfenhaus and Brett Lee showed how its done. The spirit and enthusiasm with which they bowled and how they walked back to their run up after every ball is something that the Indians need to learn. Walking quickly back to the top of the run up helps maintain a bowler's momentum and gives less time for the batsmen to calm down and prepare for the next ball. This aspect of coaching seems to be clearly missing in all levels of Indian cricket. As a result when the going gets tough, the Indian players are mentally out of the game and don't even put up a whimper of a fight. And needless to say, the Indians kept losing wickets and eventually they were put out of their misery by the prowling Aussie bowlers and fielders. The win gave the Aussies their much needed 5 points (including a bonus point for trashing the Indians) and put them in a good position to qualify for the finals which looked bleak just a day ago.

Where does India go after this? Dhoni sits out due to suspension from a poor over rate (India took half an hour extra to bowl 50 overs, yes half an hour!) and Patel comes in. Sachin is clearly injured and will not play the next game. Patel will even open if Shewag really has back spasms and cant play (which I doubt). If Shewag doesn't play, Sharma gets another chance. Tiwary will surely play the next game. Zaheer who looked off color may rest giving Ashwin his place back in the XI. So here is what we are looking at: Gambhir, Shewag, Kohli, Tiwary, Raina, Patel, Jadeja, Ashwin, Pathan, Vinay Kumar, and Yadav. If Shewag sits out, Patel opens with Gambhir the captain and Sharma is back in the middle order. Despite these changes, my crystal ball predicts a loss against Sri Lanka.