Don't look for scapegoats

UMPIRE'S POST

Don't blame senior players for losing the last ODI, it is expected that India will lose this series.

Following the Indian cricket team, or any other unpredictable performer, ought to teach you a few things: patience, forbearance and equanimity. These come in handy when facing a team like Australia, a well-oiled, super-efficient machine. If one part fails, the others carry the day. The other teams do not function quite as smoothly, with the consequence that for them to beat Australia an individual or a set has to perform extraordinarily, at a level much higher than the usual.

That is the reason why Australia's losses are few and far between. In recent years, it has taken sublime performances from Sachin, Lara, Lakshman, Dravid, Flintoff, Collingwood and

Ajit Agarkar (yes, the very same) to beat it. At the 2003 World Cup, one of the most remarkable runs by India, we lost two matches, both to Australia, both comprehensively.

At times Australia puts up a wretched performance, as in the fourth match of the current series at Chandigarh, in which it conceded 31 wides, falling to its first ODI defeat against India in over three years and eight months. (Still, with 20 balls left, it was in a strong position to win the match.)

It is very normal "" just the expected thing "" for India to lose this one-day series. There is really no need to start looking for scapegoats, and no justification for blaming the older players.

Inexplicable arguments have emerged of late that seem to put greater store on age than any skill, either inherent or acquired through experience. Sachin may have looked ugly against Brett Lee in Chandigarh, but without his battling innings and Ganguly's early flourish there was no way we could have scored 291. These are the same guys who shaped our ODI victories in England with century stands at the top of the order. Sachin has scored seven ODI 50s, four of them above 90, since the tour of Ireland in June.

We are losing patience with senior players because we have started to believe that a set of alternatives has emerged with the T20 win. In this enthusiasm, we are overlooking performance. Which of the T20 stars has really shone in this ODI series? Before you say Yuvraj, remember that he has been around for nearly eight years and is a senior pro.

In the middle of the 1980s, a selector had waged a campaign against players who were over 30: Gavaskar, Vengsarkar, Amarnath, et cetera. These players had banded together, given themselves the self-deprecatingly humourous epithet of OT and silenced the critics with their performances. Gavaskar's spectacular catches in a low-scoring victory over Pakistan in Sharjah were the icing. Alas! The chief selector seems to have forgotten those days.