No praise can be too high for Mahendra Singh Dhoni's team of champions which returned home yesterday after its impressive 3-1 ODI victory and historic Test series win in New Zealand after 41 years that seemed like an eternity.
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The stirring performances of the players on the field, and their exemplary deportment off it, have won the team and their country unqualified respect and innumerable friends and admirers in the Antipodes.
Although the world Twenty20 champions lost both back-to-back matches in the slam-bang edition, their disappointing show can be justifiably put down to insufficient acclimatisation in the alien climactic and playing conditions that prevail in New Zealand, which have been a veritable nightmare for previous touring Indian teams.
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India skipper M S Dhoni |
Monetary bonus
Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president Shashank Manohar has lost no time in announcing that a handsome monetary bonus awaits the players and support staff.
Despite the usual (and obvious!) publicity-seeking motive behind the timing of the gesture, there can be no doubt that the award is eminently well-deserved.
At the risk of sounding churlish, I must record that Indian skipper Dhoni and the team's War Council erred grievously in delaying the declaration on the fourth morning of the Wellington Test, with contemptuous disregard for the unanimous forecast of inclement weather in most parts of the country (especially Wellington) on the last day.
At the press conference at the end of the fourth day, Yuvraj Singh superciliously dismissed reporters' suggestions about the chances of bad weather on the fifth day stymieing his team's prospects of a seemingly facile, if not inevitable, victory.
But for the delay, India could have wrapped up the Test before rain and bad light resulted in play being called off 20 minutes after lunch when New Zealand were staring defeat on 281 for eight, after India had set the home team an improbable target of 617 runs to win.
Had India won, as they should have deservedly done, they would have gained a point and reduced the margin of their third position behind South Africa in the ICC Test rankings to just one.
A 2-0, rather than a 1-0, series win would have helped India retain their pre-series118 ratings points, one behind the second-placed Proteas, and within closer striking distance of 10 behind world Test champions Australia.
The draw has left Dhoni's side with 117 points, two short of South Africa and 11 behind Australia.
As mentioned in KHALIDOSCOPE yesterday, the Indian approach as evidenced by the delayed declaration and chalta-hai mindset towards the close of the fourth day came in the way of a 2-0 win, which was important in terms of team morale and self-belief.
The senior members of the team, who have played in New Zealand before and, certainly coach Gary Kirsten, should have known the notoriously changeable weather conditions in that country and, equally importantly, that Met Office forecasts in this part of the world are generally more accurate than at home.
The dismissive comments by Yuvraj, as also Dhoni, who said after the match: "With two days of play, we knew it may rain, but at that point of time, it was not certain," indicated a dreadful ignorance of the inclemency of the weather outside the tropics.
Hopefully the team is wiser after the event and that it has learnt the important lesson that you can take Mother Nature for granted only at your peril.
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