NEWS
MATCH REPORTS
DIARY
OTHER SPORTS
SLIDE SHOW
PEOPLE
ARCHIVES

Experiments, anyone?

India 287/4 in 50, Ganguly 130 not out, Dravid 116; Sri Lanka 207 all out in 38, Ranatunga 46, Tillekeratne 44, Ganguly 4/22, Agarkar 3/15, India win by 80 runs

Whenever anyone talks of the value of experimentation, the name of Thomas Alva Edison comes up. They used to say that he tried 1000 different materials before hitting on the right filament for his incandescent light bulb.

Fair enough -- after all, the entire experiment was working towards a specific end. I am not sure the same can be said of India's cricket think tank, though.

This ongoing tournament is meant to try various combinations out with a view to the World Cup, is what we were told. Given that context, where lay the sense in opening India's innings, today, with Ajay Jadeja?

Is it anyone's case that Jadeja will be tried as an opener in the Cup? To do so would be to take a batsman who seems set at the number five/six slot, and put him into a round hole for which he is squarely unfitted.

This was the perfect opportunity to blood Sadagopan Ramesh. For one thing, it makes sense to move a batsman up from one level, or from one type of game, to the other when he is in prime form -- and 'prime form' describes the young left-hander's present state perfectly.

Further, he is an opening batsman, and thus eminently fitted to take over from the absent opener, Sachin Tendulkar.

Further yet, if the Ramesh-Ganguly pairing clicked, that gave the Indians more options for the Cup. Given that the wisdom of the day holds that in England, matches are going to be won in the last 25, and not the first 15, overs, India would then have the option of sending the two southpaws out at the top of the order and batting Tendulkar at three or four, using his explosive abilities more towards the end.

The selectors and the team management completely abdicated the opportunity, however, to try the youngster out.

I did hear some theorising that Ramesh wasn't played because the Indians wanted to play more bowlers. If that were the case, an equally interesting option would have been to have opened with Laxmi Ratan Shukla who is rated a hard-hitting batsman comfortable against the new ball. This would have given the selectors a feel for how the young man plays.

Opening with Ramesh, or even with Shukla, would have been experiments in the Edison mould. Opening with Jadeja was, well, you name it.

Meanwhile, another match, another controversy centering around the umpiring. This time, it was V M Gupte in the spotlight. Gnaguly slashed, bat well away from body, there was an audible click, but the umpire turned a good appeal down. A while later, Dravid cut, the ball sat down, this time there was no audible click, but the appeal was very confident.

There wouldn't have been any controversy had the umpire just turned it down -- he, however, decided to add insult to earlier injury by calling it a wide (rather reminiscent of S K Bansal scratching his head after raising his finger to an appeal, on an earlier, memorable occasion). On hearing the call, Ranatunga burst into a laugh. Fair enough, but from then on, the Lankans -- with their captain showing the way -- appeared to have plenty to say to the umpire.

This is the kind of friction we were sure would happen in course of this series, given the BCCI's policy to let unknown, untried officials stand for the various games. S Venkatraghavan and K Parthasarathy are standing for the final, but for the league games, we have complete unknowns named for the panel.

When India and Pakistan take each other on in their first league match, we have S Ashani and Jasbir Singh officiating, god help us all.

It is not that India does not have good umpires -- simply, that the BCCI is more intent on paying off the respective zones, than on ensuring good conduct of this tournament.

And while on friction, while it is difficult to blame Ranatunga for getting a bit worked up at Gupte's antics, one does wonder if his abrasive behaviour was wise. After all, the Lankan captain has a suspended sentence against his name, thanks to a head-on collision with umpire Emerson in Australia -- all it takes is one complaint by the umpire on the field, here, to ensure that Ranatunga will not be leading Lanka out for at least the first match of the World Cup.

The Indian innings -- The Cola Kids get fizzical

Scoreboard