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India beat Zim by 107, enter final

Last night, I had a dream (apologies here to the late Martin Luther King).

I dreamt that India was on tour of South Africa. That the team landed in Durban for the first Test, took one horrified look at the track and lodged a protest. And that the South African board promptly issued instructions to have the grass plucked out one blade at a time, for the pitch then to be rolled to extinction, and thus, when the Indians went to the ground on the day of the match, they found a nice flat batting track waiting for them.

Like Mr King's as yet unrealised dream, I don't suppose mine will ever materialise either. Things would have been different, though, if I were a South African. They come here, get bundled out for 117, was all at sea against spin, lodged a protest and since then, the minute stumps are drawn, the ground staff led by Harilal Shah, the curator, are out there with gallons of water, damping the pitch down, rolling in grass, trying to exorcise all sign of spin from the pitch.

Nice. What they want, they get.

Today's match report won't, for reasons of time and pressures of other unfinished business, be quite as detailed as usual, my apologies in advance.

India got sent in yet again on a track so heavily watered, the minute this tournament is over they can sow paddy on it and go a long way towards solving the problem of global hunger. And yes, it was overcast as well, so Alistair Campbell gleefully inserted.

That was to be his last moment of joy on the day. Ramesh and Ganguly apparently had a chat about things before the game -- today was a complete antithesis of the previous match, with both openers moving fluidly into line right from the get go, very positive in moving forward or back as the ball demanded (both Ganguly and Ramesh played some lovely pull shots, and their habit of coming either fully forward or rocking right back had the Zimbabwe bowlers off line and length right at the start), and most importantly, called and ran between wickets very well to get the side off to a fluent start. 67/0 in 15, and India was cruising from that point on.

One point is worth mentioning about Ramesh. In the recent past, we have seen him getting out to the pull, thanks to a technique that sees him not getting on top of the ball, but preferring to get under it and hit it up, his mishits landing in the hands of mid on. Today, he played that shot thrice, found the boundary twice and, more importantly, on each occasion he was right up on his toes, getting over the ball and lashing it down with a turn of the wrist to keep the ball on the ground. That indicates that he has been doing some work in the nets on a problem shot, and that is good to see.

Ramesh lost his wicket trying to force the pace even further, and the Indians upped Robin Singh to number three -- the only reason you can think of (a good one it is, too) being that Robin, a key man in the middle, hasn't had much batting this series, so the Indians figured on giving him some quality time in the middle ahead of the final. Robin and Saurav Ganguly settled down for the long hole and paced the middle game to perfection (79/1 in 20, 106/1 in 25, 133/1 in 30, 156/1 in 35).

Statisticians who have plotted matches for over a considerable period of time indicate that more often than not, a side doubles the score at the end of 30 overs if it has 8 or more wickets standing at that point, and that bit of perceived wisdom was bang on here, with India finishing on 277 at the end of its 50.

Robin played as he always does -- nudging the ball around, running the singles quick and when occasion permitted, flat batting the ball out into the onside with minimal backlift and enormous power. When he got out, Dravid, then Jadeja, tried to keep up the momentum and failed, but Sunil Joshi then turned it on with a brilliant cameo, hitting with tremendous power and dead straight in the V.

Ganguly, however, was the man of the moment -- and it was a typical Ganguly innings today. Perfect placement and timing, silken fluency outside off, an increasing confidence on on (as evidenced by two on drives and two superbly played pulls). Once he got to his 100, he took complete command, playing some superlative straight hits against both pace and spin -- there are few cleaner hitters of the ball in the modern game, definitely none in this Indian side (including Sachin Tendulkar), and what is most impressive is the way he steps just a touch to leg to make room to get under the fullish length deliveries bowled by quicks and medium pacers at the death, and lifting them as easily as he does the spinners.

The two points worth making about Ganguly's innings today relate -- as with Ramesh -- to problem areas of the past. The first is that Ganguly not only has developed the knack of playing the ball with very soft hands to sneak singles, which adds another dimension to his run-scoring ability -- this, from the guy who in early 1997, once asked me, "Hey, I am getting them in boundaries, why do you keep nagging me about singles?". That is a welcome improvement, and goes a long way towards making him a complete batsman.

The other point relates to the way he got his runs. When he was on 97, they were showing a wagonwheel of his scoring areas, and this is how it looked -- 9 to fine leg, 19 to square leg, 13 to the long on region, 19 to long off, 17 to cover, 20 to the point-third man region. Indicating that where, earlier, he was getting over 75 per cent of his runs on the off, now he is a more all court player, and therefore far more dangerous to opposing sides. Add to this the fact that once he gets in and gets something like 35, 40, he rarely gives it away, going on to play the long innings.

Zimbabwe just didn't have the guns to take on an Indian batting spearheaded by Ganguly in murderous mood and well backed up by the rest. India appears, in this tournament as at Toronto, to have come a long way towards finding its own plan for an innings -- conserving wickets at the top, then turning it on at the death. For instance, the other day against Kenya, they had got to 116/2 in 35, 136/4 in 40, then to 220/7 at the end of 50. Here, they went 156/1 in 35, 183/2 in 40, then added another 94 runs in the next ten overs, 52 of those in the last five. Earlier, India would tend to panic at not lifting its run rate above 4.5 by the halfway stage -- now, they seem a lot more assured and are playing the second half of their innings a lot better. And it has helped the Indian cause to have the likes of Chopra and Joshi weighing in with useful runs, where earlier, the contribution of bowlers like Srinath and Kumble was negligible for the most part. These are the areas where they are making a difference -- could it be a coincidence that it is reflecting in their results?

And at the turn, Zimbabwe had a twin task ahead of it. The obvious one was to get 278 in 50 overs to win. The real one was to get to 278 in 42 overs, at 6.61, to qualify for the final ahead of SA on the run rate.

Zimbabwe appeared to have pressurised itself with that latter objective in mind. Neil Johnson, suffering a slight groin strain, wasn't moving his feet too well, and thus preferred the anchor role. Grant Flower took the onus of attacking, but the real story of the Zimbabwe debacle was told inside of 15 overs. Flower was going a run a ball, Zimbabwe at 52/0 in 10 was ahead of India at that point -- but that was the best they could do, and that best was obviously not enough. Look at this set of figures -- at the end of the ten over mark, despite the seemingly healthy rate of scoring, their ask for qualifying had actually gone up to 7.11, and at the end of 15, when they had made 68/2, that ask had gone up even further to 7.78.

When a batting side finds that the faster it scores, the higher the ask climbs, the pressure begins to tell. And something had to give.

India appeared to have gone a touch slack with both the ball and in the field this afternoon, perhaps a consequence of knowing that its place in the final was secure. Thus, after two brilliant days in the field, it had a pretty ordinary one here. However, the rot began because of two brilliant bits of fielding.

Grant Flower who was trying to accelerate even further -- he had to, since Johnson obviously couldn't -- tried to flick across the line and Dravid, fast developing into the safest catcher in the side, ran and lunged a long way to his left at midwicket to take a very good catch.

But the second dismissal, of Campbell, was the real beauty. Earlier, Chopra had badly fumbled on the square leg fence and let a boundary through when there was just one. This was off Mohanty's bowling. And by way of revenge, Mohanty had grassed a simple chance at mid on, off Chopra's second over.

Ironically, the two teamed up to produce brilliant outcricket. Johnson slashed one square on the off. Chopra at deep backward point ran around and fielded. Johnson, running to what he thought was the danger end, called for the second and had the run covered. Typically, from that position, fielders throw to the keeper since you can then get your body behind the throw, whereas you put the heck of a strain on shoulder and arm if you try throwing open chested to the bowler's end. Chopra, seeing that Campbell was a touch slow, quickly shifted aim and fired it to the bowler's end. Good presence of mind there, had Campbell scrambling, but the throw was still four feet wide of the mark. Enter the bowler, Mohanty, who gathered the ball, realised he didn't have time to get up to the stumps, and simply dived headlong at his target with ball in hand to crash into the furniture and catch Campbell out of his ground.

The episode was characteristic of India's performance in the field in this tournament. Today, there were a few bad fumbles, but they evidently owed to the fact that the Indians had mentally relaxed out there. With two down inside 15 overs and the ask well nigh out of the scale of possibilities, they then just went through the motions, bowling basic line and length, and letting the pressure do the work for them as batsman after batsman succumbed to the need to try and hit pretty much everything out of the park.

The one player who could have made a difference was Andy Flower -- who lasted just the one ball it took for Chopra to flight one on middle with a lot of loop to it, the ball straightening to clip the pad in front of off as Flower went right back. Good bowling, aided by good captaincy -- Jadeja brought in a slip and silly point for the new man and Flower went back to the first ball in exaggerated defence.

With the ball, Prasad made amends for a bad outing the previous game, bowling slower and slower and strangling the batsmen with deliveries that just wouldn't get to them. Chopra found conditions to his liking and promptly went on the attack, taking out four wickets while Joshi, who produced some superb overs where he repeatedly beat the bat with variations of flight and turn, was unlucky not to get wickets. Bharadwaj took out three, despite bowling a bad spell at the start -- an indication of inexperience, this, the young offie saw the batsmen attacking, and promptly started bowling flat and fast, which negated the spin and bounce he could get on the track.

Once Jadeja, Dravid, Ganguly and Chopra had taken turns talking to the youngster (noticeably, the Indians have begun backing each other up, and not leaving everything to the captain to do), Bharadwaj went back to the way he had bowled in the first two games, and got the rewards.

What is most interesting about India's performance in the three league games is that on each occasion, they have managed to bowl out the opposition comfortably. That is another area where they weren't doing too well this time last year or even earlier this year -- and that again is helping the team notch up some fine wins.

So the stage is now set for a cracker of a final -- South Africa, bundled out for 117 in the league encounter, will want revenge. India will just want to finish the tournament as it started it. And I suspect that on the day, India on form and confidence will be the team to go through. In any case, we will know soon enough.

Meanwhile, with a day of rest ahead, Messers Harilal Shah and his band of groundstaff can get out those water hoses and rollers and continue to iron out the pitch, trying to ensure that every bit of turn is well and truly washed out of its surface.

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