India in Australia - Rats in Lion's den

In the last 15 years, how many times have I hoped that Indian cricket team would win those matches that is to be won. Or atleast those in the brink of winning. Or atleast stop the opponent team from winning. Or atleast for God's sake, make it difficult for the opponent to win the match. But all my hopes would invariably end up in vain. I can easily count the occassions, where India has won the match in an unexpected and a startling fashion by completely crushing the opponents(not considering the simple and easy wins). I just sit back and imagine how would it feel like, to be an Australian and supporting such a team, where winning is just a habit. They only try to taste victory in a better style than the previous time. They try to break their own record, for not many records from other teams are left to be broken.

And coming back to my hopes, I wasn't hoping that India would win the 2nd test in Australia. That too after the results of the first test, I reminded myself that Indians are nothing more than rats in Lion's den. And after the 1st innings mammoth score of 600+ by Aussies, I knew it for sure. But thanks to a "Greece-God" type of a century by Sachin, my hopes were kinda resurrected. And my hopes(a typical desi one) weren't to win this match, but atleast to draw this match. Just atleast to stop the Australians from equalling their own record. But Australians were so surefooted that Brett Lee said after the third day, in the press conference said that he was sure that Ponting would declare after the right juncture and give Indians a trying shot. And things turned as they expected with "yaa_he_hits_another" century by Hayden and "just_to_screw_the_hopes" century by Hussey. Australians declared for Indians to thrive for meagre 72 overs. And our guys screwed it up royally!

I keep wondering if a team of 11 international players can't just stay put and hang around for less than one day in a test match. They are not asked to score runs, not to take away this match. Just save the wickets for some 5 hours. Who to be blamed? Six players scoring less than 20 and four out of that, with just single digit scores. And one more person worth mentioning and who played a major role in this test match - Steve Bucknor. If an umpire makes a mistake once, the fact that"Human Beings are prone to mistakes" back them up. But if they keep doing the same mistake and that too in favour of one team, then it props up quite a few doubts. Ideally, as my friend Vijai said, Steve Bucknor should have been the "Man of the match" for he scored over 200 runs(thru Symonds) and took 3 wickets for Australia.

Why is there something not done by ICC about this kind of blunders? I would suggest just a camera with a sleek tripod in place of the umpires. And bowling team can pretty well appeal to the camera and it would give a Green Light or a Red light in reciprocation. The camera can pretty well take care of the dimissals - be it run-outs, caught behinds and even LBWs. An intelligent camera can surely give a counter of no of balls bowled, etc., Why do we need an umpire after all?? Can't we have a sensor to decide if it is a wide or a no-ball? The only reason an umpire maybe needed would be to handle sledging or hand-fighting among players(if at all). So, we can just have a single person(as the fourth umpire) on the field. Let the cameras and the computers do the umpiring job, for we would have fair results and ofcourse less cost. I guess it's time ICC does something of this sort.

Poor Indian cricket fans - all they could think of is to burn the effigy of Steve Bucknor(in Kolkata and Kanpur). How can they be blamed? When it comes to sports where India wins in the global arena, I could think of only Chess, Tennis, Hockey and Cricket. Vishwanath Anand has been a great chess player, but chess is not a game which can attract ardent fan groups. As far as Tennis is concerned, we spoilt ourselves(thanks to Paes and Bhupathi for their comradery, Sania - the lone star in the constellation). Coming to Hockey, we have never performed to catch the headlines in leading dailies atleast in the recent past(or atleast for as long as I have known). Other sports like Soccer(India never goes beyond the West Bengal tournament wins) and F1(only challenger is Narain) can't be expected to pull crowds. So, cricket is our only hope because of our more frequent wins. In spite of what happens to the results of matches that Indian cricketers play and irrespective of shameful loses that we come across, fans are always there for them. And to the extent that if not read in history subjects, Cricket would be thought of as India's National game by many youths. They simply wait and hope that India shines.

And I do too!