Its hilarious to see how our electronic media, wearing its patriotism on its sleeve, has christened the current India-South Africa Test series as 'India's Race To No.1', 'Climb To The Top' and such other assorted taglines. Considering that the only race in which the Indian batsmen seemed interested at Ahmedabad was the one that led back to the dressing room.
How short public memory is! One triple century sends us to the moon and barely a week later a collective effort of 76 brings us crashing down from orbit. However, there is one thing that this debacle should teach us. And that is to stop comparing India with the Australian team, once and for all. You would never catch the Aussies oscillating between 627 and 76 all out in the matter of 2 innings. In fact both innings followed a similar pattern. At Chennai, it was the Sehwag show all the way. Once he departed, the curtains came down pretty quickly, with the rest of the team barely putting on another 150 runs. Take out Dravid's contribution on the 4th day, and that leaves us with barely over 100 runs contributed by as many as 8 batsmen. At the Motera, 11 batsmen made 76. Not a very drastic drop in performance, you can see!
Dale Steyn stated the obvious when he said that after the first couple of wickets fell, the incoming batsmen were totally clueless and did not know what to do. Its not as if this line-up cannot play in swinging and seaming conditions (The historic wins at Headingley 2002, Trent Bridge 2007, Johannesburg 2007 and Perth 2008 prove that). This Indian team - which has won more overseas Tests than all other Indian teams preceding it collectively managed to - displays a great level of intensity playing abroad which it has surprisingly not been able to replicate in India. Its almost as if it 'demands' batting beauties shorn of all grass at home. If we seriously harbour any intentions of being No. 1 in the world, we'll have to stop paying so much attention to the 22 yards.
P.S.: Please, can somebody tell MS Dhoni that attack, relentless, reckless attack is not always the best form of defence?
