Pak's six dropped catches more than errors

Six catches dropped by Pakistan must be seen as more than mere errors of commission

Six catches dropped by Pakistan must be seen as more than mere errors of commission

If ever Shahid Afridi wants to change careers mid-stream, he could try his hand at writing books. "How To Drop Catches and Lose A World Cup'' ufffd a hard-hitting confessional on how his team muffed up the prospects of winning the 2011 tournament ufffd would probably cause him a lot of grief, but possibly also become a best-seller.

Pakistan's Younis Khan drops a catch off Sachin Tendulkar during the World Cup semi-final at the Punjab Cricket Association Stadium in Mohali yesterday. Pic/AFP

Indeed, six catches dropped must be seen as more than mere errors of commission; this was calamity. On a two-paced pitch, that took everybody by surprise in the help it gave to pacers and spinners alike, India should never have been allowed to score more than 220. But almost every fielder in catching position seemed butter-fingered, and those in the deep kept tumbling and fumbling, unable to protect precious runs.

Going purely by the margin of victory ufffd 30 runs ufffd the match appears closer than it was. Pakistan were virtually out of the game when skipper Afridi was seventh man out in the 42nd over, with 77 runs still needed.

The belated pyrotechnics of Misbah-ul-Haq were never going to be enough. It's not that Pakistan didn't give hard chase to the target; just that they had given away perhaps 40 runs too many.

In the context of a World Cup semi-final that had attracted the top leaders of the subcontinent, the glitterati , and the world's attention ufffd Pakistan came across as pathetically prepared in the basics of the game. They bowled well, but batted poorly and fielded abominably.

There was a lesson to be learnt from Sachin Tendulkar's innings but this was clearly lost on the Pakistan batsmen. While it turned out to be a man of the match winning effort finally, Tendulkar's innings seemed a conundrum when he was in the middle.

This was his clumsiest batting yet of the World Cup, but as the mischief of the pitch dawned on everybody, also his most important.

Tendulkar struggles
Tendulkar struggled to read the off-spinners Hafeez and Saeed Ajmal well, often playing for the break when the doosra was bowled. His timing was also awry. But he stuck it out there for almost 37 overs, till India were in good position to make at least 250 which was going to be daunting on this pitch.

The pitch surprised everybody. Before the match, curator Daljit Singh had said it was a good batting track and 280 or thereabouts was gettable. In the event, track revealed itself to be quite the opposite. It kept low, played slow, had some turn, and sometimes even helped seam movement. In short, it was not a pitch that batsmen would have enjoyed.

M S Dhoni, much pilloried for his team selections in the tournament, pulled another surprise today by picking Ashish Nehra ahead of the successful R Ashwin. There was much debate over his reading of the pitch and his preferences, but in the end, Dhoni was proved correct on all counts.

He won an important toss, rightly chose to bat first, and after Sehwag, Tendulkar and Raina had helped take the score past 250, scripted a superb defence of the score by rining in frequent bowling changes, alternating pacers and spinners to unsettle the batsmen and setting the field imaginatively.

Ill-thought
That said, Pakistan's batting approach was surprisingly ill-thought. Four top order batsmen were out playing strokes of which they will never want to see replays again. The ebullient Umar Akmal, arguably the most talented young batsman in the game today, showed the enterprise and the skill to score runs on this pitch by using his feet to clout a couple of superb sixes, and his wrists otherwise for deft strokes that found gaps in the field.

When Umar was deceived by a Harbhajan Singh delivery that went straight with the arm, Pakistan's prospects of somehow reaching their target diminished considerably. Shahid Afridi strode out purposefully, but he was now like the captain of a ship whose sails had lost all wind.

India's march into the World Cup final, forecast by most experts at the start of the tournament and driven by the passion of a billion people, was not to be denied. But Dhoni and his team would be the first to agree that it could have been a different story had the Pakistanis not been so accommodating.