ODI Preview: Sachin Returns, But Can India Whip It Around?

Sreelata YellamrazuMar 2 2009

Mahendra Singh Dhoni finds himself on a tricky pitch. Daniel Vettori has his dream team. His dream team has had a dream start. And the dream start puts them in a position of confidence that Dhoni had not anticipated. Now it is the visitors who must up the ante as the game has changed dimensions.

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Vettori will have his best players in view when the first one day international gets underway at Napier tomorrow. The boost with Kyle Mills and Jacob Oram will strengthen the Kiwis as also the presence of Grant Elliot who showed his class against the Australians. That they managed to win two in two in the Twenty20 matches certainly put a few doubts in the mind of the Indian skipper.

Though Dhoni stated that his team would bounce from the mistakes of the first game, his team mates showed the same anxious temperament brought on perhaps by an exaggerated self confidence that there is little room to make amends when the second Twenty20 came around.

Now Sachin Tendulkar comes back in to the one day picture but if the batsmen from the Twenty20 team who also comprise the ODI team, who despite showing to be in relatively good nick, have not learnt the art of patience from Brendon McCullum’s book, India could be in more trouble playing out fifty overs.

Their bowling may also be jolted by the fact that Ishant Sharma may not play the first game, having injured his shoulder in the second Twenty20 match, but with the spinners and slow bowlers doing a good job in the Twenty20 game, one can expect to see more of the same.

New Zealand will now have to latch onto every ounce of confidence garnered because the demands of the fifty over game are now multiplied and where small errors or lapses can go forgiven in a Twenty20 game, there is plenty of time in the limited edition version to make a team pay, as New Zealand nearly found out to their chagrin during the Chappell Hadlee series, where they almost pulled one on the Australians.

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If India brush off their losses at Christchurch and Wellington, it could bury the New Zealanders on a pitch expected to hold runs aplenty, that is if the expected forecasts of rain are brought to naught. Once again, Vettori will be telling his boys, let’s keep them silent, boys, let’s keep them silent.

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