Familiar foes renew rivalry
Sept. 29: Having easily negotiated throwdowns from Gary Kirsten for more than 15 minutes, a noticeably relaxed and trim-looking Virender Sehwag motioned for Ishant Sharma to take the coach’s place. “You’re wasting my time,” he told an amused coach at the Indian’s team’s practice session here on Wednesday, before turning his attention to the lanky fast bowler. “Remember the Sri Lankan tactic of bowling short and wide? Try that.”
The next few deliveries — fiercely cut to an imaginary deep point fence — were an indication of how aggressively Sehwag is approaching arguably one of the toughest series in recent memory.
At the other end of the practice facility — and the spectrum — was a jaded Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who with his last minute dash from Johannesburg to Chandigarh following the Champions League T20 title win for Chennai Super Kings, had just started on getting his forward defence right against the net bowlers.
The T20 event scheduled so close to the India-Australia series has added a ‘fatigue’ dimension to the rivalry that once used to be was primarily based on how fast the Australian pacers could deliver the red cherry, and how hard the Indian batsmen could hit it.
While in the past a series against Ricky Ponting’s men would have been preceded with a training camp that would push the Indian team to breaking point, now arriving even two days before the series is considered kosher.
“Such is the schedule that sometimes it robs you of a chance of entering a series with a fresh mind and body. The way I keep thinking in my own mind is it’s the way of the modern cricket world,” Australia coach Tim Nielsen said on Wednesday,
Both India and Australia are right now split into players who are supremely fit and others who are emotionally and physically drained. Aussie pacer Doug Bollinger and Mike Hussey arrived on Tuesday and spent the better part of Wednesday’s practice session cooing their heels in buckets of ice-cold water. The Indian duo of Dhoni and Suresh Raina only arrived on the day.
“It’s not ideal, but it’s the best we can do. That is why I told both M.S. and Suresh to take it easy and not to exert themselves today,” Kirsten said.
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