Bangalore: Former Indian skipper and coach Ajit Wadekar predicted a 7-0 ‘brown-wash’ for the touring England team after their miserable 158-run defeat at the hands of Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s men in the first One-Day International at Rajkot on Friday.
"I think the Indians’ morale was very high, coming into this match, after their 2-0 victory against world champions Aussies in the Test series. They look like a team on a mission under Dhoni and I won’t be surprised if they sweep the seven-match One-Day series 7-0 as they have the ammunition to beat any team in the world right now," Wadekar told Cricketnext.com on Saturday.
"Personally, this team seems to be more talented than the one I lead during our twin tours of 1971 to the West Indies and England. Of course we beat both the West Indies and England at their own dens in a Test series, but the confidence shown by Dhoni, as captain, and the team, as a united force, tempts me to compare them with the 1971 victorious team," Wadekar added.
Stressing that the Indian team was well on their way to becoming the number one team in the world in all forms of the game, Wadekar said, all other teams will now want to beat India thereby making the task of Dhoni that much more harder to keep-up the winning streak.
"Even when I was the coach of the Indian team, I never saw this kind of total commitment and the hunger to demolish the opponents. The Indians totally demolished the Englishmen with clinical precision by outplaying them in all departments of the game. Dhoni and company will now have to be doubly careful as all other teams would want to beat India to prove a point or two," Wadekar observed.
"I think Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag seem to compliment each other perfectly and the middle order looks as solid as a rock with Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh and Dhoni himself looking in fine touch.
"However, one weak link that seems to be quite evident is Yousuf Pathan, who seems to be a misfit in this team. Dhoni must have had lot of faith in him to be promoted ahead of him in the batting order and bringing him on as a specialist spinner ahead of Harbhajan Singh unfortunately did not click," he added.
"However, it is impossible to get everything right and when a team wins by such a huge margin the team selection does not become prominent. But I am sure in the next match, Dhoni will surely replace Pathan with another specialist spinner as the batting looks well settled," Wadekar pointed out.
"I was also impressed with Zaheer Khan’s lion hearted bowling. This lad has become an important part of our pace attack. Even without Ishant Sharma, I think, the Indian pacers – Zaheer, Munaf Patel and Rudra Pratap Singh -- did well and Sehwag seems to be improving as a bowler with every match.
"So there are lots of plus points for the hosts to suggest that the Englishmen are in real trouble to save the One-Day series at the moment," he added.
Anbu.
No comments:
Post a Comment