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How To Catch In Perth
India's fielders were out of their depth at the WACA. Here's what troubled them.
Holi, the festival of colors, heralding the spring season, was celebrated in India on Friday and the Indian team was playing in the World Cup in an equally colorful setting.
Every venue Down Under has been thronged by a huge majority of Indian fans, following the team with passion and adding the much-needed color to the tournament by cheering their team to four wins on the trot.
The West Indies team was faced with a riot of colors at Perth, with the fans bringing in the festivities to the stadium too. In a match of much significance for the Caribbean team, skipper Jason Holder called correct and batted first. Soon the team’s top and middle order was off-color and they were struggling at 85 for 7. The Indian attack led by Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav had their opponents in a bind soon with only Holder, scoring his second consecutive fifty in the WC, and Sammy left to bring semblance of order to the innings. It was quite creditable as the Windies ended at 182.
The thus-far disciplined in the field Indians suddenly looked jaded with almost half a dozen catches being spilled. While Gayle was the prime beneficiary with three lives, he didn’t capitalize much and holed out early. I was really surprised to see the safe hands of Rohit Sharma and Ravi Jadeja dropping sitters.
High catches are difficult at Perth—the extra bounce in the WACA pitch means that the ball flies high off the bat. Coupled with a clear overhead sky, means that it is difficult to judge where the ball is coming down. In SA we have a similar high rate of drop catches when teams first get to play in Pretoria or Johannesburg on a clear summer day.
Players have to try and get one hand up above their eye line in order to home themselves some depth perception. Not a major concern now, unless India are playing more matches in Perth.
The bounce in the wicket was well exploited by the Indian pacers picking up wickets regularly. However it also meant they sprayed the ball giving away as many as 16 wides. That’s something to worry MS Dhoni in the knockout matches.
Much like New Zealand in Pool A, the Indian batting too was not tested much until their fourth match. Chasing a modest target India lost its openers early though may not cause much worry for the skipper possibly for the next two matches. With Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina and Ajinkya Rahane back in the pavilion soon, the last a victim of a debatable third umpire review, it was left to captain cool Dhoni—one of the best finishers of the game—to step in at a precarious position and in the company of his two spin all-rounders Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin, and achieve victory with four wickets to spare.
On the bowling front, the inexperience of Jason Holder showed as he could not apply pressure on the Indians after they were five-down and let them off the hook by bowling his part timers Dwayne Smith and Marlon Samuels instead of getting himself and Jerome Taylor on to break the seventh wicket partnership.
With this win India join New Zealand to qualify for the quarter-finals as the only two teams to remain unbeaten in this World Cup. The outcome means that Pakistan could breathe a bit easy, and put them on equal footing along with the Windies and Ireland to qualify for the quarter-finals. Of course if they come up with some miraculous performances to upstage the in-form South Africans, Pakistan will boost their chances considerably.
