Indian Ghost Continues To Haunt The Aussies

Atlast, the inevitable happens.Australia lose the Border-Gavaskar trophy 2-0,thanks to an under par Australian team that toured India this time and some luck whenever Mahendra Singh Dhoni takes on the Indian cap.After a long time,India have won a series 2-0 compared to 1-0 series victories against teams viz Pakistan (late last year) and England (in mid 2007).A delight being that Australia won the Nagpur test in 2004 to regain the Border Gavaskar trophy,a win on Indian soil after 34 years,only to lose the same at the same venue,4 years later.The man who lost the Ashes after 19 years in 2005,now can boast of having done the same in the Border-Gavaskar trophy as well.

I bet that there is some ghost that haunts the Australian cricket team everytime whenever they play India.For,even a batsman like Virender Sehwag comes up with a 5 wicket haul and bowlers like Irfan Pathan,Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan of late have proved something with the bat as well.Rarely does things like this happens.With someone like V V S Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar always being there when it comes to the big stage,this time for a change,instead of Rahul Dravid,there is Gautam Gambhir who unexpectedly became the top scorer of the series,including a double hundred at his home ground at Firoz Shah Kotla in Delhi.A series that would have been 2-1 favoring India ended at 2-0.

Despite a 70 run lead in the first innings at Bangalore,the Aussies made a mess of their own game by allowing Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh,after batting for nearly three days to post a so called respectable total.It looks like the Aussies are now feeling the pinch of losing star cricketers like McGrath,Damien Martyn,Langer and others at a stretch.I never expected someone like Mike Hussey to be a part of a test team,who can belt the ball like a T20 game.And KUDOS to Matt for atlast putting up a big score of 77 after a lot of over aggresive knocks.I feel it was primarily because of Matt that the ussies have had to face such a humiliation and second comes Ricky Ponting,followed by Brett Lee.

All that the Aussies could take from this series was a man of the match that was awarded to Kreza in the Nagpur encounter,despite losing the match and with it the series.A little planning would have seen the Aussies settle for a level.With 382 runs needed to win and a win being a compulsion,the Aussies just went after each and every ball.Someone like a Shahid Afridi would be seen doing.None of the Australian players, be it bowling or in the batting department have taken this series as a challenge,like it was taken by India four years back.Some fightback by the Australian team would have made the series an interesting one with both the teams not willing to give up.This was last seen only in the Border-Gavaskar series 2003 when India toured Australia.