On a wicket that is full of runs, the Indians who have the momentum with us will look to capitalise on it despite a couple of setbacks in the form of Gambhir and Viru. But expect, no inch given by both sides as the number one spot in the ODIs get hotter!

It was a record 148-run fourth-wicket partnership with skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni unbeaten on 71 that titled the game in the Blues favour.
Before the duo joined forces, India were in a spot of bother at 53/3 in the 16th over after the loss of Gautam Gambhir, who was bowled by off-spinner Nathan Hauritz, probably still feeling the effects of the knock he took on the field earlier. From there on in, Australia were hampered by the dew on the outfield as Hauritz failed to grip the ball effectively.

Earlier in the day, on a wicket that was expected to be low and slow throughout, Australia’s Ricky Ponting won an important toss and without blinking an eyelid — decided to take first strike.
It was a big surprise when Ponting opened up with Shane Watson and the duo laid a strong foundation — stitching together a stand of 72 off 16.2 overs before Watson was stumped by M.S. Dhoni off Yuvraj.
The Australians made three changes, bringing in Doug Bollinger for Ben Hilfenhaus who went for aplenty in the last game at Nagpur. Graham Manou came for the injured Tim Paine and Moises Henriques made their ODI debuts on Saturday.
With batting not being easy on this wicket, Punter took his time to settle and gauge the pace of the wicket. He played some delightful shots and in the company of newman Michael Hussey, took the Australian total to 128 for 2 in the 32nd over before Ponting was trapped in front by Ravindra Jadeja for 59.
Dhoni not surprisingly depended a lot on his tweakers bringing in left-armer Yuvraj Singh early into the match when the Australian opening duo were literally making hay when the sun shone on the low Kotla wicket. The more experienced Harbhajan Singh who has had a disappointing series thus far, was brought in next to roll his arm. The Punjabi duo began to bowl in tandem and  were by the other slow-ball bowlers Jadeja and Suresh Raina at the crease.
Michael Hussey played a standout knock for his side, picking singles and boundaries at will and keeping the fielders constantly on their toes. He accelerated at the right time that helped his side score 229 for 5, with the southpaw contributing a healthy 81 n.o., which was no match for the Men in Blue.

The enigmatic skipper faces his toughest Test as a leader against a team which is coming back to the golden era when Australians literally muscled their way past any opposition. The world champions Australia are looking solid on paper and if there is one apparent weakness it could be the middle order’s inexperience against quality spin.

The Men in Blue would not risk Yuvraj Singh for the opening game. His value to this side is too high and in that interest it’s better he be rested. Dhoni, however, declared himself fit. He was hit on the back of the left knee by a Munaf Patel delivery during practice on Friday.
Ricky Ponting’s men might not have it that easy this time but have a definite edge. The conditions here might suit India better. The outfield looks fast and there will be full value for shots, that’s if the ball comes on well and the batsmen can play through the line.

Australia’s strength is their swiftness and their ability to find the stumps when it matters. Given their strength on the field and India’s lack in that department, Ponting and Co. start with a 30-run advantage even before the toss.
A strong individual performance at the start of the series is crucial to propel the hosts. The confidence of the side is not sky high and if Australia run away with early success, it would become extremely difficult to play catch up.
The Indian top-order has all the potential to match up and Sachin Tendulkar will have another reason to concentrate hard. The world record holder is 97 runs shy of reaching the 17, 000-run mark.

It should be a tooth and nail encounter at the Reliance Stadium and will be interesting to see who draws first blood in the lung opener.

Squads

India: M.S. Dhoni (capt), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, S. Raina, Virat Kohli, R. Jadeja, Harbhajan Singh, Amit Mishra, Ishant Sharma, Munaf Patel, Ashish Nehra, Praveen Kumar, Sudeep Tyagi.
Australia: Ricky Ponting (capt), Michael Hussey (VC), Cameron White, Shane Watson, Tim Paine, Shaun Marsh, James Hopes, Adam Voges, Brett Lee, Peter Siddle, Doug Bollinger, Nathan Hauritz, Mitchell Johnson, Ben Hilfenhaus, Jon Holland.

“You have to try to reply to criticism with your intellect, not your ego,” said the one of the most revered England captains of yesteryears— Mike Brearley. Agreed. In his heyday, England were a stronger unit than what they are now and captains have been a topic of intense debate and discussions for decades now. If Sir Donald Bradman was discussed intently, so was England’s Douglas Jardine.
Over the years, esteemed cricketers such as Richie Benaud, Clive Lloyd, Vivian Richards, Greg Chappell, Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Sunil Gavaskar, Sourav Ganguly, Steve Waugh, Mark Taylor, Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Brian Lara have donned the captaincy hat and while some achieved phenomenal success, some have failed quite miserably.
The biggest blot in Sachin’s otherwise glittering 2-decade old career has been his inability to motivate his players under his captaincy. No, it was not a fault on his part but at that point of time, the Indian team were labelled as poor travellers and rightly so.
Sachin was first made the captain during the Titan Cup in 1996 and he won his very first series and beat the much-favoured South Africans in the final held at Wankhede Stadium. Javagal Srinath’s best bowling figures won the Indian team a win against the Proteas in Ahmedabad and India won the series at the Eden Park in Kanpur.<br />
But Tendulkar completely lost the plot when India toured South Africa and barring the chanceless 169 in Capetown in the company of the sublime Mohammad Azharuddin, Indian batting had nothing much to say. Dravid made his mark felt with his debut hundred at the Wanderers. The rest faltered.
Captaincy from time immemorial has been about not just leading good men but ensuring that the team performed at the right time. Every cricket afficionado can point a good captain, but not many know how to become one. One of the critical issues is the presence of superstars in a side. The records of Allan Border, Clive Lloyd, Steve Waugh, Mark Taylor and Ricky Ponting is a case in point. Lloyd had the services of Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, Best, Richards, Gomes, Logie, Dujon and had Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner to fill the bowling shoes.
Similarly, Waugh or Border too had the best in the business when they were at the helm. The issue never whom to play but whom to drop. The Australians in the last 15 years have been spoilt for choice and when players such as Damien Martyn, Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden, Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne retired, Ponting suddenly appeared to be leading a bunch of amateurs who were not capable of winning in the same manner in which their predecessors were. There were a generation of players such as Adam Gilchrist who were not used to losing at all.
So, to put together mere mortals to function as a champion unit took time and Ponting’s next test will be at the upcoming Ashes.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni, another example of having the right men for the job has Sachin, Sehwag, Raina, Yuvraj, Gambhir, Harbhajan, Zaheer, Ojha, Dhoni (himself), Praveen Kumar, Laxman, Ganguly, Kumble for company and the unit won matches with aplomb.
Many scholars have researched the growth of captains over the years and they have concluded that the main principle behind captaincy will help a youngster become a better leader.
The idea of captaincy or leadership is being accepted as a key ingredient to the existence of the game. However, research on this part of the game is quite subjective. One of the main elements is the ability of a captain to influence the thinking of the game and the players under him.
Captaincy is often judged in a team settings and achievement of goals (in this case a win or a series victory).
If a Benaud or Tony Greig referred to the Australian side of late 90’s as a ‘team of skippers’, it had a valid reason. The thought processes of Steve Waugh dripped down to the lower ranked players such as Justin Langer, Mark Waugh, Matthew Hayden, Shane Warne, McGrath and others in the side. The result was ruthless victories against all and sundry. The quest to become the best in the business always involves on: doing things right with doing the right thing. The combination of the can be lethal.
The best captains are those who make a mediocre player perform to the best of his potential and over a period of time help him become a match-winner. Sadly, in this particular point, leaders such as Steve Waugh, Mark Taylor had little to do as McGrath or Warne were individual superstars and did not have to be told what their roles in the team was.
Dhoni inherited the experience of demigods such as Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Kumble and the enthusiasm of youngsters such as Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina and Pragyan Ojha in the side.
Being a captain, is it crucial to being a great skipper? If yes, then how does one go about it?
Researches have proved that a smart cricketing brain is a trait one is born it and there are quite a few (mind you, very few!) who actually go on to learn this trait on the job. Others, just do not have it. An interesting factor also was the presence of no common factor to judge the captains. Some had good vice-captains (as in the case of Mark Taylor), some was too talented and the rest of the team just obeyed his orders (Allan Border and Clive Lloyd) and successful skippers were all different personalities and displayed different confidence levels at different stages of their captaincy.

An interesting observations of all researches was that the leaders played primarily on tasks at hand or their relationships with a particular player. Another important trait was noticed that the best leaders were those who could adapt themselves on a situation given to them and had the uncanny knack of selecting the ‘best team’ than going in for the ‘best players’. Now this is slightly tricky because going by records (best player tag)— Rahul Dravid should be in the Indian team and that would have been a blind choice. The reality is far different and the Bengaluru boy is yet to play a ODI in the last 2 years. Sourav Ganguly is another case in point. His records speak of the southpaw but he had to retire when the Bengali himself admitted to have atleast a couple of more years left in service.
Maintaining equilibrium is another important aspect of a good leader. By equilibrium, I mean maintaining the right balance within the team and ensuring that the motivation levels are always looking positive and not otherwise.
This is one clear aspect where Dhoni seems to have failed in the World Cup and has looked clueless as to how he needs to go about it.

Cricket Australia had for the first time brought forth the concept of different captains for different formats of the game, something which definitely did not go well Tugga (Steve Waugh) at that point of time, but it worked. Soon other nations and India in particular followed the same theory and suddenly many players who were earlier featuring in all formats of the game were sidelined and labelled as Test players and ODI stars. The likes of VVS Laxman, Dravid were brought in only for the longest version of the game and overlooked for the shorter format.
Lastly, the ability to quickly juggle between different formats of the game is the modern mantra for success. That’s the bottomline and the quicker the captains across the world realise it, the better it is for their teams.
What makes a better captain?
It is ultimately the team that makes a captain and not otherwise. When one says, the captain is as good as his team, he is dead right. Dhoni can’t individually change the tide of the team but needs the fellow Men-in-Blue to maneuver the ship to the shore or else…..

Mahendra Singh Dhoni missed a trick or two in bringing Rudra Pratap Singh late to play in the tournament. He proved to be the most successful bowler in the IPL playing for the Deccan Chargers.

While there are myriad post-mortems that will be performed for the next few days, I look at 10 main reasons why the Men in Blue just gave blues to the millions across the orb.

Reason 1: Captain M.S. Dhoni has been known as a tactician on the field and has always kept his emotions under control even when the team was winning and it was this demeanour which won him a lot of votes and terms such as ‘Captain Cool’ was coined. This tour has changed all that and the constant analysis and dissection of team’s every move has got into the Captain Cool’s head.

Reason 2: Another key reason for the team’s indifferent performance has been the lack of energy shown in the field, especially after coming from the hectic IPL schedule in South Africa. While many may want to overlook this aspect (including the members of the team). The month-and-half long extravaganza not only drained the team but also could not provide adequate recovery time for them to rest, regroup and rejuvenate for this big event.

Reason 3: Casual attitude has no place in any game and certainly not in cricket. A day before their crucial match against England, the Indian team was given an optional practise session, something which requires a lot of explanation to be done. Vice-captain Yuvraj Singh even went onto snap at a journalist that the team practices according to its thoughts and not according to the wishes of the media. Fair enough, did that statement have any translation into action when the team played the match. NO.

Reason 4: Firstly, India were put in a group which allowed them to enter the Super Eight stage with relative ease and when the biggies came upon, India was found wanting in a lot of departments and batting being just one among them.

Reason 5: On what basis was R.P. Singh not picked for almost the entire tournament? This Deccan Chargers’ pacer had been performing brilliantly in the IPL and one would have thought that his place in the team was quite obvious. But not according to MSD who had other plans.

Reason 6: FIELDING! Well, the lesser said about this, the better. Most of us have seen some brilliant fielding display by the Indians in the last 2-3 series and the standards have been quite high and one would not have expected the sorry display when it came to this department. But the Men in Blue proved everyone wrong and how.

Reason 7: The reason for selecting Zaheer Khan is just not logical. Ever since he suffered a shoulder injury at the IPL 2, Zak has only been a shadow of himself and has even dropped pace too. His fielding was appalling to say the least and definitely should have been dropped. If Sehwag was sent back to get himself cured, how did Zaheer continued to figure in the team’s interests? It is even more suprising because when the team left for London, MSD had mentioned that Zak was not fully fit. Sorry show!

Reason 8: While chasing a moderate 153, one would have expected India (who needed to win this game to stay in the tournament) to come out firing on all cylinders. This has always been the Indian team’s mantra because they have believed that Viru (Sehwag) could shut the opponents out of the game within the first 5-8 overs. With Viru gone and Rohit opening the innings with Gambhir, it was never going to be the same. Rohit failed to live up to his expectations and remained a sorry figure in the middle even as the average English and West Indies attack continued to bombard him with short-pitched stuff. Sehwag was missed for sure in the middle. Atleast, he brought a method to this madness.

Reason 9: The biggest blunder of all was to send Ravindra Jadeja (25 from 35 balls) to bat at No. 3 when you had Yuvraj Singh all padded up and ready to rule the Lord’s. It was a mere struggle for the young lad who probably had no experience to be batting at this stage and Dhoni surely chose a wrong guy to be batting at this level and that too at a crunch game such as this. Dhoni surely made more than a handful of tactical blunders.

Reason 10: Shooting from the hip has been an art mastered by most cricketers and Indian cricketers are no less. From giving brash statements to the media to sounding forever confident has become a mantra for most cricket teams, without admitting the real areas of concern. After this dismal show, Dhoni needs to know that keeping quiet off the field and performing on it is all that matters if he and his team regroup for the 4 ODIs against the West Indies starting in the fourth week of this month.

Sachin was first made the captain during the Titan Cup in 1996 and he won his very first series and beat the much-favoured South Africans in the final held at Wankhede Stadium. Javagal Srinath’s best bowling figures won the Indian team a win against the Proteas in Ahmedabad and India won the series at the Eden Park in Kanpur.
But Tendulkar completely lost the plot when India toured South Africa and barring the chanceless 169 in Capetown in the company of the sublime Mohammad Azharuddin, Indian batting had nothing much to say. Dravid made his mark felt with his debut hundred at the Wanderers. The rest faltered.
Captaincy from time immemorial has been about not just leading good men but ensuring that the team performed at the right
time.
Every cricket afficionado can point a good captain, but not many know how to become one. One of the critical issues is the presence of superstars in a side. The records of Allan Border, Clive Lloyd, Steve Waugh, Mark Taylor and Ricky Ponting is a case in point. Lloyd had the services of Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, Best, Richards, Gomes, Logie, Dujon and had Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner to fill the bowling shoes.
Similarly, Waugh or Border too had the best in the business when they were at the helm. The issue never whom to play but whom to drop. The Australians in the last 15 years have been spoilt for choice and when players such as Damien Martyn, Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden, Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne retired, Ponting suddenly appeared to be leading a bunch of amateurs who were not capable of winning in the same manner in which their predecessors were. There were a generation of players such as Adam Gilchrist who were not used to losing at all.
So, to put together mere mortals to function as a champion unit took time and Ponting’s next test will be at the upcoming Ashes.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni, another example of having the right men for the job has Sachin, Sehwag, Raina, Yuvraj, Gambhir, Harbhajan, Zaheer, Ojha, Dhoni (himself), Praveen Kumar, Laxman, Ganguly, Kumble for company and the unit won matches with aplomb.

Many scholars have researched the growth of captains over the years and they have concluded that the main principle behind captaincy will help a youngster become a better leader.
The idea of captaincy or leadership is being accepted as a key ingredient to the existence of the game. However, research on this part of the game is quite subjective. One of the main elements is the ability of a captain to influence the thinking of the game and the players under him.
Captaincy is often judged in a team settings and achievement of goals (in this case a win or a series victory).

If a Benaud or Tony Greig referred to the Australian side of late 90’s as a ‘team of skippers’, it had a valid reason. The thought processes of Steve Waugh dripped down to the lower ranked players such as Justin Langer, Mark Waugh, Matthew Hayden, Shane Warne, McGrath and others in the side. The result was ruthless victories against all and sundry.

The quest to become the best in the business always involves on: doing things right with doing the right thing. The combination of the can be lethal.
The best captains are those who make a mediocre player perform to the best of his potential and over a period of time help him become a match-winner. Sadly, in this particular point, leaders such as Steve Waugh, Mark Taylor had little to do as McGrath or Warne were individual superstars and did not have to be told what their roles in the team was.
Dhoni inherited the experience of demigods such as Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Kumble and the enthusiasm of youngsters such as Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina and Pragyan Ojha in the side.

Being a captain, is it crucial to being a great skipper? If yes, then how does one go about it?
Researches have proved that a smart cricketing brain is a trait one is born it and there are quite a few (mind you, very few!) who actually go on to learn this trait on the job. Others, just do not have it. An interesting factor also was the presence of no common factor to judge the captains. Some had good vice-captains (as in the case of Mark Taylor), some was too talented and the rest of the team just obeyed his orders (Allan Border and Clive Lloyd) and successful skippers were all different personalities and displayed different confidence levels at different stages of their captaincy.

An interesting observations of all researches was that the leaders played primarily on tasks at hand or their relationships with a particular player.

Another important trait was noticed that the best leaders were those who could adapt themselves on a situation given to them and had the uncanny knack of selecting the ‘best team’ than going in for the ‘best players’. Now this is slightly tricky because going by records (best player tag)— Rahul Dravid should be in the Indian team and that would have been a blind choice. The reality is far different and the Bengaluru boy is yet to play a ODI in the last 2 years. Sourav Ganguly is another case in point. His records speak of the southpaw but he had to retire when the Bengali himself admitted to have atleast a couple of more years left in service.

Maintaining equilibrium is another important aspect of a good leader. By equilibrium, I mean maintaining the right balance within the team and ensuring that the motivation levels are always looking positive and not otherwise.

This is one clear aspect where Dhoni seems to have failed in the World Cup and has looked clueless as to how he needs to go about it.

Cricket Australia had for the first time brought forth the concept of different captains for different formats of the game, something which definitely did not go well Tugga (Steve Waugh) at that point of time, but it worked. Soon other nations and India in particular followed the same theory and suddenly many players who were earlier featuring in all formats of the game were sidelined and labelled as Test players and ODI stars. The likes of VVS Laxman, Dravid were brought in only for the longest version of the game and overlooked for the shorter format.

Lastly, the ability to quickly juggle between different formats of the game is the modern mantra for success. That’s the bottomline and the quicker the captains across the world realise it, the better it is for their teams.

What makes a better captain?

It is ultimately the team that makes a captain and not otherwise. When one says, the captain is as good as his team, he is dead right. Dhoni can’t individually change the tide of the team but needs the fellow Men-in-Blue to maneuver the ship to the shore or else……