By Qaiser Mohammad Ali Dec 24, 2006, 12:22 GMT
New Delhi, Dec 24 (IANS) Contrary to popular perception, India had quite a good year through 2006 as they made history by registering their maiden Test series triumphs in the West Indies and are on the verge of an encore in South Africa. Rahul Dravid's team won their first ever Test in South Africa a few days ago in Johannesburg, and if it wins one of the rest of the two matches left it will become the first Indian side to win a series in that country.
In the aftermath of the one-day series defeat in South Africa, Indian fans forgot that it was the same team that registered a world-record 17 successive one-day international (ODI) wins while batting second.
Instigated by the media and a few Members of Parliament, fans went berserk in India as the itinerary provided the team virtually no time to acclimatise to the alien South African conditions and pitches that had bounce and speed.
The result was a 0-4 loss, before India's revival of fortunes began with the maiden Test victory over South Africa on the African soil.
One more victory, in the second Test scheduled to start Dec 26 in Durban or in the third one in Cape Town in the New Year, and history will be made. And with it, the drubbing in the one-day series will be wiped out for good. Since the public perception and focus is more on the popular one-dayers, achievements in Test cricket are generally overshadowed. In Tests, India's record was much better then ODIs. They played 11 matches, won three and lost two, while six were drawn.
The year started with a 0-1 series defeat in Pakistan. India started with a 410-run opening wicket partnership between captain and vice-captain, Dravid and Virender Sehwag, in the first drawn Lahore Test. They fell just four runs short of breaking the world record of India's late Vinoo Mankad and Pankaj Roy, made against New Zealand in Chennai, then Madras, in 1955-56.
After the draw in the second Test in Faisalabad, India lost by 341 runs the third one in Karachi despite pacer Irfan Pathan's sensational hat trick in the very first over at the National Stadium. He dismissed Salman Butt, Younis Khan and Mohammed Yousuf to give India a flying start.
But India's batting failure in the two innings and poor bowling in the second innings meant that Yuvraj Singh's 122 went waste.
In the next series, against England at home, India won the second Test by nine wickets in Mohali, but lost by 212 runs the third and final match in Mumbai to allow Andrew Flintoff's side to snatch the 1-1 draw. On the tour of the West Indies, India, after the loss in the one-dayers, held an upper hand almost throughout the four-Test series before winning by 49 runs in Kingston to make history. They would have won the four-Test series by a bigger margin had sun and lady luck smiled on them in earlier matches.
India next played a Test in South Africa, after more than six months. This gap is one of the reasons why their failure in ODIs became a bigger issue than it would have if the five-day Test matches had been played alongside one-day internationals.
India's performance in ODIs was not as good as in Test cricket, but it was not so bad when seen in the context of the hysterical reactions of fans in the country.
The team played 30 one-dayers, won 13, lost 15 and two ended in a 'no result'. The last eight of India's world-record 17 successive wins while chasing came this year, the golden streak having begun in Zimbabwe in 2005. The fabulous run stretched till the first ODI in Kingston in May, aptly ending with a Dravid century.
Among the high points in ODIs was a runaway 4-1 triumph in Pakistan in January-February and the landslide 5-1 win against England in March-April. The visitors had no clue what suddenly hit them after drawing Test series as temperatures soared in March-April.
India then played a two-ODI series against Pakistan in Abu Dhabi and drew it 1-1, before heading for the West Indies.
In the Caribbean, India started well with a five-wicket win in Kingston, but then lost the plot and form. West Indies, on paper a clearly inferior team than India, won the next four matches to win the series.
India were deprived an opportunity to redeem themselves when the Unitech Triangular Series, also involving South Africa, in Sri Lanka was cancelled because of security reasons.
The next destination was Kuala Lumpur. India failed to make it to the final of the rain-affected DLF Cup Triangular Series, while Australia defeated the West Indies in the final to win the title.
India's poor form continued in the Champions Trophy as the hosts failed to make it to the semi-finals. After beating England comprehensively in the first match, the 2002 champions lost to the West Indies and Australia and crashed out.
The last series of the year was also a loss-making venture. Hosts South Africa proved just too good for India as the visitors got little time to adapt to the local conditions.
The loss forced a few knee-jerk reactions from the Indian cricket board. Board chief Sharad Pawar announced that the selection committee chairman Dilip Vengsarkar would go to South Africa for in the Test series but his role there was never specified.
A few hours after that announcement, Vengsarkar's panel recalled former captain Sourav Ganguly to bolster the sagging batting-up in South Africa. They also recalled pacer Zaheer Khan, and both did well in the first Test win at the Wanderers.
One offshoot of the win was that it looked like coach Greg Chappell and Ganguly had patched up. Both had fallen apart on that fateful tour of Zimbabwe in 2005. Ganguly was dropped after the Pakistan tour in January-February. Ganguly, who made an immediate impact in the first Test with a half-century in Johannesburg, played Tests in the first and last month of the year; in between he was dumped for lack of runs.
Individually, Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar, who missed the West Indies tour due to a shoulder operation, and Anil Kumble set a few records. Tendulkar became the first player to compile 14,000 runs in one-day internationals. He reached the feat in the first match against Pakistan in Peshawar in January.
On March 18, he became the most capped Indian when he played his 132nd Test against England in his home city, Mumbai.
In the same match, Dravid became the sixth Indian - and 37th in the world - to play in 100 Tests.
In the second Test against England in Mohali, Kumble became the first Indian- and the world's fifth - to take 500 wickets in Tests.
Indian cricket's best-known administrator Jagmohan Dalmiya seemed to have played his last innings during the year.
The board banned him for life from holding any post for alleged misappropriation of funds relating to the 1996 World Cup, hosted in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Dalmiya, a former International Cricket Council and Indian board president and current president of the Cricket Association of Bengal, says he will take the matter to court - for the umpteenth time in his chequered career.
The Indian women's team also had a good year, and Mithali Raj's team signed off by winning its third successive Asia Cup title in Jaipur this month. The men's national blind team reached the final of the World Cup in Pakistan before losing to the hosts in a repeat of the previous tournament.
© 2006 Indo-Asian News Service
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