Tendulkar's genius, and Ganguly's mind games

The encomiums flowed for Sachin Tendulkar after his 141 nearly allowed India to chase a target of 330 at Rawalpindi. Writing for Press Trust of India, Rashid Latif called Tendulkar cricket's "Kohinoor[diamond]", and the best batsman he had ever seen. "Time and again I thought, has there been a better batsman I have seen in my life? I couldn't think of anyone, not even Viv Richards," wrote Latif.

"Tendulkar's genius was apparent in the way he made adjustments in his batting, and that's why he is Tendulkar and not Virender Sehwag. While Sehwag doesn't make any attempt to understand the bowlers' strategy, Tendulkar sizes up the situation instantly ... A pure genius. We are very fortunate to have been born in the same era as Tendulkar and watched him in action."

* * *

Pakistan dailies have alleged that the Indian camp is resorting to mind games to get the better of Pakistan. In a piece titled "Fired-up Pakistan avenge Karachi defeat" The News said that the Indians had deliberately mislead the opposition into thinking that Ashish Nehra would not play at Rawalpindi. "One wonders what kind of medicine the Indian team has invented that saw Nehra getting fit in hours rather than days... [It] was just a stunt that aims at playing with the minds of opponents." On the same subject, The Nation said: "Indian trick turns into reality as Nehra is out for a week". (Nehra split a webbing on his hand during the Rawalpindi and has been ruled out for a week.)

Ganguly's comment about Shoaib Akhtar's action didn't go down well with the Pakistani media either. In a piece titled `Pakistan prepare to tackle Ganguly's mind games, The News quotes a Pakistan team official as saying: "We know that the Indians have been behind a whisper campaign about Shoaib's action being under scrutiny in this series by the umpires and match referee through their media corps. We realise it is all a ploy to start a controversy in the press about Shoaib's bowling action and try to put him under pressure and disturb him in this series as he is a potential match-winner. But he is ready for such a situation."

The article even alleged that Ganguly had deliberately asked an Indian journalist to question him on the over-rate issue after the Karachi match, so that he could hit out at the ICC's system of only fining the errant team, and not docking overs.

* * *

Meanwhile, the post-mortem into the Rawalpindi match continued, and The Times of India came up with a novel reason for India's defeat: the boring diet of their players. The daily reports that the Indians had daal [lentil] soup, and then chose between Italian pasta with sauce or plain rice with daal, with "boring boiled vegetables", mashed potatoes and vegetarian sandwiches. The Pakistanis, on the other hand, tucked away into plenty of chicken and mutton, with some ras malai [milk-based dessert] thrown in as well. The newspaper also spoke to Zahid Rasool Hasmi, the catering head of the Marriott Hotel, where the two teams were putting up. "We had nothing to do with it [the menu], the Indian team management wanted it."

* * *

The News, a Pakistan daily, says that the reason Mohammad Sami and Shoaib Akhtar were more effective at Rawalpindi was because they followed Imran Khan's advice. Imran, says the newspaper, gave the two fast bowlers a simple suggestion: "Just go out and attack the batsmen. Don't worry about the runs or the extras."

The daily quotes a source from the Pakistan team as saying: "He [Imran] felt that Shoaib and Sami were struggling because they were in two minds [about] whether to attack the batsmen or contain the runs." Sami had conceded 74 runs at Karachi, but came up with superb figures of 3 for 41 at Rawalpindi, while Shoaib took 3 for 49 in that game.