India vs Zimb | Flower Power
#memoriesfromdiaries
19th May 1999
ICC World Cup 1999 Memories
Very rarely does one get to see a whopping record number of extras by the Indian side, and that too in a Cricket World Cup fixture – 51 extras in just 50 overs.
Yet another match in which India were comfortably placed, but totally squandered it all away, by some indiscipline in the bowling arena!
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| From my personal diary entry, 19 May 1999 |
Still couldn’t fathom the way in which they failed this dismally and disastrously at the hustings in this crucial game in the ICC Cricket World Cup 1999.
Many things worked against our boys today on the field. Four of them merit some attention though!
Firstly - a record 14 leg byes, 16 no balls, and 21 wides all in just 50 overs.
Secondly, it was highly unfortunate that Tendulkar couldn’t play the game on this particular day, as, sadly, he had to fly back to Mumbai, all of a sudden, because of his father’s demise.
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| A minute of silence on the field, to mark the passing away of Sachin's father |
Thirdly, adding to the team’s woes, India were fined a hefty penalty of four overs for slow over rate as well!
Fourthly, another disastrous decision today by the Indian captain Azhar – when India won the toss, but ironically elected to field first!!!
Chennai boy Sadagopan Ramesh and Sourav were the opening duo, because of Tendulkar’s absence!
Sourav fell with just nine runs added to his scorecard.
Ramesh tried his best to keep the momentum going on a high note, with 55 runs to his score, when he too fell to an unexpected slow left arm spin from Grant Flower! (Interestingly, Ramesh was the highest scorer for the Indian side, in the match)!
Batsmen soon kept falling like nine pins at such regular intervals, in such quick succession!
Having
been awarded
a hefty penalty of four overs, India now had just 46 overs for them.
And it proved a real cliffhanger when India needed seven runs from 11 balls with three wickets in hand!
All eyes were on Robin Singh, Srinath and Venky, to pull off the unexpected!
When disaster struck!
From the thunderous Olonga - one of the fastest bowlers in International cricket!
Henry Olonga struck with such power, lapping up all three wickets in just five balls in quick succession, to hand India one of their
worst debacles in World Cup Cricket!
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| Olonga strikes |
A match that India coulda quite easily won!
This led to India ending up last on the Points Tally, in the Super Sixes Stage.
Captaincy really matters! Especially when it’s the Cricket World Cup!
Dravid 13 runs (14b)
Azhar 7 runs
(11b)
Ajay Jadeja
43 runs (76b)
Robin Singh
35 runs (47b)
For Zimbabwe, now, it was just a cake walk to their crown and glory, with the famed Flower Brother Duo [Andy and Grant] scoring the maximum runs for their team, along with the winning knock as well, blazing their way to victory with Grant Flower on 45 runs, and Andy Flower (not out) on 68 runs!
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| the Flower Brothers |
Interestingly, there have been a bevy of such brother-bondings enlivening the fields in International Cricket, including the likes of –
the Steve Waugh Mark Waugh duo from Australia,
the Brett
Lee & Shane Lee duo from Australia,
the Yusuf
Pathan & Irfan Pathan duo from India,
Krunal
Pandya & Hardik Pandya duo, again from India,
the Morkel
brothers from South Africa,
the Marshall
brothers from New Zealand,
to mention a few,
the brother-duos who made for a real Cricketing ‘fraternity’ on the field!
PS: On a personal note, I should confess that, I completely stopped watching the game [all formats of the game] after the year 2000, [when in April 2000, India and the entire world were rattled by match-fixing allegations, and some of my favourite cricketing icons were also banned from the game, after being found involved in match-fixing – especially Ajay Jadeja and Hanse Cronje, and Hanse even admitting to match-fixing!]
Ende deivame!!!
I personally felt it was such a huge disappointment or rather an embarrassment, when you sit at your television set, all day long, eagerly waiting - and praying too - with bated breath for India to strike all sixes and fours for every ball, but then you realise that, all those matches were already ‘tuned’ and fixed!’ by ‘tuners’ and ‘fixers’ far far away from the cricket field, in hotels and in luxury suites!
Days when the betting racket was rampant in cricket, controlling the players from behind the stage, like puppets in the hands of the puppeteers!
But for these tainted clods who gave the game a bad reputation, the game, outwitting them all, has its own aura and its feel, ain’t it?
Those days and days and days of gully cricket, or street cricket as we call them, that we played and played from dawn until dusk, still remains etched in our hearts for ever – and with Wordsworth, we say, ‘The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more’.
The bestest illustration to this credo, we find in Narayan’s amazing Children’s Cricket Fiction – Swami and Friends.
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| Swami and Friends Pic courtesy: thecricketmonthly.com |
And we, like fast bowler Bret Lee’s fictional cricketing hero Toby Jones, indulge ourselves in that blessed time-travel to matches past!
On an aside: Well, Toby Jones is a fictional, budding school-boy cricketer, [quite reflective of the likes of Swami and like all of us who revel and relish the game]! He and his friends live for the game!
Added, the fictional Toby boy has this unique gift of time-travelling to any cricket match that’s happened in the distant past, just by giving one quick glance at the scorecard of the match concerned, from the Wisden Cricketer's Almanack – considered the ‘Bible’ for cricket buffs from across the planet!
To be Toby is to be we! the delightful cricketing bee! Ain’t we?
Statistics and pics: espncricinfo.com | Cartoon courtesy: thecricketmonthly.com
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