|
Batting
This was a tournament that was completely about batting. It was a series that India dominated because they batted better than Australia, and created a bigger flood of runs than their rivals.
Australia averaged a phenomenal 54.97 per batsman per innings this series, with Ponting leading the charge. He more than made up for his flirtations with zilch in the previous series. Hell, at an average of 100.9, he even insured himself against a failure in his next series.
They key factor was that this time, the lead Australian scorer was surrounded with plenty of support from all corners, with Katich and Hayden averaging 70 and 64 and the rest of the batting line up in the mid-40's. A point worth noting is that Gilchrist still had a bad series averaging only 16 in 6 innings.
The Indians did even better, averaging 63.33 per batsmen, almost 10 runs more than the Australians. Once again,Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman held the fulcrum, averaging 123, 82 and 76 respectively, with able support from Sehwag and Ganguly. The worst average amongst the five top batsmen was 47.33, and that tells a story.
Bowling
This series puts the Indian bowlers in an interesting predicament- it is one they would want to brag the most about from a team point of view, but also one they would want to completely erase from memories from an individual point of view. Australian bowlers have no such conflicts, it was a bad series for them on all counts and they would happily deny knowing anything about it.
In six weeks where bowling averages are flying around in the high forties, fifties, sixties and even nineties, Kumble brought the lone streak of competence, averaging 29 and with three five wicket hauls.
Relevance now
The Australian and the Indian batting was nearly at its best, and the Indians came out stronger. The question is can the Indians bat as well as they did then, because it is as unlikely that the Australians will drop their standards as that the Indian bowlers will outbowl them.
A part of the answer to that is in the fact that Australia have, atleast on paper, a much stronger bowling line up than they did in 2003-04. Lee was out for two of the four games in the series then, he is back now and looking as sharp as ever. Tait is a threat, Bracken is a more evolved bowler than he was then and Johnson has shown that he can hurt.
Things aren't going to be half as easy.
Batting
Performances
Bowling
Performances
|
