Just one WIN was all the difference between tieing the series and loosing it. It may sound funny to compare India and Australia as teams, but in reality the difference in not a whole lot. Before jumping to any conclusions, think of realities and the truth. While our batsmen face the best in the world bowling, Australians face may be the worst in the game. Sreesanth is best suited to be a Marine. Given a machine gun, he can spread the bullets in all directions instantly killing all the enemies. Cricket however is different and he successfully delivered his Marine skills and sprayed the ball all over. Just imagine Ganguly or Sachin facing that bowling and think what they would have done to him. I bet, on any given day, their strike rate would be over 200 and would hit a century in every match.

Our batting failed far less times than our bowling. Looking at our bowlers, I thought for most of the time, that they were bowling with a ball in their hands than their brains in their heads. All it takes for sachin to hit a four is a ball out side the off stump pitching on good length. For those who watched him play yesterday would have noticed that. There is a difference between God and Man and a Lion and Dog in every single boundary he hit against any batsmen in the entire tournament. Indians are lucky for the fact that Sachin and Ganguly are not in Australia team, God heavens, if that was true, their normal one day team score would be beyond 500 runs.

In the end, we should have won the match at Vadodara and the series would have tied. If the difference in scores is any gauge, the difference in bowling is a big measure too. The difference is that Australia always finds bowlers, every time all the time and we fail in that area desperately. Batting is all we got and our fielding will take a miracle to transform.

The last one-day would have been a comprehensive victory if our pacemen bowled into the left handers and away from right handers and they exactly did the opposite. India dropped eighteen catches in total while Australia dropped two.

And for those who think ‘Sachin’ should retire, THINK CRICKET. And for your records..

Player Mat Inns NO Runs HS Ave BF SR 100 50 0 4s 6s
ML Hayden (Aus) 29 28 3 1555 181* 62.20 1746 89.06 5 6 1 163 35
RT Ponting (Aus) 24 22 4 1183 113 65.72 1312 90.16 3 8 0 121 14
SR Tendulkar (India) 28 27 2 1166 100* 46.64 1411 82.63 1 11 3 150 11
SC Ganguly (Asia/India) 28 26 2 1151 98 47.95 1589 72.43 0 12 2 119 20
DPMD Jayawardene (Asia/SL) 32 31 2 1089 115* 37.55 1322 82.37 2 8 4 90 17