India cruise in game one

The first trick, on a pitch that early in the morning offered lateral movement besides its inherent bounce, was to win the toss and opt to bowl. Saurav Ganguly took that trick.

The next was to use the conditions well, with the ball. Ashish Nehra -- a selectorial after-thought who, if Chandu Borde and his men had had their way would now be cooling his heels back in India -- and Zaheer Khan took that one with three early strikes that opened the Zimbabwe innings up.

And India, thanks to a thoroughly professional performance with the ball, cruised to a win in its first game of the ODI triangular series against the host country.

Nehra's forte is an ability to hit the very full line and keep it there, right from the first ball. In this instance, he struck as early as the second ball with an absolute beauty -- inswing on line of off, drawing Campbell forward, then darting away off the seam to have the hapless batsman feathering the edge through to the keeper.

At the other end, Zaheer Khan -- lately ignored in the second Test -- returned to his natural position as a lead bowler, and like Nehra, hit length and line right away. And struck, twice, in his third over, the sixth of the innings. An angled delivery lifted off length and seamed away just enough to force Stuart Carlisle, shaping to play on the up, to edge for Laxman at second slip to take a very sharp low catch.

The last ball of the same over again lifted off length. And Grant Flower, captain for yesterday's game against the Windies, tried to keep it down and managed only to chop it on to his stumps. At 19/3, Zimbabwe needed a miracle to get back into the game -- and they had 44 more overs to negotiate.

Nehra should have picked up his second in the 9th over, when another lovely away seamer found Whittall's edge -- both slips dived, but neither could latch on to that one.

Ajit Agarkar came on in the 12th over, and yet again reminded us of an inexplicable ability to bowl good deliveries without getting wickets, but to strike with ordinary ones. His very first ball was short, and way wide of off. Whittall, chafing under the drought of runs imposed by tight seam bowling and good ground fielding, flashed hard, got the thickish top edge, and picked out Rahul Dravid running in off the third man fence and diving forward to hold. 35/4.

By this point, Saurav Ganguly was attacking for all he was worth. At one point, he was heard over the stump mike asking Nehra if he wanted a rest. No, came Nehra's response. 'Are you sure? I don't want an injury!' Ganguly was heard saying in Hindi. Nehra won that argument -- and got the wicket immediately when in the 13th over, he induced the left-handed Dirk Viljoen to drive at him, the seam movement finding the thick edge through to the third slip placed there as part of the Indian skipper's attacking field.

With that dismissal, Zimbabwe were 39/5 -- and the field restrictions were still in place.

Heath Streak had a struggle for survival early on. A bat pad fell agonisingly out of reach of Dravid's fingertips, at short square and two deliveries later, Nehra made one bend back and take the back pad in front of off -- an LBW shout that was surprisingly turned down.

Runs meanwhile came in little dribbles, with Zimbabwe moving to 63/5 in 20. Dion Ebrahim alone of the batsmen on view till that point coped well with the pace and seam movement, and looked to be getting increasingly comfortable when Agarkar made one kick up and move away around the right handed opener's off stump -- again, Laxman held well at slip, but injured himself in the process. Ebrahim, with 32 off 53, was the sole batsman to offer some decent resistance, and his departure at 77/6 pretty much nailed the home side to the mast.

Andy Blignaut has the ability to strike hard and often, and add much-needed runs to the board. On this occasion, though, his understanding with skipper Streak seemed a bit less than par -- vide two very narrow escapes during his brief tenure. In the 27th over, he pushed to cover, Retinder Sodhi substituting for Laxman raced in from mid off, dived, fielded and threw on the dive to knock the stumps down with Streak well short of his ground. 82/7.

Saurav Ganguly, seeing conditions that suited his style of bowling right down to the ground, brought himself on and in the 34th over, induced a leading edge from Blignaut as the batsman shaped to lift him over mid on. Harbhajan Singh, at mid off, held a good catch running to his right to have Zimbabwe down at 102/8.

One ball later, Travis Friend lost the plot and to a rather ordinary delivery outside off, gave catching practise to Sehwag manning the slips in place of Laxman.

Thanks largely to Taibu, who despite his captain's publicly expressed resentment seems a confident enough, and skillful, batsman shepherded Brian Strang through a last-wicket stand that put a few more on the board and kept the Indians in the field a touch longer than they expected. Agarkar finally ended the innings with a perfectly placed yorker that proved too good for Strang, and Zimbabwe were 133 all out -- a score that was about half what they needed to challenge the Indians.

There was still a bit of juice in the track, though the additional benefit of dew was long since lost. Yet, the outcome of the game was pretty much a foregone conclusion even before India began its reply.

The only real point of interest, thus, was whether Saurav Ganguly, suffering a very bad patch with the bat at Test level, could turn it round and bat with the assurance due from a batsman ranked, at this point in time, among the top three one day batsmen in the world.

He didn't.

What is more worrisome than yet another Ganguly failure is the sheer predictability -- Streak ran in, put one around off, moved it just marginally off the seam and Ganguly, yet again, was gone to the edge through to the keeper. And this mode of dismissal is as alarming as it is frequent, because Ganguly's forte till date has been his off side play. That he is not at the most fluent on the leg side is common knowledge, but he has been able to negate that with his supreme off side touch.

Vice captain Rahul Dravid, in fact, had earlier been moved to remark: "On the off, first there is God, then there is Saurav Ganguly." Now, there is still God, but he ain't playing. There is Saurav, but he ain't playing either. And this lack of touch in his favourite area is the really worrying symptom of the captain's continued ill health with the bat.

Hemang Badani came in at three, letting Laxman rest. And in tandem with Sachin Tendulkar, weathered a tight opening spell by the seamers. Given the amount of lateral movement on this seamer-friendly deck, there were occasions when both batsmen were beaten outside off, but neither seemed troubled by the occasional tough question posed by the seaming ball, and settled down to stroke the ball around the park with assurance and a calm certainity.

Sachin Tendulkar was lucky to survive an LBW appeal in the 11th over, with India 41/1 at that point -- unlike Streak in the Zimbabwe innings, he was hit on the front pad, but otherwise the strike was an action replay of the earlier negative decision.

India had got to 93/1 at the end of 20 overs, without really putting the pedal to the floor. Sachin Tendulkar stroked his way to his 52nd ODI half century, his 53 coming off 57 deliveries.

The formalities were completed in the 27th over. Badani (52 off 85 balls) swung a four to complete his own fifty and, in the process, take India past the home side's total to complete the 9-wicket win. Tendulkar remained unbeaten on 70 off 70.

And finally, one question remained: Given the shambolic nature of the normally hard-fighting Zimbabwe outfit, you begin to wonder just how much off field disputes have impacted on their play. Interestingly, the only two Zimbabwe batsmen who seemed prepared to play with some amount of application were opener Dion Ebrahim, and wicket-keeper Taibu, the very men captain-again Heath Streak reportedly doesn't want in the side.

Given the fact that Taibu showed very good form with the gloves, you would think that the team would be thinking in terms of finding him a permanent slot behind the sticks, thus easing the load off Andy Flower and letting the latter concentrate on his batting.

But then, skin pigmentation, not cricketing ability, seems to be the deciding factor at this point in time, more is the pity.