Daniel Vettori had this to say after the 1-0 loss to India.
For the life of me I cannot accept that Australia and South Africa would have ever drawn a match from the position India was in at the end of the 3 rd day of the final test match of the series. Hence India is no where in comparison and its abject desire to draw is a shame for a team aspiring to the top spot.
The only reason Vettori compared India to the other two was to deflect criticism about New Zealand's poor showing.
India obviously outplayed us in all departments, they obviously dominated the game. You can throw in Australia, South Africa and India, and they are the three best teams in the world. It's hard to distinguish between the three...
For the life of me I cannot accept that Australia and South Africa would have ever drawn a match from the position India was in at the end of the 3 rd day of the final test match of the series. Hence India is no where in comparison and its abject desire to draw is a shame for a team aspiring to the top spot.
The only reason Vettori compared India to the other two was to deflect criticism about New Zealand's poor showing.
6 comments:
Ott,
that is an interesting observation!
yes, can't see aus and sa drawing the match from the position india were in, at Napier
Ankit, reading your comment made me realise that the Indian cricket team are pretenders to the numero uno throne.:)
AUSTRALIA WOULD NOT HAVE PLAYED FOR A DRAW BECAUSE OF THEIR EGO, YOU CANT SAY THE SAME THING ABOUT SAFRICA. I THOUGHT OUR TEAM DID THE RIGHT THING AS THEY WERE ON THE VERGE OF CREATING HISTORY. THERE WAS A TIME WE USED TO PLAY FOR A DRAW FROM DAY ONE.
BOTH VETTRORI AND MOLES ADMITTED TO OUR SUPERIORITY IN THIS SERIES. I WAS NOT SURPRISED BY VETTORIS OBSERVATIONS.
Otts
While I see your point, I think *any* team would first make themselves safe and then go for a win, specially if it is once-in-41-years series win at stake. The question "Can't our bowlers defend 500 runs" is a perfectly valid one. But the ground conditions were not particularly favourable to bowlers. Say it hadn't rained on the 5th day and India hadn't got those dubious decisions in their favour and heaven forbid, NZ would have won (they had a LOT of time to get those runs) you would still be dubbing India as pretenders to the throne :)
lviss,
Thats the point I was trying to make. This team is yet to shed its past. When there was an opportunity to annihilate the opposition, they played safe by trying to create history.
A pity.
Megha,
I have no quarrel with the result.:)
What I wanted to say was they could have upped their scoring rate and got lot more runs in less time.
Instead on the 4 th day morning they dawdled.
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