Giles bowls England to crucial cliffhanger victory

By Sandeep Hegde Alesar

Hoping to win at Delhi and wrap up the series, Sourav Ganguly won the toss and elected to field on a Ferozeshah Kotla batting wicket that, as many as seven times out of 12, has traditionally favoured teams batting second. Dew and mist forced the match to start only at 9.30 am, half an hour late. England for this match had brought in Ashley Giles and Andy Caddick in place of Jeremy Snape Matthew Hoggard. For India, Sarandeep Singh made his one-day debut in place of Harbhajan Singh, who was rested for this match.

England had ideal conditions for batting, since Delhi was cool and the temperature stood at 21 degrees Celsius - much akin to a pleasant English summer. They got off to a slow and steady start, putting on 50 runs for the first wicket before Ajit Agarkar got Marcus Trescothick caught by Sarandeep at mid-on.

Nasser Hussain and Nick Knight then consolidated the innings for England, with Knight again playing the sweep and reverse-sweep effectively against spin. Sarandeep was the main sufferer, unable to settle into a proper line and length in his debut match; his five-over spell, consequently, cost almost 35 runs. Ganguly was thus forced to utilise Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag in tandem to complete 10 overs between them. Both admirably rose to occasion and bowled slow spin on a wicket where the ball came on to the bat easily enough.

At 130 for one, Tendulkar had Hussain, on 42, faintly edging the ball to wicket-keeper Ajay Ratra, but it went unnoticed by the umpire. Hussain did finally fall, having scored 49, to Tendulkar in a similar manner. Andrew Flintoff, who then joined Knight, showed tempered aggression with maturity and proceeded to accelerate the England innings. He duly completed his fifty and, for the first time, displayed his batting abilities to an Indian public who till now had only heard about them. However, on 50, he survived a stumping; Ratra was acutely conscious that Flintoff had his feet in the air, but to everybody's surprise, the third umpire pressed the green button when the television replay clearly contradicted that decision. Flintoff was finally out for 52, caught at long-on by Mohammad Kaif off Javagal Srinath. Knight, meanwhile, scored a fine 105 off 131 balls before being run out.

England, then, reached 271 off their 50 overs. For India, Srinath and Anil Kumble were economical, Agarkar was expensive in taking two wickets, while Sarandeep and Ganguly were disappointing with the ball. India started their chase in fine style, though, with Sehwag and Tendulkar continuing from where they left off at Kanpur. India lost Tendulkar in the fifth over with the score on 39 and, in the 11th over, lost Sehwag for 42. Ganguly, coming in at number three, was not fluent at the start, and to make matters worse, India lost the wicket of Dinesh Mongia with 100 on the board.

At this stage, Kaif joined Ganguly in the middle and the pair added 111 runs for the fourth wicket - a partnership record for Kotla, surpassing the previous best of 110 against Sri Lanka in 1982 between Ashok Malhotra and Sandeep Patil. Giles' first four overs cost 36 runs, and he conceded three sixes to Ganguly. India were 209 for four at the end off the 39th over, and the match seemed to be in firmly in India's grasp.

The match turned when Giles, coming back for his second spell, bowled around the wicket at Ganguly for the first time and almost immediately had him caught at long-off by substitute Owais Shah for 74. Within the next two balls, he also had Kaif caught by Graham Thorpe at mid-off for 44. In his very next over, Giles then snapped up a return catch to dismiss Hemang Badani for just two runs.

The familiar Indian middle-order collapse ensued. Within two overs, Giles had Ratra stumped by James Foster. Kumble also perished to Giles. Agarkar, with some lusty yet intelligent hitting, took India to the brink of victory, but India could only reach 269 for eight in their 50 overs. India thus lost the match by just two runs, showing yet again that they lacked the killer instinct to deliver the finishing blows.

Giles was adjudged Man of the Match by Match Referee Denis Lindsay for his figures of 10-0-59-5. His first spell consisted of four percent wicket-taking deliveries in 24 balls, while his second spell consisted of 22 percent wicket-taking deliveries in 36 balls. What a transformation within a single game!

The Indians had collected 50.5% of their runs in boundaries, while England had made only 34.6% of their runs from hits to the fence. The statistics showed the Indians yet again that, in one-day cricket, taking singles and rotating the strike is far more important than merely hitting boundaries, a factor that may also have been the reason for India losing the game by a margin of just two singles.

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