India aim to crush some toes

Irfan Pathan has just been smashed to one corner of the ground by Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

Irfan Pathan has just been smashed to one corner of the ground by Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Next ball, the left-arm seamer has his skipper falling over a ball that almost crushes his toes and misses the stumps by a whisker. Irfan walks up to Dhoni and has a few words, who replies back almost instantly. In this age of batsman-bowler verbal slanging, what were the two Indian teammates up to?

Well, they were discussing toe-crushers — a weapon Team India plans to use against the Aussies in the final.

Pathan, who will have to bowl in the slog overs, was practising the lethal length through the net session. Pathan got it right almost every time to both left-handed Gambhir and right-handed Dhoni. At the adjacent net, Sreesanth too tried to dig a few right at the bottom of the stumps and then swing a few away from the left-handers as variations.

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Ishant Sharma, who has a good yorker himself, stood as umpire, enjoying his off day.

Until now in this tournament, Indian bowlers haven’t really tried to bowl that length, but the finals may be different.

Lalchand Rajput, India’s assistant coach, admitted that the team was working on bowling yorkers.

“Yes, we are working on that and we tried it today at the nets. Irfan bowled a lot of yorkers as he’s one guy who will have to bowl a lot of overs in the middle and the end.”

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The exercise didn’t help just the bowlers though. “By asking the bowlers to develop and perfect their yorkers, the batsmen at the nets got a lot of practice. The Australians bowl a lot of those,” he said.

Swing thing

Of course, there is the tried and tested formula. Team India skipper Dhoni had clearly said that he wanted to counter Australia with swing — and there was ample indication that things wouldn’t be different. Munaf Patel and Praveen Kumar, the other seamers, got the ball to move encouragingly, much to the discomfort of the batsmen.

In fact, even Virender Sehwag, who was messing around with some seam-up stuff, got the ball to swing away appreciably from the right-handers!

Australia’s bowling attack, led by Brett Lee, Nathan Bracken and Mitchell Johnson, has been lethal with yorkers and the Indian think-tank is worried — about Lee in particular, who’s had two five-wicket hauls against India in the tri-series.

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The players, meanwhile, seem to have used their two off days well. Sreesanth has got his hair straightened for a whole new look, while Munaf Patel has just spent AUS$ 70 (approx Rs 2500) to get a close haircut and didn’t stop smiling as he got compliments through the day.