At the imposing Lord’s Cricket Ground, former Indian board president Raj Singh Dungarpur, sporting a three-day-old stubble, expressed his disappointment at India’s recent performance. He, however, decided to reserve his comment on the poor showing of the team until the result of the second NatWest Challenge one-dayer at The Oval.‘‘I have called this the best Indian team ever and I will reconsider my statement after the Oval game,’’ he said.But Ganguly will have much more important things to attend to than worry about Dungarpur’s statement: Winning the next game at Oval and finishing it off at the Lord’s with another to take the series. There is no need for the Indian skipper to press the panic button yet, though the soul searching exercise should be persevered with. Ganguly probably knows the nature of the wickets and trusts his batsmen to put his captaincy on the line and make the statement about testing his captaincy over the next few months. In Ganguly’s blueprint for battle, it’s always too early to give up and intimidating others is motivating for him. But his statement after the defeat at Trent Bridge revealed a thin crack in that attitude. After what Ganguly has done with the team in the last three years, his captaincy is under pressure but not at stake. True that the Oval game could well decide the series in England’s favour but skipper Michael Vaughan will be aware of the lethal backlash he could face on Friday. ‘‘I got lucky to win the toss and put them in. I believed we could put them under pressure by getting a few early wickets. Their batsmen played a few strokes that they may not on another day,’’ Vaughan said after victory at Trent Bridge. But more than skipper Vaughan it will be the batsman Vaughan who will be worried. In the last NatWest Series involving the West Indies and New Zealand, he managed just 47 runs and added to the ignominy by registering a seven-ball-duck at Trent Bridge. Indian bowlers will do well to ensure that they don’t allow Vaughan to bat his way out of the one-day rut he finds himself in. England coach Duncan Fletcher, however, will be a relieved man after Vikram Solanki passed the opening test with flying blues and reds. Fletcher’s belief that cutters and pullers at the top of the order are an important ingredient to success in the abridged version of the game was vindicated when Solanki and Marcus Trescothick added 63 inside 13 overs; chasing a meagre 171 that sort of a start had Fletcher grinning. Ganguly made it clear that Dinesh Kaarthick won’t take the field at The Oval and therefore swapping Rohan Gavaskar for Ajit Agarkar would be a sound move. Agarkar won’t just add meat to the lower order but also be a better bowling option since he had a brief stint in England playing for Middlesex, picking up a five-wicket haul. And as for Alex Wharf, having seen him bowl at Trent Bridge, the Indian batsmen won’t be at sea against him this time.
