da cassino online： Pakistan aren’t a team alien to collapses, but if Bob Woolmer has to go to the extent of terming it “the worst batting I’ve seen in my time as coach” it must be bad news
Siddhartha Vaidyanathan at Mohali27-Oct-2006
‘Our fielding and bowling was excellent – much better than the previous game -but our batting was abject’ © AFP
Pakistan aren’t a team alien to collapses, but if Bob Woolmer has to go tothe extent of terming it “the worst batting I’ve seen in my time as coach”it must be bad news. Woolmer described Pakistan’s collapse as “abject” andhoped that his team would learn to play on these bowler-friendly pitches.”It was a very poor batting performance,” he said emphatically. “Ourfielding and bowling was excellent – much better than the previous game -but our batting was abject. It wasn’t an easy surface by any stretch ofimagination but our shot selection wasn’t very good. If we bat the way wedid today, even the presence of Inzamam-ul-Haq would not have been enough.A defeat like this is disappointing. We’re disappointed for the Pakistanpublic. We let them down.”A big factor in this game, though, was a pitch out utterly of character with thesubcontinent – one with appreciable bounce and seam. “Even in South Africayou don’t get too many wickets that go around so much like that,” admitteda pleasantly surprised Graeme Smith at the end of the day. “But it was achallenge for us; don’t under-estimate how hard we had to work to getthere. We needed to graft after we were 42 for 5 and had all the hard workto do. Even on a track like this we had to bowl the ball in the rightareas. I thought Pakistan did it superbly upfront and we were justterrific in the field tonight.”The nature of the surface meant that a batsman like Justin Kemp, usuallyflamboyant in his strokeplay, had to knuckle down. Kemp admitted that he,along with the other half-centurion Mark Boucher, were targeting around160-170 when they’d got their eye in. “When we got a 100, 160 to 180 wasstill in our minds,” said Kemp. “Batting on that wicket I felt that it [the ball] was going to do more under lights. I thought 213 was enough but we were trying to keep wickets in hand at the death.Smith’s target was even lesser. “There was a stage when I was hoping for120-150 so when we got past 200, ” he continued, “and I was very happy. Idid believe it would be enough but I knew we had to do well. We had tostart well, get a good chunk of the Pakistan batting. If they got off to agood start it would always be difficult. And then we had Makhaya [Ntini]who led the bowling attack with Polly [Pollock] complementing him.”Woolmer, though, refused to criticise the surface, focusing his ire at thebatsmen instead. “We thought it was a better pitch than the one we playedagainst New Zealand,” he asserted. “It was skiddy and there was a lot ofseam movement. We need to learn to play on these types of pitches. It isnot temperamental, it’s technical. Our players play a lot away from thebody. We had the same problem in Perth which we worked on. When exposed toa class bowling attack on a wicket which is not just bouncy but actuallyseaming and moving around, then most sides get into trouble. Even SouthAfrica got into trouble.”South Africa’s thumping win meant that they topped the group and will nowtravel to Jaipur for the second semi-final. Smith, though, had no problem,though one might have expected that this pitch would have suited them justfine. “We don’t really mind [going to Jaipur]. Obviously everyone’s goingto say this wicket suits us more but we’ve been preparing hard on wicketsthat have been low and slow. It was nice to see this wicket – it surprisedus but we have to move to Jaipur and adapt. Adapt has been the keyword onour trip so far and we’ve to move and do the same there.”