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India were in the game and even in the ascendancy for the first five overs. Ganguly had won an important toss and equally importantly looked to be in a more decisive batting frame of mind than in recent past. McGrath looked strangely nervous and diffident. His near-monotonous outside-offstump line seemed to have deserted him when least expected. Ganguly had backed away once when McGrath was almost into his final stride. A few balls later, he held up the game again to tape up his bat. He was successfully throwing the Australians off their game. Even Shoaib Akthar with all his pre-match huff and bluster hadn't proved quite as adept at this.

And, then fatally, Ganguly reached out to a wide one from Brett Lee that he barely got to, and managed a thin edge through to Gilchrist. Still, things seemed to be going India's way. Sehwag was quick to turn a fullish one from Lee crisply through midwicket and then Sachin took 14 off a McGrath over in a manner only he can. Then onward though, everything went horribly wrong. We seemed bereft of ideas. In an awful mix of run-less defence and the sudden extravagant shot, we contrived to miss what should have been the basic tactic on South African pitches against a bowling attack like that of Australia's. Against a team as good at playing spin as India, Australia can realistically claim to have exactly three regular bowlers. Which essentially means twenty overs to score at rates of anything from five to seven. Add five from the regular men at the end, and you have twenty five overs to do as you please.

So, where was the need for that slash from Ganguly? Or, after having reached 42/1, why did Sehwag need to reach out for that wide one? The less said about Kaif's hook, the better. India had started off well enough with both Ganguly and Tendulkar running a bunch of quick singles and that's the pattern they should have continued with. Flair has its place in cricket, but on pitches that afford a bit of bounce, it needs to be coupled with restraint. Anyone who has played cricket will tell you that it's very tempting to take the attack to a fast bowler. There's something in a fast bowler's run-up that sets the pulse racing in an aggressive batsman. But, on pitches that have some bounce in them, it is prudent to give the fast bowler some ground, at least very early in a batsman's innings. Sehwag and Ganguly are strokeplayers by nature, and this led them astray. Dravid seemed mentally jaded and it felt like every dot ball he played was adding to his self-doubt. He's one of the most technically equipped batsmen around and shouldn't let the New Zealand tour get to him at all. It must be remembered that he'd played a couple of knocks of near-technical perfection on what were probably two of the most demanding pitches that anyone had played on this past year. Sure, he was keeping Tendulkar away from the strike for a brief bit and ideally, he should have been getting more singles. But, not having done this, he needed to look no further than the Lara innings against South Africa for inspiration.

For what looked like an almost interminable period, Lara had kept his strokeplay in check and runs were extremely hard to come by. Even singles seemed to be non-existent. But, Lara kept his cool and when the relatively easier bowlers came on, he gave full vent to his strokes. We seem to get caught in this tangled mess of the absence of the quick single followed by the almost inevitable rash shot. Some of this is caused by the inherent flair of our batsmen. But, part of it is also because of a lack of confidence against good fast bowling, a lot of which is brought about by this constant carping of the media - not least the Indian media - on an inherent weakness against the bouncing ball. When you're made to feel you aren't good against a particular type of bowling, you try asserting your superiority by playing the expansive shot. Basically, we were neither here nor there. We forgot the all-important quick single and then having done that, we tried to compensate by playing the big shot. This is in essence, what happened at Centurion Park.

This, plus excellent bowling from Gillespie. He is the vital penetrative first-change bowler that Pakistan didn't possess against Australia. Australia didn't play particularly well early on against Pakistan. Don't let anyone fool you by saying Ponting led from the front whereas Ganguly didn't. If anything, Australia played a bit of the boundary-based cricket against Pakistan that India plays generally. Gilchrist played an awkward hoik against the swing, Hayden played an away from the body drive, Martyn showed extremely indecisive footwork first ball, Jimmy Maher's bat seemed to be drawn almost magnetically to a wide one from Waqar. In between which there were a lot of fours from particularly loose bowling by Waqar and Razzaq. Ponting had an airy slash at Waqar that barely went over a leaping Younis Khan and a couple of walking drives that didn't connect against Shoaib. Pakistan lost the match by first not picking Saqlain and then not sticking with Shoaib or bringing back Wasim, when Ponting left playing a slash at a very wide ball from Shoaib. They went strangely on the defensive by bringing back a very listless Razzaq and continuing with a wayward Afridi.

But, ah, a lot of our media and others have now expanded on the idea that Ponting and Australia were playing planned cricket and had showed they'd the wherewithal to successfully counter the Pakistanis. Symonds played an exceedingly good innings but if you had noticed how he shaped up initially even to Razzaq, you'd wonder how well he'd have played an extended spell from a bowler of the quality of Gillespie or even comeback spells from Akram or Shoaib. And, a bit about this theory that the Indian bats don't like the short ball at the body that Ian Healy seemed delighted to propound. Tell me, which Australian bat has looked consistently comfortable against good, pacy short-pitched bowling? Surely not Healy himself nor even Steve Waugh. I've heard local West Indians in Ottawa snigger at Mark Waugh's backing away against Ambrose in the early 90s. If Healy's detected a fear of the short ball in the Indian batsman's psyche, quite obviously, this isn't solely an Indian attribute.

What our batsmen need to do is ready themselves mentally to eke out 80 odd from the first twenty overs, and not get overly bothered even if it turns out to be 60 odd. Then, back themselves to take the attack to the non-regular bowlers. And pray Asoka De Silva isn't around to hand out what might be at best termed doubtful leg-before decisions. It was fairly hilarious to hear some of the commentators say that De Silva thought some part of the ball would have hit leg stump. Some part, indeed.

But, coming back to the Indian batsmen. Against a high quality fast bowling attack like the Australian one, they needed to be more patient at the beginning of their innings. They should have batted around Tendulkar who was playing to a plan. He was unlucky to get that very good slower one from Gillespie that gripped and turned, he'd have played it if it hadn't turned as much. Although like a lot of others, I'd have liked Tendulkar to come in at one-down - simply because he hadn't opened in a while - he had done a very good job of playing risk-free cricket to get India off to a decently quick start. And, Ganguly despite his recent run of poor form, was looking good before he played that wild slash. It isn't as much a question of the batting order as a matter of getting in and playing to a plan. Taking singles and cutting out the big shots early on is what's needed. The Jayasuriya way might succeed at times on South African pitches, but the fact remains that he was very lucky to survive the New Zealand opening attack. The Lara method combined with the quick single needs to be the preferred mode of operation. In New Zealand, you could point fingers at a lack of footwork on seaming pitches. This particular failure of our batsmen had nothing really to do with technique, it was a matter of temperament and nothing else. And, if the Australians or anyone else would have you believe it was the short ball that disrupted the Indians' batting technique, or that the batting order was the root cause of all of India's problems, well, you'd better ignore them.

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