Kumble the captain - From Bad to Worse!!

In the post match conference, Kumble clearly looked happy and pleased with his team's performance, especially on 4th and 5th days. However, some of his comments were worrisome and I wonder if that’s the right mindset to take on the Aussies.

In my last column I commented about Kumble's bad performance on the field, but his comments yesterday were even worse.

Kumble was asked if draw was an apt result and he replied that he was pretty satisfied with the way we played especially after loosing the toss.

Does that mean that he is saying that just because he lost the toss, the possibility of victory was gone and the best result India could hope for was a draw? That speaks of a highly defensive and negative mindset and also gives reasons for some of the blunder that Kumble made in the field.

I would say that the result was apt given that Australia dominated the first half of the test match. However, saying that he was satisfied because we had lost the toss is disgusting to say the least.

Ian Chappell rightly said that when Dhoni was in charge after lunch on 4th day, he was aggressive in his field placement and with Ponting and Hayden gone, Australia looked vulnerable for the 1st time in the match. However, as soon as the old Jumbo returned, he pushed the point and mid-on back and more importantly brought himself on to bowl and all the pressure was suddenly released.

Kumble also said that he had a bad game as a bowler and one bad game does not make anyone a bad cricketer. I totally agree with this comment and I don’t think we should criticize him too much for his poor show as a bowler.

But, it’s Kumble the captain who was a bigger disappointment. He knew that he was not bowling well, then why the hell did he bowled so many overs? Why he kept Zaheer waiting for more than 2 hours, while his own bowling was largely ineffective?

More importantly (and this is even more disgusting), Kumble said that he did his part as a captain in this match. This means that according to him he did a fine job. Now, doing a bad job is acceptable (everyone does that at times), however, not accepting that he did a bad job is criminal. What it implies is that he is going to continue with his defensive and negative tactics, he is continue to bowl even if he is not creating any problems for the batsmen and the moment he loses the toss, the best result he would hope for is a draw.

Further, now the selectors would have a hard time in selecting the playing XI for next match. Mohali, as we all know is not a spinning track and provides a fair bit of assistance to fast bowlers. Therefore, its quite imperative to have at least 3 fast bowlers in the team. This means, that India will have to either play 5 bowlers and drop one of the batsmen or drop one of the spinners.

If it’s the 1st case, then which batsman would you drop? You certainly can't drop Tendulkar, Dravid, Sehwag and Gambhir. So we are left with Laxman and Ganguly and considering that they batted quite sensibly and comfortably, it won’t be fair to drop any of the two.

So, the next option we have is to drop one of the spinners. Now, Kumble being the captain cannot be dropped and hence we are left with only Harbhajan. Considering that it was largely because of him that series is still level, I don’t think that's a fair call as well.

So, I am sure selectors (like me) will be hoping that Kumble's injury does not heal in time and he makes himself unavailable foe the next match. That will definitely resolve some of their headaches.

Or they might take a drastic decision of dropping Dhoni and Gambhir and bringing Karthik as an opener and wicket-keeper.