Fear of failure dogs top order

Memonics

There were nervous smiles on Indian faces in the Lord’s dressing room, and understandably so, what with rain having stopped England’s strident march to victory in the first Test.

But Rahul Dravid will know that he has lost the psychological battle nevertheless, and that could be a major obstacle to overcome with the second Test beginning in just three days time.

Let’s face it, India’s performance was poor, and largely because of the pusillanimity of the batsmen.

The fielding was just a whit better, and that only accentuates the shallowness of the batters. If the relatively inexperienced pace attack had not played to potential, it would have been a debacle.

Why the team’s best batsman (on current form) and indisputably the best fielder should have been kept out of the first Test is a mystery.

Yuvraj Singh had been in very good nick in the lead-up to the Test, and his presence would at least have added energy to India’s effort.

True, including him could have meant keeping one of the established batsmen or Mahendra Singh Dhoni out. Not an easy decision to make, but one which has been deferred for too long.

After the embarrassment at Lord’s, however, there may be no escape route for the tour selectors.

Frankly, no amount of rationalization can explain the reluctance of the main batsmen to take charge, albeit in conditions that assisted swing and seam bowling.

This much is par for the course for any team touring England, and the preparation for such challenge, it is assumed, have been done in right earnest.

When the main players respond to names like Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly and VVS Laxman, one must wonder: what is going wrong?

The most credible batting performances came from three players with the least experience: Wasim Jaffer, Dinesh Karthik and Dhoni, all of whom scored a half-century apiece.

None of them could quite take control of the situation, but to be fair, it is more logical to have expected that from one from the established quartet.

Between them, Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman have played 423 Tests, but at Lord’s they could have been the rookies, so tentative did they appear.

Considering that England were without their four main fast bowlers who won the Ashes in 2005 — Harmison, Hoggard, Jones and Flintoff — their apprehension betrayed a fear of failure that is sadly becoming a familiar feature of Indian batting.

It needed one authoritative innings to turn this match around, and this came from Kevin Pietersen who, for my money, is running Ricky Ponting very close as the world’s premier batsman.

Pietersen’s physical presence reminds one of Viv Richards, as does his aggressive demeanour in the middle. He likes to dominate bowlers, relishes a battle, hits the ball hard and long, and has an innate ability to improvise.

Suffice to say that Richards would be proud of Pietersen’s dynamic approach and disappointed by the meek manner of the Indian frontline batsmen.

A fear of failure translates itself quickly into a fear of winning when players have too much to protect and are unwilling to take legitimate risk.

This is the major problem that besets Indian cricket currently, and unless Dravid is willing to do some plain talking, there is no solution in sight.