It has been a truly Indian summer Down Under. And it has got a little bit hotter than the Australians may have expected.
SYDNEY: It has been a truly Indian summer Down Under. And it has got a little bit hotter than the Australians may have expected.
“It must be something in the Sydney water.” Ricky Ponting had said that after the last India-Australia clash at the SCG last Sunday. The clash had resulted in penalty for Ishant Sharma after an ugly exchange of words with Andrew Symonds.
Prior to that Ponting had an exchange of words with Harbhajan Singh. And it was here, Harbhajan was charged for racial abuse against Andrew Symonds, which led to a lot of bad blood between the teams. What is more, Harbhajan had asked a fan to be ejected out of the SCG for abusing the Indian spinner. There must be something in Sydney water, surely.
MS Dhoni doesn’t believe in the Sydney water. “Ask Ponting not me,” he would say when asked if the Sunday’s first final could witness more bad blood and verbal assaults by the player. “We don’t initiate it,” he would say and then close the argument, “The bad blood doesn’t flow from the water but it comes out of the situations. An intense game can lead to any situation.”
Whether it is in the water or in the minds, the first final could well be the most explosive one in the recent times. The commentators and pundits feel it is the best thing to have happened to world cricket. An India-Australia rivalry is now box office hit, much bigger hit than an Ashes clash or even an India-Pakistan encounter. “At this point of time, there is no bigger rivalry than India-Australia rivalry,” says Mark Taylor, a former Australia skipper.
India think they have a chance and Australia, having lost last year’s finals to England, have a score to settle. If they can do it against India, nothing like it. With the relations between the teams all-time low, a packed SCG can witness a high-voltage contest. With some of the Australian players having been slighted for making comments against the Indians, Ponting & Co are expected to come up charged up.
Some former Australian players have backed the national team and demanded that freedom of speech be restored for the cricketers.
“Issuing reprimand is political correctness gone mad. We should allow the free speech to return,” said the former speed demon Jeff Thomson calling CA officials sooks (a timid person; Aussie slang), and exhorting the players go full throttle in the final.
The Indian team-management too has imposed no restrictions on the players. “We’ve not told them to go slow. They can go full throttle, without breaking the laws of the game,” said team manager Bimal Soni. But Dhoni says it will be just another contest. “We want to treat it as just another contest,” said the Indian skipper. That could be an understatement of the year.
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