For those who had watched the last of the Indo-Pak ODI at Jaipur, yesterday. it was a big disappointment. Statements like “psychological advantage for the test series”, “dead-rubber”,” trying out bench-strength”, make little sense. Why should the paying public and TV viewers (who also pay for watching the match) be deprived and cheated?

From the spectator’s point of view, a match is a match. Irrespective of whether the series has been decided or not, they expect a close match. I agree that all matches cannot be ‘made’ interesting. But yesterday, India’s approach certainly left a lot to be desired. This is not happening for the first time either. That is why our over all record and the Victory percentage look abysmal. Take the case of Pakistan; On a head-to-head count, while India has won 43 matches Pakistan’s tally is 65 out of a total of 112 ,with 4 matches yielding no result. If you are going to have this kind of attitude, when will the record improve? This is peculiar to India and is probably the other side of not possessing a killer instinct. Countries like Australia or South-Africa would have gone full throttle and would have tried to make it 4-1.

Now to the specifics. When you are one bowler short, and playing an extra batsmen, what prompted you to insert the opposition after winning the toss? And then chasing under flood lights, with dew on the field, is always a difficult thing. To anyone watching the match, the attitude was evident. India gave away the match on a platter to Pakistan. Under similar circumstances, would Pakistan have done a similar thing; I very much doubt.

When you are playing seven batsmen, it is always sensible to bat first and put up a big score, especially when you had won the toss. Especially when Pakistan had rested Shoiab Akthar.The approach of players like Gambhir and Uthapa was cavalier, to say the least. I am not expecting tons of runs from every player in every match, but when the approach is below par, it is a serious matter. Yuvaraj-Shewag gave away 70 runs in their quota (10 more than the average of 6 per over). Had this been checked and had we fielded better, the victory margin could have been narrower.

And then our batsmen, barring Yuvraj, no body understood the magnitude of the task. Especially Uthapa- a batsman attempts a shot, is dropped by the fielder and 2 balls later it is an action-replay that is being enacted. Even the great Kapil was dropped for indiscretionary batting.

If the top order, even one amongst them had decided to anchor the innings, runs would have come automatically. In the present set-up no player lacks match-experience, save the debutant Praveen Kumar. Are no lessons going to be learnt?

Which brings us to the fundamental question- the idea of loosing a match, even before it is played ,is okay with me provided you also have the capacity to win matches at will. Like yesterday, it was clear that from the Indian point of view, the players took it none-too-seriously- if it is a win, okay. if not, then also okay. But can the same team win a given match after announcing it publicly in advance? In the bargain, the paying public gets a raw deal. The moment spectators desert the stadium, cash registers will stop jingling, and administrators will buckle up and players will feel the pressure.

Actually, you can never differentiate between a genuine defeat and an orchestrated one and therein lies the difficulty. But the spectators have their own yardsticks, they can easily make out between a true contest and a fake encounter like yesterday!