India must bridge gap between performance and potential

Winless in the series so far, a young but talented Indian side will have to get their act together when they take on New Zealand in their third league match of the Coca-Cola Cup tri-series in Colombo on Thursday to stay in the reckoning for the final.

With Sri Lanka winning their match against New Zealand by five wickets today, India's cause has been helped and they must now win at least two of the remaining four league matches to hope for a place in the final. The hosts, with three consecutive victories under their belt and six points are almost assured of a final slot ahead of New Zealand who have two points.

"It is a do or die situation," Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly summed it up aptly on the eve of the crucial match.

Coach John Wright confirmed that Ajit Agarkar and Debasish Mohanty have been ruled out and named the same 13 that lost to Sri Lanka by six runs in the previous outing for tomorrow's match.

Losing their opening encounter against New Zealand by a huge margin of 84 runs and then fumbling at the winning post by six runs against Sri Lanka in the next, India have been quite unpredictable which makes weighing their chances a dicey proposition.

The bowlers have done a commendable job, sticking to a tidy line and length but the batsmen have been a huge disappointment, gifting away their wickets to unnecessary shots or being unable to rotate the strike in crunch situations.

It defied reason to see a batsman of the calibre of Rahul Dravid struggling to get a boundary off even a full toss when India needed 12 runs in the last over for a win.

India's case has been one of a huge gap between potential and performance so far and the coach and the skipper must do a bit of soul-searching to find match-winning solutions before it is too late.

Ganguly is finally among the runs and there is no reason why he should demote himself down the order. He should not repeat the mistake he made in the previous match against Sri Lanka, promoting Harbhajan Singh ahead of himself only to see the plan backfire.

With all-rounders like Yuvraj Singh, Hemang Badani, Virender Sehwag and Reetinder Singh Sodhi in their ranks, the Indians must open with Ganguly and Amay Khurasiya for a solid start to the innings.

The task for the Indian batsmen has been made tough by the absence of their mainstay Sachin Tendulkar but India must get over their overdependence on the maestro and play as a well-knit team.

The participating teams have shrugged off threats from LTTE guerillas and looked largely unaffected by the politically volatile situation as they have continued with their regular practice and scotched rumours of scrapping off the series midway.