Blogs Top Five Reasons For India’s Loss To Australia In The SCG Cricket Test.
January 6th, 2008 by prashantI watched the match almost in entirety and here are my thoughts.
1. Terrible Umpiring: I know we have discussed this a lot at CricDigs like how it all evens out etc. etc., but the fact is some bad decisions have more impact than others. Symonds being not given out in the Aussie first innings and Dravid & Ganguly given out in India’s second innings made a difference in the outcome. No doubt in my mind about that.
2. Opening Partnerships: In the all important second innings Hayden and Jaques were able to thwart the Indian attack and get Australia to a good start. India failed to do that in both the innings.
3. Spin bowling and batting against it: Though it is claimed Indians have a better spin attack and their batsmen play spin comfortably, it was the Aussies that scored high in both the departments. Both the Hussey/Hayden & Hussey/Symods partnerships in the second innings florished in conditions that favored the spinners. That allowed Australia to build a lead that was out of India’s reach.
4. Better bowling attack overall: Ponting could make the decision to build a big enough lead to make it impossible for India to get and was still confident that he had given enough overs to his bowlers to get India out. The attack of Lee, Johnson, S Clark, Symods, Hogg & last but not the least, Michael Clarke was far superior to India’s
5. General Match Preparedness: The Australians are a tuned squad, whereas India has tried to put together a playing 11. Australians always seem to be on their game whereas Indians look completely lost every now and then. The running between wickets, ground fielding, catching, fielding arrangements, being aware of the match situation and playing accordingly.
It all added up for India to lose a close match. It is sheer superlative performances by a few individuals that made the match this close, otherwise the overall gap in these two teams is as wide as the British Channel.
January 6th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Absolutely right !! Umpiring decision’s were not just the reason why India lost. Having scored 532 in the first innings, it was terrible to see India play themselves into such a situation in the second innings. Even if the match was drawn, I firmly believe Australlia were the deserved champions simply because they played better cricket than the Indians.
Jaffer should definitely be dropped,no doubts watsoeva. Yuvaraj should be dropped aswell. Mayb Yuvi has some more b’day parties to attend, so we should let him go
Sehwag should probably come in, and on the whole India should fight back strongly 
January 7th, 2008 at 1:45 am
Though the umpiring was simply the worst I’ve ever seen, we should give credit to the Australians. Not many teams would have capitalized on the decisions in their favor like they did. They played really well, but Indians deserved to draw the match. I was not expecting a win against Australia by any stretch of imagination, but a draw was something which the Indian team was robbed off, thanks to Bucknor.
PS: It’s really sad to see Harbhajan get banned for three tests. The rule is one of the stupidest rules ever framed by the ICC.
January 7th, 2008 at 5:48 am
There was ONLY one reason India did not win (forget lost) the SCG test match. And it was terrible umpiring. 8 wrong decisions mean the Australians had 4 more top order wickets to bat while the Indians had 4 less top order wickets to bat.