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 Despite the failure of Indian batsmen in the first Test against New Zealand last week, which the visitors lost by 10 wickets, captain Sourav Ganguly today ruled out any changes in the batting line up for the final match of the series starting at Hamilton on Thursday. "You can not pick or drop players on the basis of just one innings. They have been successful with their style. It is just a matter of one game," Ganguly said after his side had a rigorous session at Basin Reserve this morning.
The Indians suffered a collective failure in both the innings of the first Test here but the deficiency of opener Virender Sehwag and middle-order batsman V V S Laxman against moving deliveries led to speculation that they could yield their places to two reserve batsmen in the squad, Shiv Sunder Das and Mohammad Kaif. "It is a matter of who gets picked up, one who is averaging 34 or one who is counting 48 plus in Tests," said Ganguly in an obvious reference to the batting records of Das and Sehwag respectively.
The Indian captain backed his batsmen but asked them not to be complacent if India was to draw the two-Test series 1-1 at Hamilton. "There is no panic in the batting yet but they can't sit on the past and it's time they did well at Hamilton,” he said. "Their bowlers bowled in right areas but the fact is we batted very, very poorly. We played poor shots. These guys are averaging 40-45 in Test cricket, which I think is great at this level over a certain period of time," said the Indian captain.
Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, V V S Laxman and Ganguly himself are among the top ten scorers in world cricket in the current calendar year. While Ganguly admitted that his batsmen were found wanting in the first Test, he backed his bowlers to have restricted New Zealand to 247 in the first innings. "At the end of the day our bowlers did a good job to get them out for 240. We were in a good position on the third day but we just threw it away with our batting," said
Ganguly.
The Indian captain, who expressed disappointment over the bowling performance of Ashish Nehra and Ajit Agarkar at Basin Reserve, gave enough indication about Tinu Yohannan making the final XI for the second Test. "Zaheer (Khan) bowled well, (Sanjay) Bangar bowled extremely well and that's a big plus but obviously Ashish and Ajit didn't bowl up to the mark. Tinu looks very good in the nets and he has come on. He looks a much better bowler than what we have seen in England," he said.
On New Zealand fast bowler Shane Bond, who was largely instrumental in the first Test win taking seven wickets in the match, Ganguly refused to believe he was exceptional.
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