Will pride go before a fall?

The Indian cricket team has done very well over the course of the past 12-18 months. Both at home and away, they have played well- and won with a high degree of consistency.

But they now find themselves in a pickle. At 79/3 (New Zealand declared its first innings at 619/9), India is in a fairly precarious situation. Sachin, Dravid, Laxman, Yuvraj and Dinesh Kaarthick (Dhoni is injured and hence not playing) will have to play out of their skins and score runs briskly even as they preserve wickets. Conceding a lead of anything more than 100 runs will all but shut out chances of a victory- especially if the pitch starts deteriorating tomorrow.

I was struck by the team’s somewhat casual approach to its preparations. Yes, they had creamed the home side at Hamilton a week ago, but to reach the match venue just 18 hours prior to the start of the match and not getting used to the local conditions through practice smacks of arrogance.  Of course, what matters is how the team plays during the 5 days of the test match and not what it does at the nets- but even so, I thought the Indian team could have shown a little more discipline at Napier.