da luck： Anand Vasu presents the Plays of the day from the final ODI between India and Australia
da betcris： Anand Vasu in Mumbai17-Oct-2007
A dislodged leg bail was enough for Brett Lee to dismiss Sachin Tendulkar © AFP
Please, please behave
Before the first ball was bowled, once the toss was done and play was about to begin, the PA system was given its first run. Professor Ratnakar Shetty, the chief administrative officer of the BCCI and treasurer of the Mumbai Cricket Association, was put to the multi-lingual test. First in English, then Marathi and finally in Hindi, he exhorted the crowd to not “indulge in racist or abusive” behaviour towards the players. It temporarily silenced the chants of “Aussies suck”, a disturbing slogan that Mumbai has adopted, but soon enough the 35,000-plus crowd was at it again. And worse.Magic ball
It was anything but. If anything, it was the worst ball of Murali Kartik’s spell of 10-3-27-6. Short, wide, outside the off, and Andrew Symonds could have hit it pretty much anywhere he wanted. All through this series he has been sending perfectly good balls into the stands. This time he picked a long-hop, and hit it straight to Sachin Tendulkar at cover, topping off his sumptuous 107 not out in Nagpur with a first-ball duck to end the series, in Mumbai. Earlier, at a press conference, Kartik had suggested “locking Symonds up” in a room far from the ground as a way of stopping him. Apparently the long-hop works as well.Going, going, gone
In the 39th over, after Mitchell Johnson had attempted, twice in succession, to heave Harbhajan Singh over midwicket and made contact with nothing but air, Harbhajan waited at the end of his follow-through and put his hand to his forehead, peering exaggeratedly towards midwicket. He was pretending to look for the ball in the stands despite it having rushed through to the keeper. Off Harbhajan’s next over, Johnson replied in kind, first clattering a straight six, hitting with the turn and over long-off, and then dispatching one through midwicket. Harbhajan wasn’t standing around to look in this case.Last hurrah
Tendulkar is always received with reverence here at the Wankhede Stadium – although even he cops a fair share of abuse from the infamous North Stand – but today was special in many ways. Not only was it likely to be Tendulkar’s last international at the ground – it’s set to be refurbished and will only be used for an international next in 2011 for the final of the World Cup – but it was exactly twenty years ago to the day when Tendulkar did duty here as a ball boy, returning the ball to the players from the ropes in an India-Zimbabwe match. Only 26,863 international runs have flowed from his bat since. Not bad, for a ball boy.Top of leg
Just like you don’t have to hit the ball out of the stadium for six runs, a loft over the boundary will do, you don’t need to send the middle stump cartwheeling to dislodge a batsman. In fact, there’s real beauty in the delivery that pitches in just the right spot to defeat the stroke – and in this case Tendulkar was attempting to coax a Brett Lee inswinger through cover – and take the bail. The inside edge sent the ball clinically into leg bail, and Tendulkar’s last innings at the Wankhede Stadium yielded only 21 runs.
