da 888casino： The standard in fielding was the difference between the sides, feels Woolmer
da prosport bet： Osman Samiuddin in Karachi19-Feb-2006
Bob Woolmer was extremely unhappy with Pakistan’s fielding in the series © Getty Images
If ever there is a good time for a crushing ODI series defeat, then now,with just over a year to go before the World Cup, is probably the besttime for it. After Pakistan suffered their fourth consecutive defeat toIndia, losing the series 4-1, Bob Woolmer, their coach, admitted thetiming was one of the only positives to come out of it. “I’ll go on recordto say it that I am glad this defeat happened now rather than later inthis year. We have to look carefully at all aspects of our game, ourbatting, bowling and fielding.”Pakistan’s fielding had been below par through the series and althoughthey dropped less catches than India, their ground fielding struggled. Asthey succumbed to Yuvraj Singh and Mahendra Singh Dhoni chasing 287, theirfielding deteriorated alarmingly. They missed run-out chances, dropped acouple of catches, conceded overthrows and fumbled alarmingly often in thefield. Woolmer, although admitting the fielding was poor, asserted itwasn’t through any lack of effort on the part of his players.”Catches win matches but our ground fielding was very poor and hasn’t beengreat through the series. The Indians have fielded superbly through theseries although they dropped a few catches as well.” He added, “Thesesmall things make a huge difference eventually but I think the guys workedand tried hard today and it just didn’t happen for us. We have fieldedwell in the past but when things go wrong, everything goes wrong.”The Pakistan Cricket Board said publicly yesterday that they were consideringhiring Jonty Rhodes as a fielding coach and Woolmer said he was open tothe idea. “If they have the money for it, I’m happy with the idea. But asit is we work hard on our fielding and we do a lot of drills in practiceon it. Like I said, everything just went wrong for us today. Basic thingswent against us like picking up balls cleanly, mistiming our dives. It gotworse under the pressure as India chased.”Woolmer had special praise for Yuvraj Singh, whose imperious hundredsettled the match today and whose performances through this series havebeen little short of spectacular. “He’s a very good player now isn’t he?When we played him last year we were able to get him out but this timeround, he hasn’t looked like getting out at all. I hope that hamstringstrain doesn’t affect his participation in the series against Englandbecause he looks an absolutely fantastic cricketer.”Pakistan lost this series in every department though, whether it was theirregular top-order collapses or their poor bowling, Mohammad Asif apart.Woolmer readily acknowledged that they had been outplayed. “Indiaregrouped and played a lot better than we did everywhere in the field.It’s difficult to put a finger on where specifically they beat us. In thethird game the toss was more important than we perhaps thought and theyhave chased brilliantly all the way through this series. But like I said,we need to look at everything about our game before the various challengeswe have ahead of us this year.”
