Indian coach Greg Chappell insisted on Friday that Sachin Tendulkar was never out of form as was made out by the media and he felt it was only a matter of time before the champion batsman will make a big score.
"I did not think he was out of form, to be honest. I thought his innings in the second innings of the third Test showed some good portents. I expected him to make some runs. I made a few comments at the end of the Test match that it will be only be a matter of time before he made a big score.
"I found the overreaction to what's supposed to be his lack of form quite interesting because I personally thought he was batting good," Chappell said ahead of the second one-day international against Pakistan in Rawalpindi on Friday.
"He got some runs. We need everyone to get runs consistently. He's still one of the best players we have got and he's one of the best players around world cricket. We are lucky to have him." Tendulkar, who had a poor Test series in terms of runs, made a superb 100 in the first one-dayer at Peshawar which India lost by seven runs by the Duckworth/Lewis method after the game was stopped due to bad light when Pakistan were 311 for 7 after 47 overs, chasing India's imposing 328.
Chappell said India were obviously keen to win Saturday's match to level the series 1-1 as he also sounded quite happy with most of the things that his team did at Peshawar.
"We are obviously keen to win the game. The spirit in the group is excellent. We were happy with most of what we did in the first game. We were happy with our batting in the first game, which was pretty good. The fielding was good too. The bowlers did pretty good too," Chappell said. The coach, however, said the team could have scored some more runs or got more wickets so as to pull off a win.
"We could have got some more runs or got some more wickets. But we did most of the things we needed to do well. It was a record score for the ground. It was a pretty positive performance," he said.
Chappell said the team was treating each game as a stepping-stone on their journey towards the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies.
"We are trying to look at each game as a stepping stone in our journey towards the World Cup. We are trying to take positives from each game in the areas we need to improve from that game. We have to keep doing that. Obviously we have to win some games as well," he said.
Chappell hinted that there might be some changes in the team though the final squad for the match had not been finalised.
"We still are not quite sure about Harbhajan Singh's fitness. Probably he won't be fit enough for this game. We would probably look at a slightly different balance in the team. But we have not come up with the final squad at this stage." The Indian off spinner suffered a finger injury before the first ODI at Peshawar ODI and is still recovering. He did not bowl today in the nets.
Chappell said the wicket at the Pindi cricket stadium for the match appeared helpful for the batsmen, but felt it would not help the spinners perhaps implying that only one spinner-- Murali Kartik and or Ramesh Powar -- would play.
"I am not great at predicting scores on grounds. It looks a good wicket, dry, probably drier than what the wicket was a day before the game at Peshawar. I can't say what would be a good score on this ground. I don't think it will spin a great deal. Probably it won't be as helpful to the fast bowlers early in the morning. It should be a pretty good batting wicket," he said.
Chappell defended his bowlers in the first ODI by saying that in the sub-continent six runs per over was at par for the course, and said part-timers could not have done what even frontliners could not do.
"It was a good batting wicket at Peshawar. On the small ground it was pretty hard to ask the part-time bowlers to do a job the (frontline) bowlers find tough (to do).
"We could have bowled better in some ways and could have gone for less runs but we are happy with the basic plans that we worked on in that game. We would try to improve on them in each game. We discussed them and we look to improve on that in this game. That's all we can do. It was a small ground and a score of 324 on that ground is not the same as on other grounds.
"We have seen in one-day cricket in recent times, wickets are made for batsmen and bowlers are put under lot of pressure. Six runs an over is probably par in many parts of the sub-continent," the former Australian captain said.
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