India Fielding Pathetic

India's fielding display today has been quite despicable to say the least with Munaf Patel being the major culprit. But the others haven't been angels either. Dravid, Sehwag, Kumble, Zaheer all have at various times appeared extremely lacklustre. Sehwag's catch to dismiss Smith was the only saving grace.

However, Munaf reminded one of Ashish Nehra. Words are hard to find to describe the abysmally low levels of fielding he stooped to on both days. His throws were directed about 100 feet in the air and way short of their mark, several balls were let towards the boundary through various gaps in his body appendages and singles were converted to twos and twos to threes when the ball went to him with remarkable and predictable ease. Often he was specifically targeted for these purposes. Also his running gave an appearace of an absent-minded giraffe much like Nehra did.

Earlier there were a few angry and grumpy faces when he displayed these skills but towards the end the rest of the team had pretty much given up even moaning about him. It was taken as granted that he would come up with another diabolical effort everytime the ball went to him.

That he is coming back from an injury is known. But this is completely inexcusable behavior. If he was not completely fit he should not have been playing at all. And it is not as if he has done anything special with his bowling either.