Indians were outplayed: Wright

By Our Special Correspondent

BLOEMFONTEIN, NOV. 6. India's coach John Wright said the Indians were `outplayed' since making 379 after being put in to bat on the first day. ``We did not put enough runs on the second day morning. When you put on board a total of 379 runs you should make the opposition a little bit harder, but the South African 200 came in the 44th over. Today was very disappointing for batting, particularly after being 96 for one. To lose nine wickets in a day in any conditions really is not going to win you Test matches.''

Wright agreed that the two left-arm seamers (Ashish Nehra and Zaheer Khan) disappointed. ``It's easy to be wise at hindsight. The South Africans had not seen him (Ashish). He has genuine wicket-taking deliveries. So Ashsih would have played any way. There was no doubt about that. I suppose we picked Zaheer from his match winning performance against Sri Lanka at Kandy. Ajit (Agarkar) has done nothing wrong in this series. I feel sorry for him because he missed out because we thought we would get better performances from the other two to be honest.''

Regarding Rahul Dravid's position being reassessed, Wright said: ``He is a quality player. I don't know how many players in Test cricket have an average of over 50. He is a team player. Because we did not have the match at Chatsworth, we thought it was a bit difficult to ask Connor Williams open the innings, although he looked very good in the nets. But to go into a first Test in a foreign country it would be difficult for Connor. So Rahul said he would be happy to open. It's not his natural position.''

The Indian captain acknowledged the efforts by Sachin Tendulkar and Sehwag. ``For his first Test, Sehwag played a fantastic innings and Sachin got a big hundred. What happened today was we all got starts, but could not convert them into big scores. You have to do this to win matches against South Africa. It was I think because of lack of application we lost wickets, not because of the bounce. Again we let them score close to 600 after they were 377 for six.

``Hence I think Lance Klusener's knock was very crucial. I think South Africa's big total took the game away from us,'' said Ganguly who will be taking a break to visit his daughter in Kolkata. He will return before the second Test to be played in Port Elizabeth.

Shaun Pollock who was declared the `Man of the Match' said he was happy to get his first 10-wicket haul. ``I have been close to achieve that on quite a few times. I think there was something in the pitch for the seamers. We wanted the Bloem wicket to be like this. We need match practice to get into the Test match mould. I think one should give it to the boys for responding like this after giving 372 on the first day.''

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