Anderson demolishes Kiwis

It was great exhibition of swing bowling by the young talented Anderson which demolished New Zeland to 120+. Die hard cricketers must have watched two days of great cricket action. 1st day England was 89-5 and Peterson and Ambrose played the waiting game and saved the day and England finished respectably with 350+ in day 2. Anderson and Sidebotton never let the Kiwi batsmen to settle down. The deliveries that saw the back of MacCullum and Taylor was beauty and testimony to great control of swing bowling. The ball seamed of the wicket so much, that only disciplined bowling could keep the ball on target and thats what Anderson did and did that very well. Anderson is a good bowler and it is very unfortunate that he has not been used properly by the England team. He has been in and out of the team because of the senior bowlers like Hoggard, Flintoff etc.

Tuesday 10th, India will take on Pakistan in the tri-nation tourney in Mirpur and the weather news is not that good. I wonder how the various cricket boards schedule tournaments when its monsoon in the hosting country. Anyway lets hope that rain gods show some mercy on bangladesh which almost always is hit by hurricanes and heavy rains. Indian middle order is young and in-experienced with just Dhoni and Yuvraj to have played some amount of the ODI. This should be a good opportunity for the youngsters like Rohit Sharma,Raina,Gambhir to stake a permanent place in the Indian squad. Players like Yousuf Pathan, Ohja should get fair chance to prove their talent in the two tournaments to stay in the scheme of things in the ODI format of Indian Cricket.

Its heartening to see that the selectors have rewarded performance, Gony is replacing Sreesanth, even though he should have been in the original squad in place of players like R.P.Singh who has not shown any sign of returning to form.

I have a feeling that this Tri-series and the Asia Cup will not generate big interest from the viewers as they are yet to recover from the IPL hangover. Also events like Euro-2008 will divide the viewers and yet again its time to fight in the living room to get control of the TV from the women folk back to watching the Great Indian Soaps.