Weekend of Upsets

It has been a stunning weekend of upsets in the world of sports. New Zeland beats England in the 3rd ODI after losing the Tests and T20 games, West Indies beat Australia in the T20 game after losing the Test series, Turkey upset Croatia in a tie-breaker and Russia beats Netherlands to get into the euro-2008 semi-finals.

NewZeland did well to defend a very small total of 182 with some disciplined bowling and good fielding. From 42-4 NZ Elliott and Mills batted well to make sure they have a fighting total, the wicket was seaming and helping the fast bowlers. England batted poorly to lose wickets at regular intervals, other than Collingwood and Swann none of the others showed any intention to stay and reach the target, most of the wickets were poor short selection. Having said that one has to give credit to some good seam bowling from Southee to return figures of 4-38. NZ has finally won a match in this long England tour :-)

Australia some how is yet to get into winning T20 games, WI won a shortened game with some good batting from the young Marshall and all rounder Bravo. T20 specialists Shaun Marsh and Shane Watson did their best to get a reasonable score of 100+ in 11 overs but that was not enough for the hard hitting Marshall who hit 36 of 15 balls with 3 fours and 3 sixes, Bravo finished the match with a big six. Lee and Johnson were hit for over 50 runs in the first 4 overs and there was no coming back for the Australians.


Euro-2008 :- Nothing much on the results, it was just stunning that the favorites just crumbling under pressure and not so fancied sides in Turkey and Russia showed lot character to fight under pressure and pulling out some great shorts to hit the net.