India has found the most thinking and lucky captain in M.S Dhoni, what ever he does turns out to be a success. The 2 games he captained the tests, he won the toss and used some tricky strategy to overwhelm the Aussies. India and Dhoni must be wishing to repeat the same against the visiting England team in the ODI and the 2 Test Series. England might spring up some surprise in the ODI but i am sure Team India will dominate and win the Test series pretty comfortably. Having said that the ODI performance will set the tide for the 2 test series.
I am sure the England team must be worried with the current form of the Indian players and most importantly to see the whole team perform together. India starts as favorites and will try to dominate the series early on with couple good games and keep up the momentum to big victory.
Kevin Peiterson and team will be hoping to put up a good performance with contributions from the leading players in Flintoff,Collingwood,Bell,Prior,Shaw and Harmison. England has picked only one spinner in Patel for the whole ODI series and will be banking on the fast bowlers to perform well but in Indian flat pitches it will be a big task. The batsmen will have to play their best to win matches in batsmen friendly wickets and collingwood with his slow medium should be handy. If England has to put up a fight Peiterson and Flintoff should perform well.
Dhoni goes into series with in-form batsmen in Sehwag,Gambhir,himself in full form, R.G.Sharma,Yuvraj and Kholi having good time in the domestic cricket should be raring to go in these kind of wickets. The bowling looks a bit ordinary without Ishant Sharma but Zaheer in great form should lead from the front. India will have the problem in picking the correct combination and it should take Dhoni a few games to settle the team for the long and grueling 7 ODI.
I am not sure why BCCI and ECB should plan a tour packed with ODI, already the season is full and we saw empty stands for such great 4th test in Nagpur. The scenario is not great in Rajkot the officials hoping at least half the stadium will get filled, its a little bit of a overkill. Today the crowd is not coming to the stadium and it will not take long for the people to stop watching the games in the TV, which is feeding the game of cricket with huge sums of sponsorship money.
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2 comments:
You are spot on when you say that there is an overkill of ODI's. Its distressing to see the BCCI packing the calendar with so many ODI's which people will hardly remember after a couple of days.
This poor scheduling also takes the sheen of our brilliant victory over the Aussies, as instead of savouring such a momentous achievement , our Players are back to the dressing room .
One thing which I like about Dhoni is that he does not allow the victories to climb over his head. He has a very balanced head. He has enabled the team to play together as an unit. As he mentioned in the presentation ceremony in Indore, the team is enjoying each others success. Which is very healthy for the team. Hope Team India transforms into the next phase (No. 1) under his reign.
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