Team India started their campaign to retain the T20 WorldCup in style with a reasonable victory over the talented Bangladesh.
Yuvi played a gem of an innings to save the day for India with power packed 41 of just 18 balls to pep up the score and India finally finished with a reasonable score of 180. Rohit and Gambhir started the innings in typical style with some well timed hits to the fence.Gambhir back to form is good sign for India and Rohit performing well in the openers slot gives us the flexibility of including an extra bowler. I feel Rohit is bit too ambitious in his strokes, he seems to be going after the bowling all the time.
We are a bit slow in the middle overs between 7 & 14 overs where we struggled to score runs but Yuvi was in great touch that he clobbered the bangladesh bowlers all over the park with towering sixes. Yuvi ensured India gets to a respectable total and I.pathan finishing off with a 6 & 4 in the final few deliveries. Sadly Raina did not get enough overs to set his eye in and explode and it was the same for Y.Pathan. We should also give credit to the bangladeshi spinners, they bowled brilliantly in the middle overs to restrict the explosive Dhonia and Gowtham.
Bangladesh started their chase in good stead with some hard hitting from both the openers and exposed our new ball bowlers. Zaheer was not spared and as usual I.Pathan gave away his quota of runs with the new ball (god know how he is picked time and again and given the new ball) Dhoni brought in Y.Pathan and he responded well to remove the inexperienced Tamim. After this point it was all the way Ohja show with some great seam bowling from I.sharma from the other end, Ohja picked wickets in all the overs and gave very few runs and sealed the victory for India. Harbajan played the role of restricting the run flow to perfection. I feel we gave away too many runs in the initial overs and need to find some way to restrict the run flow to 6 an over in the first 6 overs.
Over all it was a good day and may not be a great opener for India but this should have provided the team management to think through the combination for the future matches.
Sad to see that Aussies are struggling to make it to the knock out stage from the group of death. Aussies need to win against Srilanka by a big margin and WestIndies should also win Srilanka for Australia to make it to the knock out stage. On the other group its a battle between England and Pakistan to make it to the knock out stage. Netherland seems to be determined to make it to the next stage.
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When Raina or Rohit Sharma fails we say "They did not get any chance". We have to see their performance over a period of time etc etc. We know by the same yardstick how many North Indians played so many matches for India. Kaif, Bahutule, Agarkar etc etc.
But if it was Badri or Karthik, even if they fail for two consequitive matches we say they failed to use their chances.
How biased we are in our thinking.
Sriram,
Its not the bias in our thinking.It has been proven time and again that TN players fail at very important stages of their carriers.
TN players need to make it impossible for the selectors to drop them with superlative performances. A simple example is M.Vijay and Manish Pandey, M.Pandey attracted all eyes when he got a chance and grabbed it in both hands and made it impossible for the selectors to ignore him in the future. Take the case of M.Vijay even though he is technically sound and correct he failed to perform big (big is very important) that's where all the other state cricketers stand out.How many chances do you think Kartick will get, he wasted all the good chances (Srilanka series,newZeland test etc)
Unless TN or for that matter southern states keep winning the ranji Trophy consistently its not going to be easy for the selectors from the south to push their case.
Please read my earlier post on this http://speakcricfunda.blogspot.com/2008/10/curse-of-tn-cricket.html
>> We are a bit slow in the middle overs between 7 & 14 overs where we struggled to score runs ..
This was another instance of Dhoni was batting in slow pace when come-in to bat at No.3. This is High time to re-shuffle batting order for the benefit of Team India ! Will see..
It disgusting to see Dhoni constantly promoting him up the order irrespective of the match situation. In a cricket crazy country like India we can easily hear people discussing about the recently concluded matches & ongoing series. In the last few days where ever I go, I see people slowly turning furious for this move of Dhoni. Its very important for the Team India captain to have the backing of the people. If he continue to come up and play a rot of a innings like he did in the opener in no time the media and the people who had been praising him so far will turn against him.
With Raina in such a good form going into the tournament should get to face the maximum number of balls possible. Its no point holding him down to the 3rd down. When he starts to come down the order it likely that he may lose his fine touch. Yuvraj once again proved he will deliver when the team needs him the most. He should be most likely to follow Raina. Time for Dhoni to sit back and rethink.
Yes Ajay... Dhoni should come down the order as he used to and blast the bowlers instead of coming at the top and steadying the innings... T20 is not for that... Even Raina, Gambhir and Rohit can play long innings at a quick pace too.. so no point in steadying the innings when we have such a good players who are in fine touch as well...
Hope the think tanks give it a thought and make changes accordingly
Ajay,Shankar & Anonymous,
Can not agree more with you views.
What surprises me most is when people like us can think through this problem and feel that dhoni is not the kind of player for No 3 spot, why Kirsten and the team management not thinking on this lines and persisting with this batting order ? When it was CSK it was understandable but not with Team India.
I am hoping that dhoni realizes soon that there are good youngsters to fill the No 3 spot and take the burden of getting to bat at the death overs.
It is hard to digest that Aussies are out of the tournament at this stage.Overall the team looked a bit uncertain of how to go about in this T-20 format. I think the lack of participation of top players like Ponting,Clark,Haddin, Hussey,Johnson,Braken in this format of the game has affected their confidence and they almost looked very rusty at times.
Ponting looked very defensive most of the time in both the matches and lacked imagination in dealing with the bowling changes.
I am sure these top players will realize that skipping IPL was a big mistake in terms of understanding the quick change of fortune in this format.
Do you think even if Karthik had performed in the Newzealand series he would have been in the team ahead of Dhoni. C'mmon Dhoni is the captain.
The same logic you apply for Karthik is not applied for the likes of Rohit, Raina or Jadeja. Rohit failed miserably before IPL. He would have been in the T20 world cup even if he had failed in IPL.
Jadeja has not done anything great to be selected for the T20 world cup though he is talented.
If performance is the criteria then Jadeja do not deserve a place.
But Karthik is judged based on one Srilanka Series. Thats what i call it as bias.
Sriram,
If Karthick had performed in any of the chances he got in the Srilankan series or the NewZeland series he would have pressed his case as a pure batsmen in the team. India is yet to fill the No 6 spot. Kartick along with Dhoni played Test matches in the England and he opened the innings with moderate success but that's not enough. If he had scored runs in tons how can the selecters ignore him in the first place.
True that Rohit has failed but he is seen as a player for the future with lot of potential and has also proved his potential with scores to back his claim. On Jadeja again he is seen as a key member of the future indian team from none other than the great Shane warne, has any of the past greats backed our TN players ??
To conclude i would again stress that its a curse that the players from the south need to perform exceptionaly well so that the selectors can not ignore them.Good enough performance has never been good for TN cricketers and the reason for that is the past players lack of great performances.
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