NewZeland & Australia win ODI series

NewZeland and Australia won the ODI series against England and West Indies respectively. The series win for NewZeland must be very satisfying after losing the Test series and other controversy in the ODI matches. For the Aussies it was just another series win for the record books after the test victory.

I think i was little harsh on Collingwood and England in my previous post Spirit of the Game .... Dead ???

After looking into other reports and post match report (repeatedly shown in ESPN) pointing that NewZeland players were equally unsportive in not coming to the customary handshake after the match even after collingwood waiting in front of the NZ dressing room for more than 5-10 minutes. The NZ players action only confirms my scary thought of Sprint of the game being killed by the new generation players.

AsiaCup-2008

It has been in the expected lines so for in the AsiaCup-2008, thanks to the curators for providing such flat /dead tracks that all the games are high scoring games. It has been great batting display from Sehwag,Gambhir,Raina,Mallik,YounisKhan,Sangakarra,Kapali over the past few days. Srilanka with the win against pakistan is sitting comfortably in the super four and its pressure for pakistan to win all the games in the remaining matches of the tournament.

We all understand that its tough on the players in this time of the year in pakistan and the schedule has been very tight for few teams. The schedule is arrived well in advance and the boards are aware of this and the players know what is expected from them, there is no point in cribbing on the schedule for poor performance on the field. Indian bowling and fielding has been pretty ordinary for the past few months and Dhoni blaming the schedule for the stick they got against Bangladesh is not welcome. These are the same guys who were fit for the IPL in the peak of the summer and played back-back semi-finals and finals. I think the pressure of captaincy is slowly catching on with Dhoni, his reply to the lose in the kitply cup and this response here is not going to do any good for him. After all its early days for him, one can imagine how difficult it would have been to former captains who have been in the helm for so long like Azharuddin and Gangully, hope Dhoni learns quickly from these great captains to cope with captaincy pressure.

Spain Wins European Cup After 1964

It was planning and execution by the less fancied Spain with the solitary goal from Torres. Germany with all the big names could not net the ball even once to make a match of it. Spain in all probability looked the best team in the tournament and its great to see them win the cup.

30 Minutes Break !!!!

It was cruel to see a drawn game between England and the New-Zeland in the 2nd ODI because of bad whether and 30 minutes break in between the innings. NZ were chasing 162 of 24 overs and the revised target was 134 of 20 overs and the game stopped after 19 overs with NZ needing only 7 runs to win.

Why on earth the game needed a 30 minutes break when the players have already finished their lunch and the game was already shortened by rain and bad light. Umpires say that the rules does not allow a break lesser than 30 minutes, i just ridicule the rule and feel that the umpires should act according to match situations and apply some common sense as Vettori has mentioned. It was also some dirty tactics by Collingwood to slow the over rate to such a dismal 13 overs in the first hour and showed the umpires were not at all in control of the match. Sad that the patient 15000 + crowd had to wait so long and go back with such a result.

Somehow these Englishmen make news of even very ordinary things, if it gives their side some cheap publicity, i am referring to Peterson switch-hit short. So many players in the past have innovated shorts which brought them quick runs like reverse sweep,paddle sweep,hitting the ball behind the wicket-keeper etc etc but these English media and board did not care to probe but sensationalize the short played by Peterson, the media and the board got together to probe and come out with a clean chit on the short, even when NZ did not care to raise this as an issue as an opponent side. The English Cricket Media has surprised the world with such funny things in the past and continue to do the same in this information age too :-)


Euro-2008 - Its going to be a great night with rivals Ballack and Ronaldino fight in the quarterfinals (need to somehow make myself awake, as the match starts at midnight in this part of the world). Another great contest in the quarterfinals will be the match between Spain and Italy. I think it should be easy for Croatia and Netherlands facing Turkey and Russia respectively.