My Bloglogue April 12th 2005

So!, Indians managed to lose an easy win. Gangully finds himself in deep trouble. He is now banned for 6 games for slow over rate. Very soon, even staunch Gangully Supporters like me will think twice to bail him out in future. Gangully and Captaincy, I know I have bailed him, defended him on various occasions, today for some time I will give up little of my ever lasting bias for him. I felt Gangully should have sent Kaif in his place. Basically he came in and wasted about 33 balls to score few runs. During this period we could have scored another 20 odd runs that could have saved the game. Any way after the game postmortem is easy! Frankly DADA Gangully is banned and out, very soon selectors will say TATA Gangully, he might have to have to car pool with John Wright. For now I don’t mind the real captain [pic below]- to lead the Indian team.

Match started about an hour late, Sachin and Viru started of with sheer power, flood gates were open, this time both the reservoirs started to flood the area with runs. Sachin turned on the “Sachin” mode, he was striking the ball like he used to about 2 years ago. He never slowed down even for moment in this wonderful innings of 123, he was finally trapped by Cramps in his hands and thighs went to play a tired stroke and was bowled, by then India has piled lots of runs. Viru, was run out because of his casual attitude, it was not prudent for the dashing opener to underestimate the infield. Just before then, he escaped a close call by being in between the ball the stumps, but the next time Yunis khan got his man and Sehwag was short of the crease. But this got Dhoni, who once again started of with blasting strokes and went to support Sachin. Dravid, Yuvraj blasted some valuable runs to lift the score above the 300 mark.

When Indians stepped into the fielding arena there was no need for the skipper to adopt a defensive strategy. They just needed to attack the Pakistani batmen, however Gangully had a defensive field, why/? Thanks to our new ball traders, bowling was below par, in fact very bad Balaji in particular. Afridi was going with fill steam who capitalized the poor line and length. Added to Gangully field placement, Batsmen scored runs at a rate of 7 and above.
As if this was not enough, Indians started to bowl a negative line on the rough. Sachin was aiming at a leg side line; he has done this in the past and been very successful. However I don’t know why the hell Murali Kartik was asked to bowl similar line to Sachin on the rough. I felt he should have bowled his usual orthodox off side line that would have forced the batsmen to play against the spin. Finally after 8 overs Gangully lets him bowl his traditional line and at once India got a break through. Yes, it was kind of late but India now had some scope to get back in the game. But once again Indians were casual; Yuvraj dropped an easy sitter for Malik. Both the batsmen [Inizi and Malik] milked the Indian bowling and fielding for singles. This is the main reason for them to reach such a huge total. I was thoroughly disgusted to see Indians loose an easy game which should have been won by Indian hands down.

I am yet to recover from it, however, let me cheer myself,
Jinaku Jinaku gin gin chiku Jinaku Jinaku gin --- SACHIN!. way to go!.
[Thanks to the hook words from Vijay’s movie Sachien, listen to the song, va va en thaliva by Shanker , music Devi Sri Prasad. ]