2nd Cricketing Day at Oval
Just three more allotted days are left for the conclusion of four match test series between India and Australia. Yesterday at the end of the day I had allowed both the team to share the honor of the day but today Australians have kept me deprived of writing the same. The second day of this final round of war belongs to Indians especially to the rear guard action by the bowlers with some beautiful and purposeful batting.
The overnight Indian pair of last recognized batsmen Dhoni and Sachin were out by adding just 8 and 30 runs respectively to their score of previous day and Australians were with the real chance of limiting the Indian first inning under 400 hundred but what you can call it last three Indian bowlers were allowed to score more than 150 runs with the wood in the hand. I know surely a few eye brows were stretched when yesterday I had wrote about the limitation in bowling attack of Australia but today’s play was the evidence for support to my views.
Gandhian approach adopted by the Indian captain Anil Kumbale, at the issue of Braid Hog at Perth is looking like to pay the rich dividend as the body language of the Australians was for below the standards set by them. It might be the criticism from all part of own country and pressures of media over the ground behavior of the cricket team after the Sydney Test, also forced Australian players to try to be more gentleman and in this effort process they last their natural sting. This was not the same Australian team on the field for which I am used since years to watch, so many catches were dropped and even the lower order batsmen were allowed to score runs freely at will. It was not the success of Australian bowlers but in fact failure of Harbhajan Sing and Anil Kumbale for raising their batting talent for scoring knocks of tons. The killing instant, which had made Australians world champion since so many years was missing all together through out these two days. Though Australian opening pair is intact but the runs scored in 20 odd over are not matching with the famous Australian striking rate.
For India, failure of star wicketkeeper Dhoni is surely proving a corner of concern; this hard hitting batsman seems to forget that wood in his hands is for hitting the leather and not for protecting the self body. This is the series of failure for the Dhoni in the games away from the lands of subcontinent. England tour of India last year and even the Twenty-20 world cup [India won this] in South Africa are the stories of failure with bat for him. Today Dhoni manage to get 8 runs from the 10 balls faced by him before being caught in deep but surely 14 runs from 64 balls are putting a question mark on his ability for playing on the pitches overseas. Neither the oval strip was adding evil to action of leather circle nor the Australian bowlers were at their best of known temperament, the situations were very much ideal for batting, but Dhoni fail to utilize this by showing the lack of application and dedication as shown by the spinner duo of Harbhajan and Kumbale. If this trend of failure is kept in continuation by Dhoni in the coming ODI tri series, surely the Indian cricket selectors will start thinking in terms of coming with two options for the slot of wicketkeeper batsman in the team and might come forward with the two options, on the terms of two separate captains for test matches and shorter versions of the game, Dhoni for the matches in the subcontinent and some one else for the overseas tours of Indian cricket team.
Just three more allotted days are left for the conclusion of four match test series between India and Australia. Yesterday at the end of the day I had allowed both the team to share the honor of the day but today Australians have kept me deprived of writing the same. The second day of this final round of war belongs to Indians especially to the rear guard action by the bowlers with some beautiful and purposeful batting.
The overnight Indian pair of last recognized batsmen Dhoni and Sachin were out by adding just 8 and 30 runs respectively to their score of previous day and Australians were with the real chance of limiting the Indian first inning under 400 hundred but what you can call it last three Indian bowlers were allowed to score more than 150 runs with the wood in the hand. I know surely a few eye brows were stretched when yesterday I had wrote about the limitation in bowling attack of Australia but today’s play was the evidence for support to my views.
Gandhian approach adopted by the Indian captain Anil Kumbale, at the issue of Braid Hog at Perth is looking like to pay the rich dividend as the body language of the Australians was for below the standards set by them. It might be the criticism from all part of own country and pressures of media over the ground behavior of the cricket team after the Sydney Test, also forced Australian players to try to be more gentleman and in this effort process they last their natural sting. This was not the same Australian team on the field for which I am used since years to watch, so many catches were dropped and even the lower order batsmen were allowed to score runs freely at will. It was not the success of Australian bowlers but in fact failure of Harbhajan Sing and Anil Kumbale for raising their batting talent for scoring knocks of tons. The killing instant, which had made Australians world champion since so many years was missing all together through out these two days. Though Australian opening pair is intact but the runs scored in 20 odd over are not matching with the famous Australian striking rate.
For India, failure of star wicketkeeper Dhoni is surely proving a corner of concern; this hard hitting batsman seems to forget that wood in his hands is for hitting the leather and not for protecting the self body. This is the series of failure for the Dhoni in the games away from the lands of subcontinent. England tour of India last year and even the Twenty-20 world cup [India won this] in South Africa are the stories of failure with bat for him. Today Dhoni manage to get 8 runs from the 10 balls faced by him before being caught in deep but surely 14 runs from 64 balls are putting a question mark on his ability for playing on the pitches overseas. Neither the oval strip was adding evil to action of leather circle nor the Australian bowlers were at their best of known temperament, the situations were very much ideal for batting, but Dhoni fail to utilize this by showing the lack of application and dedication as shown by the spinner duo of Harbhajan and Kumbale. If this trend of failure is kept in continuation by Dhoni in the coming ODI tri series, surely the Indian cricket selectors will start thinking in terms of coming with two options for the slot of wicketkeeper batsman in the team and might come forward with the two options, on the terms of two separate captains for test matches and shorter versions of the game, Dhoni for the matches in the subcontinent and some one else for the overseas tours of Indian cricket team.
No comments:
Post a Comment