India Shortened By Aussies

Posted by Aniket in News on 05 8th, 2010 | no responses

Short Ball Predicament

Many considered it as a match between two potential finalists but the way team India played, it didn’t look like it. Probably MSD was without his thinking cap. Some of the decisions were quite surprising. He mentioned that pitch will assist pace bowlers and went ahead with attack full of spin bowlers and included only Zaheer and Nahera in playing XI. He won a crucial toss but he did not want to face dreaded Aussie attack and opted to bowl first.

Harbhajan opened India’s bowling attack as he is doing this quite often these days. The first over was maiden but there on it was complete mayhem. All the good work done by Harbhajan Singh was undone by Jadejaby conceding 19 runs in 4^th over and that provided the momentum to Aussie inning. Dhoni preferred Jadeja over Zaheer to bowl inside powerplay which cost them heavily.

Watson and Warner gave Australia a brisk start. At the end of 6^th over they were 53 for no loss.Jadeja was brought back to bowl 10^th over despite bowling badly in his first over. He was hit for 6 consecutive sixes, on last 3 balls of 4th over Watson hit 3 and on first 3 balls of 10th over Warner hit 3.

At one stage Australia was set to cross 200 run mark but India pulled things back in last 4 overs by conceding only 23 runs and restricted Aussies below 185. There were 16 sixes and only 6 fours in Australia’s inning. Chasing such a huge total was always going to be difficult but with depth in batting India fancied their chances.

India’s fight back was cut short by some brilliant pace bowling by Nannes and Tait India was 4 down for only 23 runs in 5 overs. From there on only miracle would have saved team India. They preferred to dig deep and were 50-7. They were not only batting themselves out of this match but out of the tournament as a loss by huge margin would have hit net run rate badly which might be a deciding factor for semis.

But Rohit Sharma was a saving grace for team India he along with Harbhajan and Zaheer pushed India beyond 100. In the end India was bowled out for 135 runs thanks to Rohit Sharma’s 79 that saved the humiliation.

India’s weakness against short balls was exposed by Aussies. Indian did not apply themselves and kept on throwing away their wickets. Except Sharma none of the top order batsman even touched a double digit mark. India also bowled short balls but with slow bowler and Warner and company whacked them over the ropes.

All is not lost team India, they need to win their next two matches to qualify for semis. They need to bounce back strongly and need to improve their performance in all three departments.

In 2^nd match between West Indies and Sri Lanka, Jayawarden who is in form of his life scored 98 of 56 balls. Batting looks easy when he gets going. He was watchful early in the inning but once he got his eye-in, he hammered all bowlers all around. Sangakkara also joined the party and they posted 195 on board. It was a huge task and when West Indies lost Gayle early on Lanka tightened screws and made it even more difficult for rest of batting line-up. In the end they won by 57 runs.

Losses by huge margin have dented India and West Indies net run rate badly. Now they will be up against each other in next game on Sunday.