Thursday 17 December 2009

Injustice Noted!!!

This is with respect to the fact that the man of the match being given solely to India's Virender Sehwag for scoring his ode day career best score of 146, when the entire match saw almost each and every batsmen from both the sides scoring runs at will. There was India's all time great Sachin Tendulkar who scored yet another half century when he scored 69 off 63 balls and the captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni who scored a 53 ball 72 from India's side and Upul Tharanga and Kumara Sangakkara who returned with scores of 67 and 90 respectively fro Sri Lanka.

In addition to the above mentioned scores, the blistering knock of 160 from the blades of Sri Lankan batsman Mahela Jayawardane indeed deserves a lot of applause whatsoever. With all these figures in front, it is nothing but injustice that only one batsman was awarded the man of the match when there was yet another contender for the award despite belonging to the losing side. Justice meant in giving away joint man of the match awards to both Mahela Jayawardane and Virender Sehwag. There have been many such instances in the past where a player from the losing side is awarded the man of the match.

Recently, if our memories are still aware, Sachin Tendulkar was awarded the man of the match for scoring a blistering 175 against Australia when India lost the match by just 3 runs when chasing a mammoth total of 350 set by Australia. No doubt that Sachin Tendulkar did deserve the award whatsoever that particular day. However, it is to be noted that Australia were without a single noted bowler in their side. Anyway that is secondary. This was just a similar match where India won by 3 runs when defending their mammoth total of 414 runs. And a point to be noted is that India were the home side in both the matches against Oz as well as against Sri Lanka.

I just cannot differentiate how come Jayawardane's name was never mentioned while declaring the man of the match when he equally deserved the award. I remember Inzamam-Ul-Haq being awarded the man of the match for scoring 122 against India in the first ODI while chasing 350 at Karachi. Moreover, if the greatest ODI in the history of the game is taken a close look at, it was South Africa who had won the game but the man of the match was shared by both Australia's Ricky Ponting and South Africa's Herschelle Gibbs for scoring 164 and 175 respectively. The difference between the runs scored by these batsmen was 11 runs as compared to the 14 run difference between that scored by Sehwag and Jayawardane.

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