Sunday 5 June 2011

Depleted India show West Indies the gates

Well, some two years down the lane, the West Indies had been whitewashed by the Bangladesh with most of the big names missing from the West Indies squad. Now, a team deceived from its key players is found to thrash the same country on its home ground. Recently, the case was the same when they had Pakistan in the delivering end in the only T20 game they played. India were without the services of Virender Sehwag, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh etc who have pulled out of the tournament citing one or the other reasons. The team was captained by Suresh Raina.

The necessary action that a T20 game is expected to give happened to come towards the fag end of the innings with Yousuf Pathan blasting two sixes and Harbhajan Singh hitting one. Of course, even Rohith Sharma had two hits out of the ground but that was preceded by a series of ducking the ball.Rohith Sharma took 23 balls to score his 26 at a rate of 113.04 runs for every 100 balls he faced. However, neither of the teams were found to show any sort of experimenting with their bowling with India sticking to 5 bowler theory and West indies using 4 bowlers to bowl their full quota.

Being the home team, the West Indies showed all sorts of confidence when they started their run chase with a 66 run third wicket partnership between Marlon Samuels and Dwayne Bravo. This though couldn't fetch them a victory could however save some face for the hosts. The match was of little or of no consequence with hardly any takers irrespective of who wins or who loses. The target should have been chased down by the West Indies with players like Christopher Barnwell's late show with the bat that saw 3 sixes which was more than anybody else's in the game.

I was just wondering when Samuels was mentioned in the team. Samuels' last game for the West Indies was against Sri Lanka in 2008. After that, we hear Samuels was suspended by the ICC for having a suspect bowling action. If one can go through the scorecard, you can see Darren Sammy with four wickets at a rate of 4.00 runs an over. That was a match figure one of its kind with a bowler bowling 4 overs, taking 4 wickets and giving away runs at a rate of 4.00 runs an over. But, destiny was too harsh upon him when he missed the man of the match award for being in the side that lost the match.

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