Thursday 1 September 2011

India mistake England to be West Indies

With a depleted team, India managed to whitewash the West Indies 2-0 on the previous tour to the Caribbean. But, if the same mentality is applied towards touring England as well, one needs to judge the stupidity of the Indian team who have lost yet another match against England yesterday at Manchester by 6 wickets. Needless to be said, India saw contributions only from Ajinkya Rahane, Rahul Dravid and Suresh Raina who did the scoring while the rest of them that includes Dhoni, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli failed miserably. However, a target of 166 was still a tough one to reach.

I really give hats-off to Dravid for hitting three sixes and en route becoming one of the two batsmen who could manage to clear the ropes. Despite his style not suiting to T20 cricket, Dravid managed to keep up the momentum which speaks of his hard work in the nets. Dravid's style of play is more suited to test cricket and comes in handy regarding one day cricket. Not only did Dravid score 31 runs but was instrumental in putting up a partnership of 65 runs for the third wicket along with Rahane. Coming to the game, one need not cite the absence of Yuvraj and Sehwag.

With the likes of Dhoni, Rohit Sharma, Kohli etc, much more could have been made possible which actually didn't happen. Giving undue credit to some Jade Dernbach would be a waste of time when Dhoni and co felt that everything was over once they lifted the world cup in April this year.England were comfortable with contributions coming in from every batsman who took it to the crease. If not for Hales who scored a naught, there were contributions from Kieswetter, Pietersen, Morgan, Bopara and Samit Patel who came in handy with the bat. More than big scores, there was continuous flow of runs for England.

With so much depth and form in the batting England, nothing much could have been done by the Indian bowlers who got belted one after the other starting from Praveen Kumar. All the option that Dhoni had in hand was to give the ball to Rohit Sharma thinking that a change in bowling might stop runs from being scored at ease. With Rohit Sharma going in for 16 runs off his over, Dhoni didn't couldn't take the risk of trying Raina and Kohli. Dhoni has to be satisfied for crossing 150 and then bringing it till the 20th over and not finishing somewhere in between.

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