Luck strikes India at the right time

Well there have been two games in this tournament where India should have won and eventually lost. Those are the game against England and South Africa where India lost the plot mid-way defending a decent total. Despite those two huge losses, the Indian players in every department were no short of their body language and guts. They did everything well till yesterday's game against the Aussies which was their win against the team after 24 years. Had the even took place a year later, may be India would have celebrated a silver-jubilee of their win over the four-time world champions.

India had last won a game against Australia in world cups in the 1987 edition where the Mahammed Azharuddin-led team India beat the to-be world champions by 59 runs though they lost their other encounter against the Aussies by 1 run in the same tournament. Since then, India has been at the receiving end of the Aussies as many as 5 times. Coming to the tournament, in that match against England, India did very well to get to 338 powered with a hundred by Sachin Tendulkar but eventually not only lost all their ten wickets but an opportunity to win as well.

Though India lost 9 wickets for less than 30 runs and failed to play their complete quota of 50 overs, a score of 297 was not a bad one at all. The score was more than enough for the Proteas to shed their sweat. Had the Proteas been that tough to face, they should not have lost 7 wickets and played until the last over en-route to their successful run chase. That was the second bad luck that struck team India. One need not consider their win against West Indies to be a luck favoring India for West Indies are a team that only Holland can fear.

You can see from the scorecard about the panic that the Aussies had with not even a single bowler happening to bowl his complete quota of ten overs. The Aussies could extract only 1 over maiden when Brett Lee happened to be the lucky guy this time. Likewise, there were four bowlers from India to have completed their full quota of ten overs that included the likes of Yuvraj Singh and Ravichandran Ashwin. There were three bowlers from India to have been better than the four from Australia. Concluding the post, did the Aussies take the Indians for granted or was Dhoni lucky to have this his?

India breakdown into peices against Australia

Anyone who would have watched yesterday's match between India and Australia would have just declared Australia as the winners of the world T20 even before the semi-finals of the tournament is decided. India was the only opposition that had a chance to beat Australia with the West Indies and Sri Lanka being underdogs in the tournament. The moment Australia secured a win against India, all would have just crossed their fingers. India was one of the teams to have won both their league stage games. of course, even Australia have won both their league stage games against Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The only difference between the Indian fielders and the ball boys was that the fielders were inside the boundary while the ball boys were outside it. There were more instances where the ball boys collected the ball and handed it over to the fielders than the fielders themselves stopping. The ball full-tossed itself 13 times in the duration when Shane Watson and David Warner were at the crease. The Aussies had more number of sixes than the number of fours which happens rarely and the case stands even more rare with India being the opposition. Putting it simple, Indian bowlers were tired of trying too many things.

Despite the score being too high, Harbhajan Singh could manage one over maiden which is definitely a feather in his cap. Though Harbhajan Singh went wicketless, he was the pick of the bowlers when he gave away runs at a rate of 3.75 runs an over. It was evident that Australia are poor players of spin bowling when a part time spinner like Yuvraj Singh scalped two wickets though he gave away runs at a rate of 10.00 runs an over. But, the frontline bowlers like Ashish Nehra and Zaheer Khan were completely failures with the ball who were among the major run donors.

If that was what happened when the Aussies were batting, here comes Indian batting which saw only one face that was Rohith Sharma. One can go through the scorecard to see only Rohith Sharma scoring 79 runs which was the only score more than 20. There were the likes of Murali Vijay, Gambhir, Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh but could only walk back disappointed. Harbhajan Singh was found to score 13 runs which was more than any other batsman barring Rohith Sharma. One has to thank God for the Aussie bowlers finishing the match in 17.4 overs which saved the viewers 10 minutes.

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.