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 20^th over and not finishing somewhere in between.

Is England a match for Sri Lanka?

One has to wonder who on earth crowned the English as the world T20 champions last year when Australians were the favorites to win the trophy. It is agreed that England were a tough opposition then. But, yesterday England never showed any signs that a world champion is expected to show. England were no match for Sri Lanka who beat them in every department eventually in the match by 9 wickets. There was no player from the English side whose contribution can be highlighted. Out of the eleven, only three players were able to cross the double digit score with Pietersen and Morgan scoring 47 and 41 respectively.

Adding to the misery, being the home team, England had absolutely no chances to lose the game with players like Morgan, Pietersen and Stuart Broad. As mentioned in my earlier posts, the match was of hardly any consequence with only one game to go. A winner or loser has nothing to take home. But, that should not be a reason for England to relax with 6 of their batsmen scoring single digit scores out of whom two of them got out scoring zero. This can just be considered as a continuation of the dominance of Sri Lanka over England since the quarter-finals of the world cup.

One can go through the scorecard of that quarter-finals match too see the way the Sri Lanka batsmen openers shattered the England bowling by winning the match by 10 wickets with an opening run partnership of 229 runs. Now, though the effect was not that devastating, a 9 wicket win for Sri Lanka over England should definitely make them think much hard about their future in the game. It is fascinating to see the age old Sanath Jayasuriya still wearing the Sri Lankan uniform and scoring in boundaries and scalping two wickets. I guess he is the oldest player to feature in T20 cricket.

Well rather than calling it a guess, it is a fact. Though Jayasuriya's batting had nothing in particular to say, his bowling fetched him 2 wickets from 3 overs giving away runs at a rate of 6.00 runs per over. However, there were the likes of Jayawardane and Sangakkara who could get the job done for Sri Lanka. One can sense the lack of responsibility from the bowlers of the England team who bowled 11 wide deliveries. The Sri Lankan batsmen finished the game in style by grabbing a victory with a boundary. But, England need to re-think about their fortunes i case they need to make their presence felt.

Tuskers strong on their day

Well one of the teams upon which all IPL fans can have their bet this time around would be the Kolkata Knight Riders who are found to have regrouped from their previous shattering which was evident in the last three editions especially the second one where Brendon McCullum was made to captain the side instead of Sourav Ganguly. However, yesterday the story was slightly different with the Kolkata Knight Riders having a tough time against Kochi Tuskers Kerala at Kochi (where else). Another delight of the day was that the home team won the match which has been otherwise in the other contests.

Home teams have been seen returning at the losing end with the teams like Delhi and Hyderabad topping the list followed by Mumbai. Coming to the game between Kochi and Kolkata, the match was a favorite one for 'K' fans with both teams having the letter 'K' in them. However, even if one goes by that theory, then the fans would have been delighted for the team with the maximum number of 'Ks' emerging victorious. The Kochi Tuskers kerala have three 'Ks' in them as against only two such 'Ks' by the Kolkata Knight Riders. And for peiople who don't go by that, here it is.

One has to just think why on earth does the batsman from whom a master innings is expected happens to disappoint? Brendon McCullum who has shown to entertain his fans happens to get out early scoring just one run no matter how many balls he has played. Is it because McCullum had last played for Kolkata in the past three editions of the tournament that he has a soft corner for them should be thought about not so seriously. No individual batsmen can be highlighted from the Kocjhi team with contributions pouring in from Parthiv Patel, Michael Klinger, Mahela Jayawardane and Brad Hodge.

The toughest decision to make was as to who should be adjudged the man of the match with Jayawardane being the top scorer of the innings and Morgan doing his stand alone innings of 66 that topped the match overall. However, with the preference going to the individual from the winning team, adjudging Jayawardane as the man of the match would not have been a bad choice. But, considering a quickfire innings, the award points to no one else but Brad Hodge for his 35 from 19 deliveries at a strike rate of 184. Main mistake lied in Kochi giving 4 overs to Lee who went in for 42 runs at 10 runs an over.

14, 15 and 16 are the top scores

Well it was fascinating not only to see England win the first test at Nottingham yesterday but also the scorecard was one of its kind when the top three individual scores in the 2^nd innings of Pakistan's batting happened to be 14, 15 and 16. Of course, the score of 14 in the innings was scored by extras and that is no player. These three add up to 45 runs which is more than half of the total score of 80 put up by Pakistan. Recently, a couple of weeks back, Pakistan made news for the right reasons when they bowled Australia for 88 which was their first score below 100 to lose all ten wickets.

Now, they themselves make news this time for the wrong reasons when they lost all their ten wickets for a score 8 runs less than what the Aussies scored. Coincidentally, the aforementioned scorers were the only three which crossed the double digit mark. Extras apart, there were just two Pakistani batsmen who scored above ten and with one making up his mind in leaving out the tail end batsman Danish Kaneria who scored 16, the number reduces to just one batsman out of 11 scoring double digit. It is nothing but a tragedy that the top scorer in the innings happened to be a number 10 batsman in Kaneria.

One more thing that would fascinate all Pakistan cricket fans would be the fact that the top scorer for Pakistan, with both their innings combined would be another tail end batsman in Umer Gul when he top scored with an unbeaten 65 in the 1^st innings. That was the 3^rd highest individual score in the match after the English batsmen Eoin Morgan and Matt Prior notched up centuries for their team in the 1^st and the 2^nd innings respectively. It was a good toss to win by the England captain Andrew Struass who wisely chose to bat. The scorecard tells us the pitch which was found favoring the bowlers and batting 2^nd would have been inviting trouble.

Of course, hardly any captain wins the toss and elects to bowl first no matter n what pitch he is playing. The Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni can be excluded from the list who is often found making abnormal decisions with reasons which only he justifies after making a fool out of himself and his team. One can see 8 bowlers from the Pakistan side having the red cherry in their hands in the first innings when England scored 364 as against the only 4 bowlers from the English side. This showed the pressure that the Pakistan players were. This was unnecessary with three more sessions and four more days to go in the match. Pakistan needs to learn a lot. Better approach Bangladesh.

Save English cricket campaign

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts that England are at present the only team not to have lost a game to any of the non test playing nation and also against Bangladesh. But, with every encounter against a minnow like Bangladesh, England are found coming up with a performance that is just slightly better than a defeat. None of the remaining 8 nations would have as many close encounters against minnow teams as England might have had. May be West Indies could well be excluded from the list. This is the 2^nd time in a row that England are facing such a drought in one day cricket against Bangladesh.

England won the 2^nd one dayer against Bangladesh by just 2 wickets which speaks for itself regarding the caliber of the English team. And the victory was possible due to the fact that there was a batsman in Morgan on side who held the nerves firm for England despite wickets falling from the other end. Without a batsman on one end, victory would have been far from question for the English team. There were five batsmen from the English side who returned back to the pavilion after scoring single digit scores. The English side lost 8 wickets compared to 6 from the Bangladeshi side.

Such a scenario occurs in games where there are two strong teams battling it out there. Like it happened in the match between Australia and Pakistan in the group stage of the ICC Champions trophy last year. This is in a way worse than a defeat when a team that is expected to win in a one sided manner gasps for the same though I have cited this as 2^nd best to defeat earlier here. One has to question whether it was England indeed who made it to the semi finals of the ICC Champions trophy last year and were they the ones who beat the Proteas 2-1 on their home ground.

Had it been the Bangladesh who had won the match in this fashion, the world of cricket would have been in full praise for Bangladesh but this may not be the case with England. The only positives for England lied in the area where the man of the match award went to Eoin Morgan who belonged to the England side unlike in the last game where the man of the match was a Bangladeshi batsmen in Tamim Iqbal. And some mature decision from Alistair Cook meant in going in for 3 bowlers who bowled 10 overs each unlike the lone bowler who bowed 10 over in the first encounter.