India not targetting a whitewash against RSA

With the first two matches already being won by India and with it the series as well, suggestions are that India would be looking in for a whitewash. One need not specially cite the way India won the first one dayer against South Africa where the match went on until the last legal delivery was bowled. Anyway, that is a different issue altogether. However, the fact that seems evident after Dhoni's decisions to rest Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag is that Dhoni doesn't have the idea to whitewash South Africa. Instead, Dhoni's idea seems to give youngsters some international match practice.

This would be the first whitewash imposed by India over South Africa if at all India succeed in doing so. I just cannot remember as to when last did South Africa ever play an ODI series against India in India. From the past 6 years since the 2003 world cup, South Africa have been to India only for the test series if not for the 5 match ODI series that was played in October 2005 which was leveled 2-2 with one ODI being abandoned. In 2004, South Africa visited India for only a 2 match test series and so was the case on its earlier tour in 2008 where the Proteas played just 3 tests.

As a matter of fact India has hardly whitewashed any team barring Bangladesh. The only ODI series that I can recall in the recent past is the 5-0 victory over England in November 2008. That was a 7 match ODI series that was cut short to 5 one dayers owing to the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai. The second best to this would be the 6-1 series win over Sri Lanka in 2005 and 4-1 against Pakistan in 2006. As a matter of fact, India were unable to whitewash Bangladesh on its earlier tour when India lost the 2^nd one dayer at Dhaka in 2004-05 by 11 runs.

And now though this is no golden opportunity, India has given up the idea of going in to whitewash South Africa. Dhoni has included the likes of Abhimanyu Mithun, Rohith Sharma and Murali Vijay who will be replacing Tendulkar and Sehwag. And as usual, there is no Harbhakan Singh and Zaheer Khan which completely rules out India's chances of winning the 3rd and the final one dayer at Ahmedabad. However, some chances despite the absence of key players would be absence of Smith in the South African team and the presence of Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, Suresh Raina etc among a few others who can put pressure on the visiting team.

India take no chances this time

With the thrashing what they received in the first test at Chittagong, India were in no mood to relax keeping in mind that they had to prove a lot of things in the second test at Dhaka. And, the Indian players did just that. Added to everything that happened earlier in the tournament, India were convinced after the return of the regular captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni who had to miss the first test owing to a back injury, which India had to put in a delayed and extra effort to see them through that match. But now, everything looks to be intact for India.

The Bangladeshi batsmen that includes Tamim Iqbal, Imrul Kayes and other lesser known names as far as international cricket is considered had absolutely no answers for the Indian bowlers that had the likes of Zaheer Khan, Ishanth Sharma in the lead. Unlike in the first test where it was all left on the experienced lads like Sachin Tendulkar and Zaheer Khan to fight it out, this time it was Ishanth Sharma who did everything he could with the ball. What a match it was with both the openers Tamim Iqbal and Imrul Kayes getting out for a duck! One need not forget the caliber of the Bangladesh team when citing the above deeds.

However, Bangladesh didn't stop reminding the world regarding the improvement they have shown in recent years and also showed that they are very much interested in playing test cricket as good as any other test playing nation. In fact, Bangladesh are the only team who are found putting up more hard work than any other team in today's test cricket. If a close look at the 9 test playing nations in today's cricket is given a close look at, no country is found playing the game the way it is supposed to be played. Finally, there has to be one winner and one loser for every game.

However, there was a late swing in the Bangladeshi tale when the number 8 batsman in Mahmudullah scored 96 runs and there were also four batsmen who scored in excess of 30 runs. This was hardly expected from a Bangladeshi team that was at one stage found reeling at 51 runs for the loss of 5 wickets. The last two wickets of the Bangladeshi innings lasted for 78 runs which is too costly as far as Bangladesh is considered. India should not have allowed Bangladesh go past 200 runs with all these in hand. But, once again, a little bit of underestimation made this turn into reality.