What a match! Come the morning of the fifth day, and all the three results seemed possible. Curator's dream come true.
All the Indian dreams were shattered by an impressive England performance. After dominating the first two days of the match and holding on ever so slightly in the next two days, England produced a killer performance on the last day. Something that they missed so much in the earlier two games. Well played Colts.
I would say that India lost the match (And could not win the series) more because of their poor top order batting & catching than because of England's good bowling. In my opinion, the decision to go in with 5 bowlers was correct. Howeer, the decision to bowl first was not. If you are gonna play five bowlers then you must believe that the 5 batsmen will be good enough. If you don't believe that, they you pick 6 batsmen. Its as simple as that.
Anyway, it was a good cricketing series I feel, with almost all matches getting decided on the last day and that speaks tons about the quality of pitches. Andrew Flintoff was the star performer and he really relished the captaincy. India found two exceptionally good talents in Munaf Patel and S. Sreesant, both of whom bowled brilliantly. The Indian (mis)fielders dropped more than ten chances in a match, and no team should expect to win after that. There should be no excuse for missed chances. Add to that, the top order failures meant that we were expecting just too much out of our bowlers and so the end was inevitable.
Another impossible thing happened in Mumbai. Sachin Tendulkar was booed. The man tipped by many as the best to play the game was hooted on his home ground. What a surprise! It just goes on to show that Cricket is a game of consistent performances and not just past track records. [Feel free to think about Saurav Ganguly if you wish to :-) ] Tendulkar is probably at one of his worst patches in his career and he has only two options. Score or Go. It will be interesting to see how the champion reacts to the pressure.
In the meanwhile, kudos to the Indian sportsmen who are winning so many medals in the Commonwealth Games.
Cheers,
- Tosh
The Trial
9 years ago
2 comments:
We need to bring back Laxman for tests... Don't quite understand how he can be dropped...
LaX was dropped for two valid reasons:
1. They wanted to play with 5 bowlers.
2. They wanted young people to establish themselves in the middle order to cover for the ageing ones.
He got dropped not for poor form but in the better interest of the team, which is fair.
Given Sachin's injury, he earns an automatic recall.
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