West Indies Win The Lucky Draw

Well with as many exciting encounters in cricket at present in progress, there are equal number of boring encounters as well on the other side of the cricketing world. The excitement includes the ongoing clash between Australia and South Africa for the number one spot in test cricket and the boring one being the West Indies' tour of New Zealand, which has so far not been taken seriously by either of the teams out there. None of the test matches that were played, were played with the spirit of winning or atleast having the opposition in a spin. Such was the situation with teams like Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. But, the late entries to the same have been West Indies and New Zealand.

Both the teams out there are found to play the games just for the sake of it. Thank god that they were not played in a cricket crazy country like India. Had it been, the sponsors would have had to think twice before going in for such matches. And that too in this era where recession has taken a toll! Anyway, issues like that should not really matter us. However, this is been found to clash with the timings of the Australia-South Africa test matches. The preference obviously going to this rather than the West Indies-New Zealand stuff. But, what about the ones who'd prefer a one day match over a test?

And also its been a long time since a one day international has been up. And the cricket fans would obviously be craving to watch some wonderful one day encounters. But, thanks to the boring West Indies-New Zealand series which has stripped them of the spirit of waiting for a one day match to kick off. This leaves the cricket fans wth no other option than to wait for the one day series between Australia and South Africa to kick off after the third test and the two T20 matches that follows. Neither were the two T20 games interesting if the expectations are to be believed. So, will the game of cricket be able to flourish in these nations wtih such a bad approach?

Lest, there are three more one day matches to go. The first one being cancelled and the second was reduced to 28 overs a side, which the West Indies clinched luckily. None of the players from both the teams making the talk of the hour makes the matter still more worse. Especially after the retirement of Stephen Fleming and Shane Bond, the New Zealand team have no big names that would be found on the fans' lips, with someone like Scott Styris and Jacob Oram making news only for injuries rather than the way they play their game of cricket. And even the West Indies are no different in this regard, with the only consolation being Shivnarine Chanderapaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan. Ok..a little bit of Chris Gayle. Not too bad....