A Step Ahead..India

Hmm..with all critics showering the team Indian in spite of a win in the second one day international at Dambulla,it looked as though the impact of this criticism on team India had such an impact that they were desperate to prove a lot of things and this is what they did! If not for the likes of Mahela Jayawardane,the Sri Lankan team had nothing to boast about when their batting was taken into consideration.And what an opening spell ot was by the duo of Zaheer Khan and Praveen Kumar who rattled the Sri Lankan top order by taking 5 wickets between them.Sri Lanka were reeling at 94/7 after the 27th over and much did one realize that they would cross the 200 mark,which they eventually did.Thanks to some patient batting by Mahela Jayawardane..a captain's knock indeed.

And hats off to all those people who called the pitch at Colombo a batsman's heaven when both the teams out there lost all their ten wickets.And the team that batted first could not even cross the 250 run mark despite the slog over advantage in the late 40 overs.And,the team that batted second..Forget about a batting friendly wicket.The ball was found moving like a cobra towards the end of the second innings itself and,when the match progressed to the second innings the situation was even more worse that the Sri Lankan batsmen had no other choice but to lose wickets.

The going was smooth during the initial phase of the first innings which the Indian batsmen Suresh Raina and Mahendra Singh Dhoni made full use of,scoring half centuries each to post a decent total.It was really sad to see Ajantha Mendis miss out on a hattrick after claiming two wickets on successive balls during the fag end of the Indian innings.This really a magic of the toss of the match which Dhoni luckily and effortlessly won and with it the match.Sad that Chaminda Vaas could not grab his wicket number 400 even after an economical spell of 32 runs in 10 overs.

It was amazing that even the likes of Muttiah Muralitharan,upon whom the Sri Lankan team had complete dependence and expectation could not serve even half of what was expected from him.So was the case with Sanath Jayasuriya.Even juniors like Suresh Raina and Virat Kohli could not be contained by these experienced bowlers on their own track.Tuff whether to congratulate these youngsters for standing up when the opportunity arose or to condemn the experienced bowlers who could not turn their magic on even these kids.

Another D-L Debacle

Well with the T20 game of cricket itself lasting so short duration,imagine what would the situation be if there is a case of a bad weather,or heavy downpours as it happened during the match between Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders which was eventually won by the as usual Chennai Super Kings.One fact that has to be noticed here is that whenever there is a necessity for the Duckworth-Lewis method to take over,the team that would be in favour would at most of the times be the team which has been the upper hand in the series.Like it happened in the South Africa-Sri Lanka match in the 2003 WC which was awarded to Sri Lanka though it was South Africa who was in need of one.And the next bast example that I can give is the semis of the same in which Australia (who held the upper hand through the tournament) ended winners.

Coming to this match,the Kolkata Knight Riders didn't do a debacle as it was done by the Delhi Daredevils in the previous encounter.But,the fate of the Kolkata Knight Riders had different plans.Though not an extraordinary innings,a decent one from the blades of Salman Butt,followed by an OK like game from Das.But,some hats off to Makhaya Ntini who got yet another hattrick in the tournament.An unknowing one.None of them even Ntini didn't realize that he had done something special with the ball.

The tournament is turning out to be a special one ..something that even the World Cup that comes once in every four years dosen't have.The tournament has so far witnessed five fastest centuries with each one of them breaking the previous record with the number of balls taken into consideration.And the tournament has so far seen three hattricks.The number of such feats in the world is at the most two in the 2003 edition (which had Sri Lanka's Chaminda Vaas & Australia's Brett Lee).

But,still I wish the Duckworth Lewis method should not be used to predict the match results which would give rise to yet another format of the game.Probably a T10 match.