Why Indians didn’t appeal when Strauss edged?

The Indian team seems to have a “hearing problem” in addition to its bowling and fielding affliction which led to its failure to shield a strong score of 338 in the World Cup match against England on Sunday.

Much has been spoken and written about how poor bowling and fielding in addition to late batting collapse that resulted in the fall of India’s last seven wickets for 33 runs and nearly enabled England to win. I mentioned in my previous blog how happy Mr.Dhoni was to draw a match that was surely could have won hands down. I seriously think Dhoni should consult an ENT specialist before the next match for the betterment of Indian cricket. Zaheer Khan too should accompany Dhoni.

England skipper Andrew Strauss, who was the architect of India’s agony by scoring his highest score in ODI 158, should have been out when he has scored a mere 13 if wicket keeper Dhoni, Zaheer or close-in fielders had appealed for a caught behind at that point. Strauss clearly nicked a Zaheer delivery and waiting for an appeal from behind and the bowler, for his amusement there were no appeal! 98 runs later, the England captain had edged another delivery from the same bowler Zaheer with his score at 111 but none of the Indians on the field appealed! There is no excuse to blame noisy crowd. When Strauss trapped Leg before he was expecting same mute from Indians, but this time they did appeal and got him out. How sad!

Sachin Tendulkar scored 137 v Sri Lanka at Delhi on March 2, 1996,

Sachin scored 143 v Australia at Sharjah on April 22, 1998,

Sachin scored 141 v Pakistan at Rawalpindi on March 16, 2004,

Sachin scored 123 v Pakistan at Ahmedabad on April 12, 2005

Sachin scored 175 v Australia at Hyderabad on November 5, 2009

All above matches have one thing in common, no. Not only Tendulkar’s centuries. India lost in all those matches. I am not blaming the little master for those losses, he did well his part but his countrymen failed to capitalize on his contribution. They let him down most of the time when he scored heavily.

Dhoni is happy to draw the match against England!!!

If Indian Captain Mahendar Singh Dhoni feels it’s OK to be drawn the match against England in their second league matches in ICC World Cup; then he has got some serious mental problem! Dude, your team scored 338 runs, yourself and millions of Indian cricket fans around the world were all expecting nothing less than a win! This time around you don’t even have a Sreesanth to blame, damn it!

No more hide and seek game here guys, Indian bowling sucks big time, England were scoring freely like a domestic match, just remember they have everything against them, toss, ground, crowd support. Under the flood light they should be struggling to score! At one stage it was like a certain win for England, they were cruising like a new Bugatti Veyron, till something suddenly happened to Zaheer Kan, was it an exorcism? Out of blue he came out and took 3 wickets! Twist in the tale. If there is no six in that last over of Munaf Patel, India would have been well home. Or there was no sixes in previous over of Piush Chawla….. OK, I am not going to count all the overs here.

It seems like England captain was quite happy with the result, he looked so relived and relaxed after drawing the match. He even shook hand with Peterson and other colleagues with a smile on his face, yet he said he was not happy about the result in post presentation talk, Nasser Hussain asked the same question to MS Dhoni, and Indian captain answered YES! He is OK with the draw! So Indians have no more potential to improve! That’s what he said right? They touched the limit!

This match showed even referring system is not error free. Yuvraj clearly got out Cambell in front of the wicket; Yuvraaj thought it is out, all spectators in the gallery, millions of viewers in front of TV sets thought the same, what more; Cambell himself thought he was out! Referral System came to play and it had a different go about it. Now we have to have 2^nd referring umpire to monitor the first one, if the first one fails the 2^nd one take charge, well… what if the second one too fail? J

ICC World Cup 2011 Snippets – Part 1

2011 ICC World Cup kick started with a beautiful boundary from India’s Virendar Sehwag. His survival as a batsman in the crease for the first 5 overs are running on 80% of pure luck. Next 5 overs 60% of luck, after 25 overs it is 100% talent with little or no luck!

Look at his game against England on their second match in world cup. First ball he faced turned into streaky four, well, he wasn’t teasing the team England with those half chances, he was hell nervous out there and Bangalore crowd was aesthetic!

Match between Pakistan and Srilanka too was a good entertainment. But wait…, a young Pakistan batsman jumped on the pitch while batting, apparently spoiling the pitch according to the umpire. Umpire called the batsman immediately and tried to explain not to jump on the pitch, poor Pak player didn’t understand a thing what umpire was trying to convey. Umpire jumped hard on the same surface to show the batsman not to do that!! Srilankan captain Sangakkara was pulling his hair out and finally pleaded to the umpire let it be, if he got it or not. Don’t show it on the pitch sir, we got to bat after this!

Sachin Tendulkar is a living legend, but he is not bigger than team India. Every tom dick and harry says India should win this year’s world cup for Sachin Tendulkar. What about the country? What about millions of Indian fans around the world? Less fortunate street ass riding on Tendulkar’s popularity is not new. Started by one time Sachin’s good pal Vinod Kambli, and it was like a domino effect everyone including Harbhajan Singh backing up the presupposition. Harbhajan Singh is well known friend of Sachin Paji, or Harbhajan created this impression about him and Sachin in media smartly responding on anything about Sachin, in return he gained so much of popularity, a lot of money from the ads and a place in Mumbai Indians in Indian Premier League, even his own state team Punjab Super Kings didn’t rate him so much!

Indian pacer Sree Sranth was very upset initially when he was left out of the World Cup team. He cried on the rooftop to pick up some sympathy (not exactly like how he reacted after getting slapped) Indian Cricket team chief selector Krishnamachari Srikanth compelled to answer the media questions when he visited Kerala; the speedster’s home state. In fact Srikanth was struggling to find a convincing answer. Praveen Kumar’s ill timed injury became blessing for Sri Shant, he played against Bangladesh in opening match and showed the world why he wasn’t picked in playing eleven initially. Now Srikanth is thanking Srisanth for clearing the cloud!