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Well, it took 646 matches for Australia to face a 10 wicket defeat. With only two of its regular batsmen in squad, Australia couldn’t post a fighting total. Credit goes to Shane Bond for making a good use of the situation. Casual flip of channels during lunch made me watch the last 15 minutes of this match.
Three tests being played simultaneously is a rarity by itself. All those tests producing a result is a bigger rarity. On top of that, all the three tests have concluding on the same day would be unbelievable.
India won on South Africa, the former’s first test win on SA soil.
Australia won on England, to clinch the series with a 3-0 lead, two more tests pending.
Sri Lanka won on New Zealand, to level the two test series.
Interestingly, the team who batted first won in all these tests, bowling out the opposition in their second innings.
Writing this blog at the close of India’s second innings batting in the first test. Its great to watch the partnership of Ganguly and Laxman yesterday. Today, Laxman provided more entertainment by inching to a solid 71 runs.
Ironically, both the batsmen who were considered to be unfit for the series, Ganguly ans Laxman, are the only ones who could manage a half-century in the 3 innings of the match so far. The totals scored by these people, Ganguly with 76 (51*+25) and Laxman with 101 (28+73) top the charts on the Indian side. Hope they continue this form throughout the series, which may spell troubles for SA for the first time against India at home.
So these unfits, Ganguly and Laxman, are the bestfits for the first test! Well played!
Today, I realized that 8 top cricket playing nations are playing one match or the other.
That makes all sports channels in India broadcast one match or other. Pretty busy day ;-).
For a team that scores 500+ runs batting first, that too, after declaring with just six wickets down, it is very rare to loose the test. However, Australia enforced a remarkable loss on England, thanks to great second innings bowling by Warne and good batting by Ponting and Hussey. England declared their first innings after scoring 551/6, yet faced a six wicked loss on the last day. Great test win by Australia!
VVS Laxman, the person who is deemed to be unfit to be in the initial squad to the South Africa tour is now named as Vice Captain of the India Test team! Hope Laxman makes use of this opportunity…
No. I am not talking about falling stars or lightning. I am talking about India Cricket Team’s run in the ongoing South Africa tour. In two of the three matches so far, I thought I would attend some meetings, come back and watch India’s batting. But by the time my meeting is over, the India batting order simply collapsed. Today, I went for a short meeting when India are some 20/0. When I came back, they are 39/4 or so. Then I went to another meeting and by the time I checked the score again, it is 134/7. Its the same story again and again in this series.
Lets see if India is at the bottom of the ditch here or still sliding downwards…
The game of Cricket is as unpredictable as weather. A good example is the final day’s play of the third test, where WIndies had to go for a rush hour declaration. Delaying the declaration might leave not enough time for WIndies to win. Preempting the declaration would mean that India gets a gettable target.
The day was filled with interesting moments, when the game tilted away and towards India. However, at no point, WIndies looked like it is going to win.
The India team managed a good total, given that its first four batsmen got a 50 each. This is the kind of batting a team would like to see, when it has to come out from the follow-on situation a day ago. Hope they continue this spree in 4th test.
Didn’t get a clue about what the WIndies thinktank’s game plan is, on day 3 of the test 3. Just before lunch, they spent 14 overs scoring a mere 21 runs, where as they did make that many runs in just one over after lunch. Here is the state of the match in the pre-lunch session:
Both batsmen scored 60+, 515 runs on the board, and what would you do? Just play for lunch? Do they think the extra 45 runs they got by wasting all the critical time would matter?
Just one session of time wasted on the second day of the first test made India face the agony of coming so close to win, but not win. After all the good performance they have put in, hope WIndies don’t go thru such agony in this test.
Keeping the result aside, here are a couple of thoughts. First: Lara, undoubtedly a great player, is always criticised for being a fan of records, not results. With this strange strategy today, is he going to give more evidences for such criticism? Second: The test match version of cricket is said to be loosing its charm because of its slow pace. If a team that is in command is going to play so defensive as WIndies, probably that loss of charm is being fasttracked. Let us see how many spectators can be spotted in the stands on day 4 and 5.
Coming back to the match, Laxman, the lone player who couldn’t make his mark yet in the series, looked vulnerable, but stayed put. Building partnerships with Dravid is part of his track record, hope he continues with that record. With a WIndies loss practically out of equation, India should be happy just with a draw.
Well, the day’s matches didn’t disappoint at all! There is continuous action in the middle, in fact, more action in the form of extra time for the second tie, that saw both Genmany and Argentina to quarter finals of FIFA WC 2006. The Swedish goal keeper did an excellent job, otherwise we would have seen a much bigger margin for Germany, which held the ball for a grasping 61% of the total time. The first 10 minutes of the Argentina-Mexico tie saw 2 goals scored, and it took another 90+ minutes for Argentina to score the decider. However, the action in the middle was gripping all the time!
Good start for the second round! Hope the rest of the Cup goes like this!