Cricket Shastra

From 83 for 4 to 267 for 4 !!
Not bad at all .. I would say. Quite a fantastic recovery from India.
Lets focus on the positives first. Gambhir has started finding his feet in the international arena ever since his wonderful batting exploits at the top of the order during the T20 World Cup. He can now be put down as a reliable Number 3 player for India, at least in the 50 over version. This has more to do with the lack of options present, than with his talent. Among the present pool of batsmen India has, no one is more suited for this role than him (I am counting out Rahul Dravid, as he probably will find it tough to find way back into the ODI team .. whatever be the result of this series). The onus is on Gambhir to take his role seriously and deliver in crunch matches. Even Today, he almost threw away his wicket while on 10 and had Sangakara not grassed that chance, the scoreboard might have read a lot different.
I have always had doubts about Dhoni’s ability to bat in tough conditions. He always seems to be able to bat in only two modes, either overly aggressive or overly defensive. I am yet to see a aggresive defense or a defensive aggression from this chap. He just seems like he wants to hang in there when the conditions are tough, even if he gets bad balls. At other times, he seems like he wants to get the match over at the earliest, and starts banging every ball out of the park. But I was pleasantly surprised today with his batting. His innings was a fine example of how to build one’s innings. After the couple of quick dismissals, one due to an umpiring horror and the other due to outright stupidity from the batsman, his calmness brought some method in the madness that was prevailing in the middle.
Together, the two understated batsmen fought off the chances of mid innings collapse. By the time the allotted quota of overs were bowled, one of them had helped himself to a truly deserving century and other one had played a wonderfully paced captain’s innings. For quite some time, I had thought that this inning would also go the same way as the one against Australia. But these two displayed great skills in keeping the good balls out and swatting others for boundaries , especially towards the end of the innings.
Now its time to get on with the negatives. Yuvi was the one player who was supposed to make the batting order strong. But he always had problems playing quality spin bowlers. He can swat them for a couple of boundaries, but he definitely can’t bat consistently well against them. Today too, Murli had him bamboozled. It wasn’t so much about the quality of the shot that he played, but about how easily Murli had foxed him. Remember the Manoj Tiwary dismissal against Brett Lee ? Bouncer, bouncer , bouncer and then out of nowhere, a yorker length delivery. With Yuvi batting, Murli bowled three flat fast-ish deliveries on his stumps and gave the next one some air. Yuvi was enticed into the drive and ended up giving a catch at slip. I don’t think there is any prettier site for a bowler than to see his plan work out against one of the top batsmen in the opposition team.
I do feel sorry for Rohit Sharma though .. He had batted so well against Australia the other day that Ian Chappell had said “I think India have found the ideal replacement for Sachin when he retires, for the number 4 test spot”. The cover driving, the square drives and the lethal cuts were all excellent, but its yet to be seen if he is able to keep scoring his runs when bowlers around the world have worked him out. Right now, he seems to be too intent to cut deliveries. May be that is something that teams can exploit in the future, if he does go on to play for a long time. Today he got a very poor decision from the umpire, but he will have his chances in the series.
Sachin and Sehwag were good at the top of the batting order. I just hope Sachin notches up at least a couple more centuries on this tour. Its not too tough, considering the sort of form he is in.

Update : Match canceled due to Rain .. Both Teams share 2 points each.