I think yesterday's Dhoni's propmotion up the batting order was really a master stroke. . It achieved two things 1) It shielded Yuvraj from Murali and the SL Spin bowlers as we know yuvi doesnt play spin well. Also Yuvraj off late has been throwing away his wicket and even if he had scored a 20-30 and then thrown away his wicket it wudnt have been good enough. another wicket at that stage could have caused some panic 2) Raina also calmed down and played patiently with Dhoni. remember Raina was dropped before when battng with Gambhir. both did not fear about the run rate and kept working singles and twos well and ran well preserving their wickets. This enabled them later to accelerat well knowing that we still have yuvi-rohith to come unlike the last match(dhoni-rohith accelereted very late as we were 4 down already). Even ater loosing dhoni-raina and quick succession, yuvi -rohith kew that they had to just get 50-60 odd which on this wicket was a cake walk. I think it was a fearless approach from Dhoni to come up the order to control the mid-overs well. he ran his twos and threes well considering the fatigue the guys wud have had after 2 consecutive days against non-minnow oppositions in that heat.
1. Dhoni and his men have achieved yet another milestone within the brief period of Dhoni's captaincy. Detractors are free to call it fluke, luck or whatever. I am an unabashed and open admirer of Dhoni as an individual, cricket player and captain and therefore have no hesitation whatsoever in applauding his feat. May God give him strength of character and power of will and ability of physique to carry on exactly in the same way as he has ever since he started playing at the highest level and more so since assuming captaincy.
2. It was amusing, to put it mildly, to hear that Ramiz Raja was complaining of complacency on the part of Srilanka in losing to India. I was thinking that most of the time, Ramiz was a much better and balanced commentator on TV than even our own Gavaskar, Arunlal and Shastri. I need to revise my view now. Anyone who has been watching the Asia cup matches now being played, will rather doubt India - Pakistan match in the super league as possibly "staged" - judging by the way the Indians fielded and dropped many catches and not even bothered to show disappointment for the records, rather smiling after dropping catches! Also allowing fours where there was not even a single, bowling without any strategy etc.
3. Match against Pak could have been won, if only Rohit Sharma capitalized on his first good start in the tournament and Yusuf Pathan had his feet on the ground, not in the air!
RE:Musings
by Maheswari on Jul 05, 2008 07:03 PM
I completely agree with you. It is pathetic to see India lost to Pakistan for want of good partnership
