*Photo from www.nationnews.com
*Photo from www.cricinfo.com
The marketing men will be fuming, for after all, a large number of the major sponsors of CWC 2007 are from India or have an Indian connection. The television people will be devastated after purchasing the rights to televise the tournament. The fans, anyone familiar with cricket knows, are fanatical and already the outcry and worse has begun.
The highly rated Indians appear to be joining Pakistan on their way home, barring a miracle victory by Bermuda over Bangladesh. After slaughtering minnows Bermuda mid-week, they met up with an inspired Sri Lankan team who clinically showed them the door. The Indian batting giants once again failed, with Tendulkar out for 0. Instead of India and Pakistan, the Asians will be represented by Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in the next round.
The West Indies won convincingly against Pakistan’s tormentors Ireland, but my doubts about whether they will be able to compete with the in form teams- Australia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and New Zealand- continue to linger. When Jeremy Bray was flaying the bowling, the bowlers had no clue about how to respond and the captaincy was poor. Bray is a one dimensional batsman and the solution as the commentators kept pointing out was simple, yet still the bowlers continued to feed him short balls wide outside off and the captain showed no signs of leadership. If they do this in the second round against top batsmen they will be subjected to a massacre. It was good to see Chanderpaul return to form and he played some great shots; Samuels looked in good nick; Ramdin did well behind the stumps. Gayle bowled well, but batting wise, after a few big strokes he gifted his hand and demonstrated once again that he does not have much of a cricketing brain!
Onto Antigua on Tuesday for the first game of the Super Eights- West Indies versus Australia- where hopefully West Indies can produce some magic. Before that we still have South Africa versus Australia tomorrow in the final game of Group A. On a track which has seen some huge scores so far, I expect a run fest.
No comments:
Post a Comment