The millennial babies would have felt that this was a throwback to their childhood. Watching Sachin bat and to see the rest of the team making a hash of it is nothing new to them. To put his longevity in perspective, he played two World Cups before Ganguly played in one. Ganguly has played in three World Cups and is now a part of the commentary panel
There is something dynamic about Sehwag. In the early years too, he played in the same fashion but now his batting has acquired the additional dimension of demoralising the bowlers. The flick that he played off the very first ball of the innings speaks volumes about his mindset
Where Sehwag was all violence in getting his runs, Sachin was silk. He drove, flicked, crunched, came down the track and deposited the ball into the stands. The array of the shots that he played delighted crowd, connoisseurs, and common man alike. The pick of the shots he played were the crunchy cut shot past the covers and off drive past Morkel
When spin was introduced into the attack, it was that Sehwag would go after them but he probably fell a victim to his own over confidence as he tried to be too cheeky to cut the leg spinner away and was castled. Starting off with the run-rate that they did, India could have afforded to go slow in the middle overs. They did that and probably lost a bit of momentum as South Africa
At 267/1 in the 40th over, India were looking to push the accelerator. Tendulkar fell in the same attempt by playing a tired shot. What followed that was a collapse beyond the comprehension of common man. All these days the talk revolved around how good the batting looks but today when confronted by a good attack, the batting failed to push on
29/9 is not the way a team calling itself the favourites would want to find itself in. Although the performance of the batting order can be struck away as one off, its the shots that they got out to that bewilders. Steyn engineered the collapse in a superb manner and picked up a five wicket haul. The pleasures of having an aggressive bowler in the line-up
With the wickets falling in a heap, it was given that the morale of Indians would be low. In what was an apparent positive, Amla took strike against Zaheer, instead of Smith. Smith struggled against Zaheer and tried to play himself in. That’s the comfort that was afforded to them by dismissing India for 296. They couldn’t have done that in the face of a target of 350 +
Smith tried to break the shackles against Zaheer Khan by lofting him over the infield but fell the very next ball trying to repeat the stroke. This time around, he did not get the elevation. Kallis came to the crease on the back of a poor run in this tournament and started about slowly. Amla was his usual self, playing the drives of the backfoot and elegantly flicking away the ball on the legside
Amla’s dismissal might have set off the warning bells in the South Africa camp as he was undone by sharp bounce and turn. AB de Villiers allayed those fears by playing a stroke filled innings. Kallis fell to a smart piece of collaboration between Harbhajan and Dhoni. When South Africa called for the Powerplay soon after, it was thought to be an impulsive decision but it turned out to be a good one as de Villiers and Duminy looted 17 runs of a Zaheer over
de Villiers too like Sehwag earlier in the day was a victim of his over confidence as he slog swept straight into the hands of deep midwicket. When Duminy and van Wyk fell in quick succession, the ‘C’ word began to buzz around. du Plessis relieved the pressure by hitting a six and Botha too landed a few lusty hits
On a day that should have seen a comfortable win for India, the batting and bowling bought about few unwanted headaches for the team management
After the batting collapse, India never really were in control. The bowling was quite spirited in the first 20 overs. But unless they took wickets consistently, there was really no real pressure on the batsmen. I loved the way the proteas batted, it was a level headed chase I think. Required run rate reaching 9.0 was as good as a win for the bowling side about a decade back, but with T20, not any more.
ReplyDeleteAbout Sachin, he was a pleasure to watch. What I can't get my head around is why did he have to get out like that? After putting in all the hard work, scoring a century - and then getting out to a bad powerplay shot. What is this fascination about slog hitting in the power play? Why are we so bent on scoring 350+ every match? I think there was too much pressure on the batsmen to score a huge total because they did not know how much of a total their bowlers can defend.
-Swarup.