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A lot can change in 2 months time. If KL has a good IPL, he will automatically be in contention on the basis of his decent record in England! Its the wrong yardstick but that is what it is. The Selectors keep going back to the same old players instead of trying new players.

From whatever little I've seen of Unadkat he has much better control + he offers variety being a left arm medium-pacer. Remember that 5th Test in England when Bairstow went berserk. The likes of Siraj, Shardul & Co. were going around 6rpo. The spinners traditionally at the Oval only come into play on Day 4 & 5 so its too much to expect our spinner to hold one end up & stem the run flow.

Bangladesh beat England AGAIN to win the series 3-0!
Unprecedented, absolutely!!

Bangladesh is very good at home and this England side was playing without few of their main players. BTW this is the first ever T20 series between England and Bangladesh. Shows how much less cricket teams get out of Big 3.

IMHO this is the reason T20 is getting more and more popular by the day. Its quick(done in 3 hours), action packed and most importantly there's no one dominant team making the matches competitive.

While I love test cricket, T20 seems to be the future which would help cricket gain popularity across the world.

Can't believe I'm saying this, but KL Rahul is having a great day as keeper. A few tough takes, including a diving one off a Shami wide down the leg side and an excellent catch to get rid of Smith. If he can give a good account of himself in this ODI series, then he might just replace Shreyas at 5 in the WTC final. And we can play a specialised batter for Bharat.

Meanwhile we have pulled things back to reduce Australia to 174/6 in the first ODI after an initial blitz from Marsh.

English conditions can be a handful for even experienced wicket-keepers, let alone someone like KL who's only kept in ODIs. Keeping for 90 overs in a day cannot be easy for a non-regular keeper since your body isn't used to it no matter how fit you are.

Australian Pacers breathing fire, Gill just survives a DRS call.

20/3

That's exactly why we need good batsmen at numbers 5/6/7.

Here's my train of thought: Rohit struggles against left arm pace are well known and if you watch Gill closely, his set up is more for playing off the backfoot. This was exploited by Anderson in the one off test and also by Jamieson in the previous WTC final. Pujara & Kohli too are hit and miss in English conditions. Shreyas even if fit is too weak against swing and bounce.

So with a brittle top order, I'd rather take KL Rahul with a few months to prepare, rather than KS Bharat.

Meanwhile, we are seeing glimpses of the WTC final in the 1st ODI. With the ball swinging just a bit, Starc has already made our top order look like fools and we are 20/3

I actually don't mind it. I'm rooting for KL to win this game for us.

At the start of this match all the experts were harping about how good a batting wicket this is. Well, all that jibber jabber fall flat with batsmen struggling against pace.

However it is KL's day. He was great behind the stumps and now carried the team home with the bat. One he reached his 50, has been going bang bang. Who would have thought. :D

Edit:
This meme is going to go viral nowrl:

When everyone's eye on the match or on KL he fumbles. He just plays when least expected of him. Culprit will be half of his mindset and rest half goes to the stupid idiotic commentators going bla bla over money paid to them. Remember one student in our school where teacher praises him and he fumbles due to unnecessary attention. If these commentators shut their praises KL can be 'tried' as WK batsman in ODIs.

The man on the right :p


Only Rajnikant can make even KL Rahul win us a match!!!!!

India 54/5 in the second ODI Vs Australia, the old Indian batting weakness outside off stump is back with a bang!

I think 50 overs need to be scrapped, one players don't have the temprament left to bat out that long, second as viewer it is just too long. T20 is the fuure and makes sense to invest in that whole heartedly.

On the other hand the Indian batting is just not in shape in current form and set of players, I shudder to think what will happen in WTC final in front of Australian pace battery. While we also have good pace bowlers, our batting currently will be no match.

What a hammering, and World Cup is just 6 months away and this is pretty much our first choice team, future looks bleak.

50 overs a side ODI did not even last 40 overs!

Pathetic performance from the Indians. Well played Australia.