The Cricket Thread

[snaronikar]

Well, well well. No takers for this thread today till now.

Indians have got themselves a target of 240 now. Will they do it? Or again the top order will crumbles like previous matches? and our middle order...ummm. Lets wait and see.

Pathan today gave too many runs. Hope he makes up with his batting.

[normally_crazy]

guys,

I have no access to televison. Can some one tell me whether the injury on Ishaant's finger is serious ?

And I have my fingers crossed - we have this nasty habit of making small totals look much bigger than they actually are.

Go India Go - Chak De.

[faithless_1984]

Go India Go - Chak De.

Chak Dia.!!!




India win by 6 wickets.!

[normally_crazy]

Yipppeeee !!!

Master class from the old genius after a loooooonnng time and a very very good knock by Rohit Sharma. And we have rubbed the Aussie noses hard in the ground.

Will some one post here - what Ponting says ? I am at work now !! :(

EDIT - The Man of the Tournament (for me) Dhoni hit the winning shot. Great.

[Surprise]

Here's the Man of the Match, Tendulkar. "It was a terrific effort by the whole team. Rohit Sharma really batted well, full credit to him. He has a terrific head on his shoulders, he's calm and composed, and today I batted with him for the first time for such a long time.

"It was important today that the second half of the game we played well and that's what we did." He's got a groin strain. "The niggle has been there for a while. It's wonderful that I'm still able to get out in the middle and score some runs." Indeed it is.

Now here's Dhoni. "It was a good track to bat on. We got the wickets, that really put the brakes on the Aussie innings in the middle overs. The wicket was very exploited by Harbhajan and Piyush Chawla."

Ishant has done something to his blood vessel, he says, so there will be an update soon on that.

"It's always a pleasure to see him bat the way he batted," he says of guess who, yes Tendulkar. "He was batting well, running well, he carries the youngsters. If he is there in the middle then you won't have too much of trouble chasing whatever you're chasing. The whole team enjoyed the innings, but it's important to keep in mind too that games are yet to come."

Here's Ponting. "We were probably 20 or 30 runs short. The wicket held together really well. Another sloppy performance, not only from our batters but I thought our bowlers bowled as badly as they have all series. A good batting effort from Sachin, though.

On to Brisbane where "it's just about getting our heads right, a couple of the guys are disappointed with the way they got out."

It was a master class innings from Sachin Tendulkar. Thanks for him making my Sunday entertaining.

[rsjaurr]

Well done India.
This Indian team is giving Aussies some really hard punches even outside boxing ring,so why enter in a ring.

After loooong time Sachin played a innings which i would rank his 3rd best after his back to back 2 against same team in Sharjah way back in april 97.Contrary to his previous innings while chasing where he always seemed to be in hurry,here he was calm and looked to score most of time which probably made the difference.

What to talk about Rohit,i always had great faith in his ability since he made his debut.His innings was today of even better quality than Sachin.

BTW when Rohit was very close to being run out twice,probably his age made the diference.Saurav would have been run out both time and that could have made the difference b/w win and defeat.

3cheers for Bhajji to for getting wickets of his two best friends.

[LLL]

nice win...apart from bhajji, even shaz threw some punches on ian chappell...

[DieselFan]

I think the MOM was Rohit sharma. The youngster showed great maturity and patience.

[karanraheja]

Finally finally here s a team that can beat the Aussies. I just hope we win the next match !! & i wish i could go near Ponting, Hayden & Symonds & show them the finger...sorry for being offensive but thats what they deserve!

[pmbabu]

Wow, that was a fantastic win! Keep up the good work, Dhoni and his team. Let us now win at Brisbane and claim the title!

For the record, the erstwhile Indian teams have won exactly two ODI matches against Australia, in Australia.

This young blooded Indian team has already won two such matches in this series alone, one of them being the FINALS. Rohit, Ishant, Gambhir and to some extent Praveen have proved their mettle and have shown that they belong to the big stage, big time! So much for the criticism poured on the team selection as to how a young and untested bunch of lambs were being fed to the hungry Australian monsters.

Well, it is credit to Sachin, for he finally brought his innings of the series in the FINALS and scored a magnificent century also staying till the end. I felt it was fitting that Dhoni hit the winning runs what with fantastic team selections that he has done backing up his instincts all this series.

(I wonder why Ravi Shastri while understandably going ga-ga over SRT's century, keeps saying he has nothing to prove to his critics. On that account, can we pick Sunny Gavaskar? He too obviously has nothing to prove after all those runs that he scored? Anyways, let us cherish today's win for now!)

[snaronikar]

No doubt today's was a fantastic win.

Equally important is that this should not go to the young peoples head. Otherwise, it will be a sorry tale in the balance 2 matches. Aussies are known to come hard on the balance matches and we should keep ourselves calm and win any one of the 2 matches.

[rsjaurr]

Originally Posted by pmbabu

For the record, the erstwhile Indian teams have won exactly two ODI matches against Australia, in Australia.

This young blooded Indian team has already won two such matches in this series alone,

Critics should now keep their mouth ..enough is enough.

And how come there are't enough posts while we could have seen many more had India lost today's match.


Spare a though for poor hocky team.They also won 7-0 against Russia in a Olympic qualifier,a tournament which they need to win to qualify for olympics.

[snaronikar]

BTW, what happened to U-19 WC finals today? Anybody got an idea?

EDIT: Sorry, Guys. Just saw the TV and India won the U-19 WC. Congrats to our boys..cheers:

[pmbabu]

Originally Posted by snaronikar

Just saw the TV and India won the U-19 WC. Congrats to our boys..cheers:

Oh man, you should have seen the celebrations. They were wild, very wild and understandably so. And Dav Whatmore (the U-19 coach) was jumping like a kid.

It was a run a ball chase for SA after the rain interruption, but our boys held their nerves amid some dropped catches and missed stumping chances to emerge victorious.

Now, we have won 2 WCs in the last 1 year, the T20 WC and now the U-19 WC. Winning the CB Series in Australia will be a fine feather in the cap.

Imagine the money that all these victories will be bringing to these lads! You may not sleep then, having made the wrong choice in your career ;-)

[pmbabu]

I was just checking the ICC ranking table in the following link and was startled (not by the rankings) at the number of matches India have played.

India has played the most number of ODI matches - 55 of them in all. SL comes second with 44 matches. In tests, India as 38 of them (second only to England who have played 40 each of Tests and ODIs). Overall, India alone seems to be playing hell a lot of matches.

Will this mad scheduling ever stop? Why then will not our fast bowlers break down every now and then.

ICC - Cricket Rankings

BTW, India is on close heels to become the 3rd ranked team in the ODIs if we can beat Australia once again in the CB series. NZ currently ranks 3rd with 113 points and India are at 112 points.

Australia might lose their No.1 position too. They now have 129 points and SA are 127 - dangerously close!