My Musings on Life, Poetry and Short Stories

Those who watched the match between England and Bangladesh on Friday were in for a treat! Boy! it was full of twists and turns and contained a few valuable lessons for our not so impressive cricket team. Determined to restrict England to a modest total, which Bangladesh direly needed to have any chance of remaining in the hunt, the bowlers and fielders of Bangladesh performed the task to perfection. At times the celebrated English team looked so helpless against the minnows that they were on the defensive. Sensing vulnerability, Bangladesh pressed home the advantage and restricted the English team to 225. Having achieved their primary objective, the minnows set about their further plan of action in such style and manner that the viewers witnessed a fabulous batting performance that created doubts as to who were the "minnows". Their inexperience did show up in the hasty attempts they made to keep the score board ticking resulting in some runouts and the tumble of 4 quick wickets. However it is the manner in which they came back into the game with the resilience, composure, determination and disciplined performance that provided a few lessons to every other team. Boy, did Shafiul Islam and Mahamudullah paint an exqisite picture on the World Cup Cricket canvas with such painstaking effort. Win or Lose, their triumph on the fateful Friday will remain etched on our memories for a very long time.

As I had mentioned earlier, the Indian team continues to languish in the bowling & fielding departments of the game as evidenced by the manner in which they struggled to record their win against minnows like Ireland, Netherlands and Bangladesh (If you dare to call them so!). Dhoni’s  continued persistence with Piyush Chawla instead of trying Ashwin is beginning to worry loyal Indian supporters. Even the mighty Tendulkar is finding it difficult to play a long innings, which is over due. The match against South Africa will be a lot more difficult than the previous matches and I hope MSD marshals his resources and men to put up a better show than the four earlier outings! Sachin and Shewag should bat with a lot of composure and stay long enough to ensure victory. Otherwise this may well be the Requiem for the “Burial of our World Cup Dreams”. Wishing our team all the very best for this crucial match.

As predicted in my earlier post, given below, Dhoni needed to rev up the fielding department and some fine tuning of the Bowling skills prior to facing England. Alas, it was not done and the result was an excruciating "Tie" despite a very strong score of over 300. Tendulkar crafted his yet another beautiful TON on the International cricket canvas ably supported by the belingerent team mates Schewag and Yuvaraj. The complacent bowling and fielding lapses that followed enabled Strauss and Pieterson to hammer the bowling at will!. When it looked as if they were cruising towards victory at ease, Zaheer's exquisite magic of a spell hit the English juggernaut like a ton of bricks and made them struggle to save the game. Again when India's victory was almost certain, the unimaginative bowling of Munaf Patel failed to clinch the issue. He lacked the tenacity shown by his little colleague Piyush Chawla, who despite being hammered by the batsman kept his cool and clean bowled him with a beauty of a Leg Break!. I hope Dhoni corrects his approach and show the grit and determination of the erstwhile super leader that he was earlier and bring home the World Cup. Good Luck.