Re: India/Pakistan series - Daily Diary
Rahul's review of Fifth One Day International:
It took sometime to get down and write this, may be cause myself was too confused with what happened in this series and in fifth One Day.
Indian fans were looking for records after fourth one day win. We didn’t remember when India did beat Pakistan three times in row. Than came the record that this is largest winning streak India ever had that is four matches in row. That’s for records, though when you have batting lineup of Tendulkar, Sehwag, Dravid, Dhoni, Yuvraj, Pathan supported by Kaif, and Raina and you got to chase four times in a row that makes life easier.
I had made two points in last match’s review“India seems to be getting clinical in approach and it will be difficult to unsettle them unless one of Pakistan’s talented players play an Afridi like inning.”
“SreeSanth had three catches dropped on his bowling. I hope team management will take this in to account and give him another chance a good haul of wickets from him could be round the corner.”
Both came true in this match. SreeSanth finally found his wickets, and India did just remained as clinical as they have been run chases.
Match started again with Inzy losing the toss and Rahul Dravid promptly put Pakistan in fully assured of chasing capabilities of his team. Pakistan did bat cautiously and regular loss of wickets assured that they weren’t running away. Innings from Younis proved that he should be put in at number three in both forms of games and his assault in final over clearly indicate his abilities to hit the ball hard when required. Though there was a short cameo from Razaaq, for me there were only he and Younis batted with some purpose. Somebody should realize that Yousuf can’t think and despite all his skills and should be treated as one that needs constant talking to keep him in right frame of mind. SreeSanth and others kept the bowling tight and did provide some variation, and with Indian pace attack taking wickets with bouncers was a refreshing change. The score of 286 was challenging but achievable.
India batted with utmost caution with Dravid literally batting as he is batting to reduce the margin of defeat rather than winning. Though when you look at Kaif (with two failures behind him), Raina to be followed by Powar and the bowling attack, it looks like that there was strategy to take team closer to the total followed by final assault. If that was the strategy, it was executed to perfection. I don’t want to take ream of paper praising the innings of Yuvraj and sheer brutality of Dhoni in this match.
What is significant is the consistency of these two, there was clearly reverse swing in some balls. There was ball keeping low. Still we had these innings is the most important part for Indian fans.
For Pakistan this was absolute low after a great test win, the bright points were surely Shoaib, Younis and Asif. This isn’t a great thing for Pakistan after winning two under 19 worldcups, the last one 2 years back. When are these under 19 men graduating to next level. PCB better gets its act together.
From Indian board all its followers will ask for is not to bring Ganguly back if he can shake the apple cart. May be we should get back Jadeja (He scored highest runs in this Ranji season). Though a batting lineup of Sehwag, Tendulkar, Dravid, Yuvraj, Kaif, Raina, Dhoni, Pathan, is already formidable enough. The bowling attack looked good in OneDays, though all Indian fans will keep the comments reserved till we see more from these youngsters.