Dec 13 2008
Proving Me Wrong Ha?
Well..if one happened to read the post which I posted yesterday, regarding the first test between India and England, I had written about the points which meant to highlight India’s upper hand in the series as compared to England. But, when I saw the second day’s play, and the Indian batting in particular, it just made me think as to how could have I done that? Though it was a guess work, I really laughed at myself for making such stupid guesses. Even the pitch didn’t seem to behave the way I had predicted it to be.I regret that the pitch was a belter. I now congratulate team England for earning their runs hard.For a moment it was like as though I had forgotten that both the teams have come to play cricket here, rather than India alone.
Finally, India’s run at home is looking like coming to an end. And England can be now thought of to have gone back to the days in 2005, when they lifted the Ashes that year after 20 long years. Hope that even this guess doesn’t come out to be false. I liked the way England fought fire with fire. The way they handled the top six Indian batsmen, none of them being a nightwatchman firmly in their grips. And before that, I mean in their batting, from where Strauss had left on day 1, went on smoothly, though Andrew Flintoff was not upto the mark and England failed to cross their target of putting up atleast 350 runs on the board.
Now, the only hope for the Indians being Mahendra Singh Dhoni. I seriously welcome such matches, though being an Indian, a match which provides colour and the thrill, for which it is being played is always welcome. And even the rain gods didn’tseem to take away the match from us, that too which I had predicted earlier. So, I really beg your padorn for the same. The error is seriously regretted. The match is proving to give the thrill that even the recently concluded Border-Gavaskar trophy didn’t. Now, I feel that this first test match is worth the wait for. An almost a month long wait for some cricketing action was really worth of it.
Irrespective of the match result, a good performance that would always remain in the memory of cricket fans is a perfect match. And England have done just that. Now, it is that England have justified themselves for having players like Andrew Flintoff, Kevin Pietersen and others. Lack of practice for the England team didn’t mean mushfor them, nor did the Indian players extract much out of the practice and the home team advantage what they got. I wish the remaining three days of the test match goes off smoothly, with both teams fighting the opposition with fire. Thank you England for giving us such a great match to watch. Thank you so much.
