Day of the underdogs..

Visited the cricinfo website this evening at 5.40pm to see if the match between Eng and Netherlands( a football clash between the same teams would have been something else!) was over but what I saw was this : Netherlands - 228/3 , 45th over with Ryan Doeschate on 98. A pleasant surprise indeed. I imagined the crowd chanting "upset upset upset"! He soon reached 100 with a single and 4 overthrows , that also indicated England's poor fielding. The target for England was a pretty challenging 290+ score, that they acheived after several nervous moments during the chase.Mr Ryan Doeschate was again all over by snapping a couple of wickets. The crowd was firmly behind the underdogs but unfortunately they fell short by a few runs. It was sad to see the century man in orange sit down on the turf after such a fantastic performance with his hands on his head . Well, Doeschate - don't worry , even if the Dutch don't win , am sure you will get paid well in the IPL! ( He will be playing for KKR this season).

While watching the final minutes of the chase, I changed the channel and was surprised to see Roger Federer playing India's only hope on the tennis singles circuit - Somdev Devvarman . He was trailing 6-3,1-2 but I must say, that he played pretty well. A couple of forehands and volleys were excellent but as you saw more and more of the 2nd set, you felt that Federer was toying with Somdev, especially when he let go some of his trademark backhands. Inspite of that, Somdev showed a lot of confidence and fighting spirit in the way he performed against Roger. Liked the fact that he ran around chasing balls during rallies. How often do you see Indians do that on the tennis court against players of Fedex's caliber ?

Recently read that SD wanted to break into the top 50(not 100 - thank my fans - Sid/Gopal for pointing out that its not 100!) this year and going by what I saw today, am sure that ain't too far but if he has to move from the Challenger tournaments to the higher level tournaments, he has to improve a LOT on his overall game . He however won a lot of hearts ( primarily Mallu hearts since this was being played in Dubai!) with his performance!

Great to see people performing against all odds and even though, today they didn't come up trumps , someday they will!