Sunday, February 27, 2011

Waddaaaa match !!!

The India England tie played on Feb 27 2011 in the 10th ICC 50-50 Cricket World Cup would be remembered for ages by cricket fans. It resembled a see-saw in its prime condition. India ? England ? Yes, no no ,Ooooooo , ahhhhhh, Oh no ,Crap ,Damn, it had everything ! On display was tremendous skill, will power, human emotions, crisis management and plain common sense. It would be a great advertisement case study as part of a management course. I want to highlight top 10 points / observations that I personally feel contributed to this match . Would love your thoughts to be appended to this in the form of comments:

10. Rain rain go away , come again another day - Exactly what happened! Both teams must offer their prayers to the rain gods.

9a. Pieterson - Caught and bold Munaf Patel - Both batsman and bowler flabbergasted ! Flicked it from a TV commentator.

9b. Bresnan - Muscularly built giant came in at the end and mesmerized the Indian batsmen with unplayable deliveries. Ended up with dream figures of 5/48. Well done mate!

8. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar - Its said that even babies begin to understand cricket when Tendulkar beings to bat! SRT at his best , a super duper 100 ,what more could the crowd ask for ?

7. Strauss stressed us out - Strauss played a blinder. Captain's knock. Superbly executed. Completely overshadowed Tendulkar .Its not often that the last one happens but it did today and Strauss deserves complete credit for that magical knock.

6. Caught but not out ! - Hey hello , "Howz that" ! None of that happened. Strauss was so calm that the Indians didn't want to stress even the umpire. Strauss was caught twice but no one could freaking hear the knicks and hence, no one appealed. Good lord, can we please give a repeater that repeats the sounds from the stump microphone so that the wicket keeper can follow sound patterns ??

5. Who belled Bell ? - Yuvi belled Bell. Bell was sure he was belled . Umpire wasn't . Entire India was. The only other exception was the 2.5meter adhering UDRS system that said Bell hadn't been belled. He then belled the indian bowlers till Zaheer finally belled him !

4. Piyush Chawla - I imagine he would say the following about his performance today - I started out well, replaced that Sreesanth, got bowling before Bhajji paaji , got Trott out when he began to look dangerous. I then bowled a lot of rubbish to Strauss saab and Bell sir , oh in my town also we have a big bell by the way. MSD sir then gave me the 49th over. I told him No no i don't want but he still gave and I didn't know where to bowl. I felt my head was turning and turning in circles when I thought the ball had to turn and turn. Somehow over was over. Later when I saw the scoreboard, I realised that English babus hit me for 2 sixes and I got one wicket. Do you know if I got the wicket with a straighter one or with a googly?

3. Power plays are killer plays especially when you have Zaheer - Dhoni was devoid of any more ideas when Strauss called for the Power play. Fielders were forced to come in and ding dong , everything changed!!! England didn't know what to do. Zaheer knew exactly what to do! The entire field setting did the trick!

2. SBS - If you were wondering if this was a brand,then you're wrong. It stands for Swann, Bresnan and Shehzad - who smashed 3 sixes , scored 28 of the 29 runs in the last 2 overs. Indian tailenders were pathetic. More of that in point 1 !

1. 338/9 to 339 all out to 338 all out - 50th over, 5th ball - last 2 batsmen at the crease. What do you do ? Try and steal a couple of singles and/or slog . Zaheer hit the ball to mid wicket, and set off for what looked like a single . But then the madness set in . Insane running followed and Zaheer was out! Beats me why they attempted 2 runs . Wait wait wait! Wasn't over. The shocker followed . The umpire at square leg signaled that the first run was short.The only person who could have done that was Munaf Patel. Patelji , well done!

Anyway, the final result Tie was probably the best result . Thankfully this was not a semi final like the one between South Africa and Australia in the 99' World Cup where one of the teams there had to be eliminated! Kudos to a fan , wait for it , tastic match!

5 comments:

Pulkit Midha said...

u are improving dude!

Ranjan said...

@pmid - thank you sir... very kind of you

Aks said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Aks said...

Like this one match on Sunday wasn't enough.... another fantastic contest today! Like someone said - all World Cup matches should be held in Bangalore :D

Ranjan said...

Totally..... Kudos to kumble and team and the great city of Bangalore or Bengaluru !!