Paper tigers

Half time - India vs South Africa - India's Score - 296 all out

Someone who hasn't seen this would say "Wow! Awesome performance" but the fans who probably saw them collapse in the manner they did would be very angry, very irritated and deeply shocked !

It was almost like Indian cricket team of 90s and 2000s - Once Sachin falls, every one else follows. If Sachin ever told his team to follow him , he never ever meant that they should follow him back to the pavilion and at the pace at which they did.

To imagine that they were 267/1 and lost their last 9 wickets for 29 runs, is just worse than club cricket. 0 3 1 0 0 0 were some of the scores that our Indian batsmen had against their names on the scoreboard. Our cricketers forgot the concept of singles! So to remind all of us , if you touch the ball with your bat and run across to the other end from where the bowler just bowled (and the nonstriker runs to your end provided you are not caught) , then 1 run is added to your score! If you touch the ball with other body parts and run across, you still get one run (if you are not LBW etc etc).

Many proverbs/phrases were probably made just for the Indian team , an example being "falling like nine pins".

By the way, if someone asked you who is the best bowler of the world cup you must (MUST) tell them that its the batting powerplay.

Last but not the least, a big salute to Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. An amazing amazing knock with those trademark straight drives , flicks, cuts, sixes !!! The guys in the dressing room were posing when he was batting and even seemed like they wanted to bat. No one even tried to bat after that! My teacher once said "Paper tigers" with reference to students' writing exams but that quote is so very apt for our batting today! So paper tigers, will you turn out to be bowling and fielding tigers later today ?

Well the game is over and South Africa fought and fought till they won. Hitherto not so good cricketers come good against India and Peterson showed just that right at the end.

India were 10-15 runs short thanks to their woeful batting. Dhoni's luck finally ran out. Maybe Bhajji who had a fabulous day getting the crucial wickets of Amla, AB Deviliers and Duminy, should have bowled the last over . Who knows what would have happened ? Bowling a intoxicated looking Nehra in the last over was in hindsight, a massive mistake. The fielding surprisingly was pretty decent but as they say in life , you pay for your deeds and India did on the cricket field for their miserable collapse. India probably didn't deserve to win today. As Dhoni summarized in his post match conference - "Play for the country , not for the crowds"! As a result, no one has qualified for the quarter finals from this group !!!

Last point - Guys, please win when Tendulkar scores a century :P