Cricket Thread III

[Naresh]

<b>Mudy Ji :</b>

<b>It breaks my Heart of see that the Yevil Yindian Yindoo Criket Team went to the lowest Nadir by Denying Pakistan even a consolation win!</b>

<b>We are not amused Mr Woolmer!</b>

<b>The five-match One-Day International series between Pakistan and India has ended <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>with India denying Pakistan even a consolation win in the final ODI at Karachi last Sunday.</span> It was India’s fourth successive win after they lost the first match to Pakistan by seven runs under the D/L method.</b> The Indian camp should be happy because they have managed to beat a side that was brimming with confidence after having defeated the Ashes-winning England side just a month before the Indians arrived for a full tour of Pakistan. What went wrong between then and now?

Coach Bob Woolmer says “in sports sometimes things go wrong in big bundles”. He is bang on target on that one at least. But why and how? Those are the questions that need to be answered and neither coach Woolmer nor skipper Inzamam ul Haq has answered them even as both have accepted that “India outplayed Pakistan”. Now that is a truism. Did this rough patch appear for no obvious reason and bids for a place in the great, unsolved mysteries of the universe or can we find the law of causality at work here? If it is the former then we can do nothing but wait for the next epiphany for Pakistan; if it is the latter — and we do hope this to be the case — then the coach and skipper need to tell us how the élan on display against England gave way to drooping shoulders against India.

Just days ago Australia bounced back after losing the first ODI in the three-match final against Sri Lanka. That’s the sign of a great team. In our case we threw away four successive matches after winning the first. Were we getting bored of winning? Even against India, after the two drawn matches, we produced a winning combination of batting and bowling to clinch the Test series. It is all very well to say that we lost the ODI series because of poor batting, bowling and fielding. But how does a team on a winning spree manage to reverse its fortunes? Surely it must require some hard work.

Coach Woolmer also produced another gem: “We have to look hard at our batting, bowling and fielding and I am glad that it has happened now so that we can do something about it before this time next year.” Glad that this happened? We are not amused. This is a team that, before this flop, had taken England to the cleaners. Now it needs to look hard at its batting, bowling and fielding. Does that leave out any department of the game? Why was nothing done, if everything is so wrong in all departments, before this debacle?

Meanwhile, even as our national team was being thrashed in Karachi, further south in Sri Lanka our Under-19 team managed to successfully defend a low total of 109, dismissing India for 71 runs and retaining the Junior Cricket World Cup title. Earlier, Pakistan had defeated Australia to reach the finals. <b>There is something to cheer about, after all.</b>*

Cheers <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo-->