Gautam GAmbhir was today handed a one match suspension over alleged inidence of elbowing of Shane Watson. I have no problems with that but the sad part is Shane Watson was only fined 10% of his match fee. We all saw how Watson flung his elbow out when Gambhir was running past him. When Gambhir retaliated Watson was as surprised as anything. Indians were not supposed to retaliate he always thought.
Sledging and mental disintegration was an Australian thing around a year back. When Australia won the one day championship in India in September 2007, Ricky Ponting said that the attitude of Indian Players will change When they tour Australia in Dec 2007 and then they would find out how tough these Indians really were. They found that out all right. They won the test series 2-1 narrowly (If you count the Sydney test) lost their reputation and the One day series after that.
If any of us watched the IPL matches, Watson always had a word to say to even the lesser batsmen, He would get hit for a four, put in a bouncer next ball and would feel happy about it. But when Gambhir and Laxman were flaying him all over the park he had nothing but his hand to stick out.
ICC is now worried that the game is going too arrogant and they must shell out punishments. Again I agree with it but why the double standards.
Australian bowlers were having verbals with even VVS Laxman, the mildest guy in the Indian team, he had to silence them with his bat remaining unbeaten in both the innings; but Gambhir made a gesture both with his bat and elbow. Next time every bowler would think twice before sticking his hand out to a batsman attempting a run.
Anil Kumble decides to retire from international cricket today after a glorious carrier startng from 1992 in England. The decision was sudden and unexpected, It was not something he had talked about before and certainly not in the middle of a series.
He might have been speculating on continuing even after the series had he done well. He has not been a match winner for India for a couple of series now. The hand injury and emergence of Amit MIshra as a quality leg spinner maybe has a part to play in deciding his early retirement.
It has been a great carrier for him. In the late 90s and early 2000s he along with Sachin tendulkar were the only players capable of winning matches for India. India lost badly when they failed.
Despite the heroics of Srilankan Spinners,Sehwag and Harbhjan helped India win the 2nd test at Galle.
Winning the toss was important as it would be in the 3rd test at SSC. The Indian seamers did a commendable job in the 2nd innings taking 4 wickets between them and providing early breakthroughs.
Tendulkar, Laxman, Dravid and Ganguly are still to fire , I think batting 1st on the placid SSC wicket will help them.
As for the Srilankans they lacked application in batting and looked as vulnerable to pace as India did to spin.The 3rd test has great prospects for us and after a long time an Indian series in Lanka looks exciting.
Credit goes to Harbhajan Singh for the way he came back in the 2nd test; Its not easy to sit out for a long time, come back and perform like the way he did.
As i had predicted or rather feared, Ajanta Mendis proves to be a mystery bowler and most of the batsmen have no clue about his unorthodox action. He took 6 wickets in the 1st innings and most of the batsmen couldnt go into double figures. He bowls the offcutter, legspin, googly and the straighter one with the same action and is very hard to pick.Only Sehwag seems to have a clue against him.
After the Asia cup loss Kumble said experienced players like Dravid and Laxman will easily sort him out but Dravid has been out to him three times in as many innings.
Indians are still in the game mainly due to two superb individual performances from Sehwag and Harbhajan otherwise they dont really have anything to cheer about.
Asia Cup is over and the Indian team is now going to sri Lanka. The unimitable star of the Asia Cup was Ajanta Mendis.This was the 1st time I saw him bowl and that was some phenomenal stuff
Indians tried to dominate him from the start and lost virender Sehwag on the 2nd bowl of his first over when indians were going at 8 uns/over. That was the sign of things to come and five more indin wickets perished scoring only 9 more runs.
In view of this bowler, the srilankan series assumes greater proportions for me. The past sri lankan series have all been boring draws or wins by large margin.
Indians come here after relative success in the test matches in Australia but playing Muralidharan and Mendis will not be easy on any turf.
Dhoni has decided to opt out of the series, That’s fair enough and it gives Prthiv patel one more chance at the international level.
Tendulkar, Laxman, Dravid and Ganguly are back for the tests after the IPL stint and we’ll have to wait and watch how they handle the Sri lankan bowling attack
Asia Cup is over and the Indian team is now going to sri Lanka. The unimitable star of the Asia Cup was Ajanta Mendis.This was the 1st time I saw him bowl and that was some phenomenal stuff