A Win, A Loss and A Win !

The Latest on Indian Tour of Australia

That’s what Indian Cricket team’s scorecard reads after the last 3 matches played in Australia. Consistency is what seems to be missing not just with the team performance but also with the team selection. The latest thing to make news is Indian team’s rotation policy. Resting key players when they are most demanded! Now that sure is a great way to gain solid and good consistent performance.

Wait there is another reason substantiating the rotation policy, which I read in papers. The next World Cup will be held in Australia, so Indian team is testing out its bench strength as they want to ensure the young boys get a chance to acclimatize to these conditions. Well sure talk about experimenting when we have just been whitewashed in a test series about a week back or so.

Coming back to – “A Win, A Loss and A Win” story of Indian performance. It looked like Indians would continue their string of defeat after being defeated heavily against Australia, in the first T20 game. However Indians won the second T20 game at Melbourne by 8 wickets. They were successful in squaring the T20 series 1-1. Thanks to some brilliant fielding and bowling performance by Indian players in the second T20 game.

Indian team really put up some brilliant performance in the field, specially the fielding, no wonder there were 4 run outs. Kudos to Ravindra jadeja for his excellent bowling and fielding! The next thing you know the next day the kid makes big news in IPL 5 auction. CSK buy Ravindra Jadeja for - two million dollar in tie breaker and there you have ladies and gentlemen IPL’s fifth and latest two million dollar man!

The ODI Tri-Series  ~ India-Australia-Sri Lanka

Just when I thought Indians are back to the winning ways, two days later on 5^th Feb 2012 Indians lose again at MCG. Australia won by 65 runs in what looked like a one sided contest. Australia scored 216/5 in 32 over. The match was effected by heavy rain and hence over(s) had to be reduced. Indian’s failed again and seem to have choked under pressure and where all out for 151 in the 30^th over.

Indians again came back strongly in the 2^nd ODI which was against Sri Lanka. The pitch at W.A.C.A is known to be a favourite for pace bowlers. However Dhoni played smart and went in with 3 pace bowlers and 2 spin bowlers. It sure came in handy and both the spin bowlers Ashwin and Jadeja proved to be as effective as Vinay and Zaheer the pace bowlers Dhoni picked. Although Lankans did clobber Praveen Kumar’s bowling. In the end Sri Lanka was restricted to a score of 233/8 in allotted 50 over. Indian batsmen played sensibly to win the match by 4 wickets and 20 balls to spare.

Now this is a tri-series and it’s going to be a long one. Indian’s will have 8 games in all to play in this series. Four games each against Australia and Sri Lanka. The top two teams amongst the three will make it to the best of the 3 finals. India will now face Australia in their next game to be played at Adelaide on 12^th Feb 2012.