First Match - Abandoned
Second Match - India Beat West Indies by 105 runs.
Third Match - India Beat West Indies by 93 runs.
Fourth Match - Hmm… I don’t really want to talk about it.
Oh well.. Here goes. It was a rather embarrassing defeat. The series looked very much in the kitty when India had to chase 190 runs. The faithful Indian Fans probably even started celebrating. Even though the first three wickets fell rather early, Rahane stuck in there and hit 60 runs to pave what looked like a really short road to victory. And then came Dhoni. No one would have even considered the chance of a defeat. Not even a pessimist.
Time moved slowly after that. Or at least Dhoni did. He batted and batted and batted. Remember that time Sunny Gavaskar scored a 174-ball 36 runs? It was 1975 all over again. Dhoni’s innings were just as excruciatingly painful. It would have been worth it had India won of course. India fell short of the target and West Indies won by 11 runs. They were probably surprised too. Their bowling was good though.
Time moved slowly after that. Or at least Dhoni did. He batted and batted and batted. Remember that time Sunny Gavaskar scored a 174-ball 36 runs? It was 1975 all over again. Dhoni’s innings were just as excruciatingly painful. It would have been worth it had India won of course. India fell short of the target and West Indies won by 11 runs. They were probably surprised too. Their bowling was good though.
Earlier, West Indies managed to score 189 runs, losing nine wickets in the process. They had to literally scramble for runs in the end. 35 was the highest individual score. The Indian bowlers did their bit with Umesh Yadav and Hardik Pandya taking three wickets each. Kuldeep Yadav took two.
India leads the series 2-1. The first was abandoned. While West Indies cannot win the series, they hope to draw it out. India sure would like to win the series to make up for the fourth ODI. Else, they are not likely to hear the end of it.
My lineup.
-Virat Kohli
-Ajinjya Rahane
-Kedar Jadhav
-Miguel Cummins
-Kuldeep Yadav
-Umesh Yadav
-Alzarri Joseph
-MS Dhoni
-Shai Hope
-Hardik Pandya
-Jason Holder
What do you think?
Indu
P.S. Please note that the above-expressed opinions are purely the Editor’s. We do not take responsibility, nor can we guarantee the performance of the players. All the best !!!
Clearly the wicket was not a belter - given that both teams struggled. But Dhoni has this tendency to leave too much to be done in the last few. When he was able to pull it off, it was well and good. But clearly he is not able to now a days. He needs to rework his plan for situations like this. The plan that worked for so long will not work any more.
ReplyDeleteProbably why he was asked to step down from captaincy. So that he could concentrate on his batting.
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