India deserved to win

After India's one run win against South Africa yesterday at Jaipur, some questions to be answered for team India are: Should India feel happy for making it to the records for the narrowest margin of victory on one dayers, which was the 3^rd time with India being at the delivering and and the 2^nd time with the Proteas being at the receiving end? Should Sreesanth feel happy about his comeback not only to international cricket but also in the match, when at one stage he was found giving away 17 rpo and at the end was the man who can be rather called as the architect of India's 1 run victory?

In the recent past as far as India is concerned, they have faced Sri Lanka, that was followed by a tri series involving Sri Lanka once again & Bangladesh as the third team. Then it is the ongoing one day series against South Africa which was set up by the BCCI to rather challenge the Proteas to strip India of the world number 1 rankings if they could do so. With India having seen enough of Sri Lanka in the past 2 years or so, the next best thing that could be worth looking forward to would have been nothing but the series against South Africa.

And, with the result of the 1^st one dayer well in front of us, the caliber what India enjoys in today's cricket can well be guessed. It was indeed a good toss that was won by Graeme Smith and a good call as well when he put the Indians into bat first. Chasing a decent total would not have been tough had the top and middle order South African batsmen kept up to the asking rate. If not for Sachin Tendulkar, all Indian batsmen players who took to the crease came out scoring double figures. Of course, Sreesanth didn't but, Sreesanth never took to the batting crease.

Nothing could be as worse as getting belted on their own pitch in front of their own people especially when the expectations from the crowd is enormous. And India were fortunate to win the match despite some late blastings from Parnell and Steyn. A little bit of contribution, which need not have been necessarily been more than 2 runs from de Villiers, Petersen and Morkel (who scored single digit scores being known batsmen) could have seen South Africa through. A number 10 batsman in Steyn was the batsman who hit the maximum number of sixes in the match. But still, I say that India did deserve to win the match by no matter what the margin was.