Friday, February 26, 2010

South Africa can hope to win the last one dayer

The series between India and South Africa is the one between the number two team and the number three team in one day cricket. But, if the series is given a deeper look at, this is not evident from any angles. South Africa are found playing cricket as though they are legally committed to it. There is no sense of seriousness of any sort from the South African players. South Africa should have won the first one dayer played at Jaipur when none of the batsmen played upto the mark and left it to the tail end batsmen who can bowl a yorker but not play one.

South Africa had to rely upon the number 8 and 9 batsmen in Parnell and Steyn who were comparatively better than Mark Boucher, Petersen and Albie Morkel who got out scoring single digit scores. And in the second one dayer, South Africa lost it the moment a score of 401 was out up on the board which is needless to be said. Luckily, South Africa crossed the 200 run mark. But, this time the South Africans need not fear defeat and can consider themselves lucky enough when they will not be bowling to either Sachin Tendulkar or Virender Sehwag in the 3rd ODI scheduled at Ahmedabad.

The Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has decided to rest the aforementioned batsmen for the inconsequential match scheduled in Ahmedabad tomorrow. Instead, Dhoni will be playing some new faces like Abhimanyu Mithun, Rohith Sharma and Murali Vijay who are supposed to just get some international exposure in the match against South Africa. One can see the South Africans making fools out of them every time they rejoice during the fall of an Indian wicket without realizing the intention behind Dhoni playing the 3rd one dayer. However, the opposite of the same is not welcome by anyone when one keeps the smiles off the ground.

However, there will be batsmen like Yousuf Pathan, Dinesh Karthik, Rohith Sharma and Dhoni himself who can prove something with the bat. Dinesh Karthik was no less when he came to batting in the 2nd one dayer when he scored 79 runs aided with three fulltoss hits to the fence and one need not be reminded specially regarding Rohith Sharma who belted the South African bowling in the inaugural edition of the T20 world cup held at South Africa and flopped their chances of making it to the semis of the same in 2007. Whatever, if South Africa fail to win the 3rd ODI despite all these chances given by Dhoni, I wish they appeal to the ICC to include them in the list of minnows.

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