Sunday, June 20, 2010

Just another step towards victory

As I always say regarding whenever the West Indies go out there in the middle to take on the opposition, this time as well, the opponents namely South Africa did everything right and effortlessly to overcome the West Indies. Continuing from day before where the Proteas had left after the captain Graeme Smith notched up a century against a bowling squad that can just fill in the vacant places in the squad. With that being an old and an outdated issue, the point to be seen here is that Smith is found boasting victories only against West Indies and no other team in the world.

It is evident still the way the Proteas lost the second test on their tour to India in February early this year. In the second day of the second test against the West Indies, Smith and his team had another day on the field wherein they all were found doing was to continue the good work they had done on the first day's play. Meanwhile, it was Graeme Smith himself who came up with a century when he scored 132 day before yesterday to become the driving force for his team's to-be victory in the second test. Nothing special or creative in it.

The first step for the Proteas is a close being over when they piled up a total in excess of 500 by the end of half a day past the first day. All they have now got to do is to wait and see from the position where they field the way the West Indian batting crumbles in the days to come. However, if the West Indies' batting is seen in the hours that have collapsed yesterday, they are found to have as usual reduced the degree of humiliation by reducing the margin of defeat. In this case, the defeat may be on the 5th day or by a few runs less than what they had in their first test.

There was an individual score of an unbeaten 46 by the West Indian captain Chris Gayle which will not bring him the captain's knock in any way. And that is far from expectation and also far from deserving at the same time. One thing that can be seen from the South Africa's first innings is not only that there were three batsmen who scored centuries but also between them contributed as many as 377 runs out of 543 runs which happens to be close to 3/4th of the total. However, this cannot give a conclusion that the pitch was a batsman's paradise for, the opposition is West Indies. Likewise, Smith can experiment from the next test onwards after winning this one.

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