A last smile on English faces

I have written in my last post regarding the way Western teams struggle on their tour to the sub-continent and England being one among them, their days of misery will soon start with the first ODI scheduled on 14^th of this month at the same venue where England have won two games on the trot against Hyderabad Associations XI with the second match having a huge margin of 253 runs. Needless to be said, there are no teasers for the team who have lost and I personally congratulate the Hyderabad Associations XI for sacrificing for a good cause by losing both the games.

There was absolutely no chance of the domestic team winning over an international team but, had England beaten Hyderabad Associations' XI without the services of Pietersen and co, one might have considered their guts before facing the real threat. There are hardly any chances of England grabbing even one game away from the Indians which will see the likes of Gambhir and Zaheer Khan making a comeback after they were ruled out of their previous tour to England. The match that happened yesterday would no doubt be cheered by the tourists who would be thinking of achieving a milestone here.

England have in the past done it against the West Indies when they won both series, one at home and the other away without losing a single test. But, India is no West Indies and no matter how bad the team has been, hardly any team from the West has been able to trouble India on their home soil. The only team that has been able to do so has been Pakistan and no one else. Of course, South Africa have tasted victory on Indian soil in the 90s when they were the favorites under the leadership of late Hansie Cronje.

Jonny Bairstow scored a quickfire 104 from just 53 balls which would have been a bowler's nightmare had it been in an international match. 7 bowlers from Hyderabad were looking helpless with most of the hits going out of the fence in one way or the other. With all that at stake, there was one bowler in Medhi Hassan who scalped 3 wickets out of the four that fell. In the end, England put up a better performance compared to their previous one and Hyderabad put up a more dismal performance by playing one over less than what they could manage in the previous game.