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 3^rd 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 3^rd 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 2^nd 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 3^rd ODI despite all these chances given by Dhoni, I wish they appeal to the ICC to include them in the list of minnows.

If not for Sachin's 100...?

The moment the South African captain Graeme Smith imposed follow-on, the game was as good as over. The only way India could save some face in the match would have been to avoid an innings defeat, which unfortunately didn't happen. The only question to be answered was by how many runs would South Africa end up victorious? However, one thing that could be noted from the 4^th day's play is that Mahendra Singh Dhoni did everything he could do, so that no fingers point towards him at the end of the day. Dhoni spent almost 2 and a half hours at the crease before he was forced to leave the field by Paul Harris.

An outlook upon the same suggests that Dhoni tried hard to take the innings as far as possible, which could only be an eye wash and nothing else. Dhoni had the company of Sachin Tendulkar at the other end, who took the entire responsibility of the Indian batting as long as he was on the crease. The only thing Dhoni had to do was to just stay there, which Dhoni had no problems in doing. This was evident from the way Dhoni got out after putting up a partnership of just 17 runs after Sachin got out. Sachin got out when the scoreboard read 192 and the scoreboard read 209 by the time Dhoni made his way back.

It was Sachin's presence on the crease that made someone like Murali Vijay bat for more than 2 hours and score 32 runs. Had it not been for Sachin, India's total would have been unimaginable. Still, the best part of the match was that an innings defeat for India went unavoided. I have in the past as well written about India's position in international test cricket, which was evident from their performance against Bangladesh and once again proved in the game against South Africa. Even the number 9 team-Bangladesh never had such a bad defeat like India when it faced India a couple of weeks back.

The pitch was suitable for batting, which was evident on day 1 when South Africa lost just 2 wickets and put up a 200+ run partnership, that later went on to be a 300+ one. A selfless decision from the South African captain must be noted when he didn't not wait for Hashim Amla to score a probable triple hundred or get out, like most captains on earth do. The only positives for team India would be that they scored 319 runs in the 2^nd innings which was more than the 233 that they scored in their first. More than 3 Indian batsmen scored double digit scores in the 2^nd innings. But, all these was never a match for the Proteas atleast in Nagpur.