Another thriller by SA-WI

Well as I mentioned in a post a couple of days back regarding the thrillers in matches involving West Indies and South Africa, especially after their 1 run loss at the hands of the Proteas, here comes another exciting thriller if the newspapers are to be believed. And here as well, the match saw the West Indies batsmen putting up a decent score on the board when they ended their batting innings with 283 runs on the board. This total no matter was 17 runs less than what the South African batsmen had piled up and was 18 runs short of a victory.

But, as far as the West Indian batsmen are considered, the match would have given them much relief when they as usual reduced the margin of defeat and then also there was a batsman from the West Indies side who threatened to snatch the game from the Proteas when Sammy scored 58 runs from 24 balls at a strike rate of 241. This is rare in the West Indies side who can only gift their opposition or surrender meekly. Darren Sammy hit 6 hits out of the ground which was equal to the total number of sixes hit by anyone else from both the sides.

The match saw 12 sixes, out of which 6 were hit by Sammy alone as mentioned. The remaining contribution came from Chris Gayle and Dwayne Bravo who hit 1 and 2 sixes respectively. Then from the South African side, A B Devilliers hit one six and the new batsman who playing his second one dayer - David Miller hit two of them equalling the number hit by the West Indies' batsmen minus Darren Sammy. Once again Hashim Amla was awarded the man of the match this time rather deserving for his top score in the innings of 92 that included 7 fours though without any sixes.

This time the West Indian batsmen did what they were supposed to do in their last game at Antigua when they played 48 overs. This time the West Indies' innings lasted for one ball more than 48 overs but without any different result. And the West Indies captain didn't go in for 8 overs and insisted in bringing in just 7 of them. As mentioned earlier, the margin of defeat for the West Indies also was reduced to 17 runs as against the 66 run defeat they suffered a couple of days back. There were 3 batsmen from the WI side who returned with scores in excess of 50.

For more details here it is!

Ireland betters the West Indies

Needless to be said, it is not always the wins and losses that count in the game of cricket which was more so in the case of the match between the West Indies and Ireland. Though the West Indies won the match against Ireland by 6 wickets with the man of the match being awarded to the West Indian batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan, it was the Ireland team that took home much of the honors of the game. First of all, it was Ireland who were touring the Caribbean and do not enjoy the home team advantage like the West Indies team.

And then, the West Indies team needed the services of senior batsman - Sarwan to have a win. The West Indian batsmen though not losing wickets at regular intervals and by the end of the match not losing more than 4 wickets which is a decent approach, they had no reason to take the game until the penultimate over of the match when they scored the winning runs in the 44^th over. I think that the West Indies must be reminded that they are in an era where targets more than 300 are chased down with little effort and they must take the example of India who are found doing it repeatedly.

This was once again a needless encounter after the West Indies played the Canadian team a couple of days back. The Irish batsmen played their full quota of 50 overs and also there were two batsmen in Paul Stirling and Kevin O Brien who notched up half centuries for Ireland. They also crossed the 200 run mark unlike Canada who were all out for just 108. But, it is neither Canada's not Ireland's fault. It was interesting to see the Irish captain William Poterfield going in for 7 bowlers out of whom none of them bowled their complete quota of 10 overs.

Likewise, the West Indies captain Darren Sammy bought in just 5 overs to bowl the Irish batsmen out not before they played their complete quota of 50 overs a side. The West Indies team lost two of their in form batsmen namely Shivanarine Chanderapaul and Andre Fletcher with just one run on the board which was a sort of triumph for the Ireland team. One has to recall the fact that it does not make someone jump in joy whenever West Indies beats Ireland but, when it happens the other way round, it definitely makes news headlines. This was the chance for the young legs of the WI team to showcase thei talent and may be they were doing exactly that.

6 Ducks from the winning side

Well West Indies' loss in the recently concluded ODI series and the T20 series against Australia can well be justified for, West Indies is a far worse outfit compared to Australia who are not at their one time best. Moreover, West Indies were facing Australia in Australia where forget about winning, even a matured loss would be a great feeling for the West Indies team. But, now in the first T20 game against Zimbabwe at Port of Spain, where West Indies were expected to win for one last time, it was fascinating to see West Indies playing the T20 game as though it was a test match.

All that the West Indies team can feel comfortable about is the fact that there was a West Indian bowler in Darren Sammy who bagged 5 Zimbabwean wickets, returning with figures of 5/26 from the 4 overs allotted to him. Can anyone of us imagine even in our dreams a team ending its innings of a T20 game with not only putting up a partly score of 79 but also at a strike rate of just above 3.0 runs an over? In the recently concluded India-South Africa 2 match test series, both the teams out there had atleast one innings wherein the team had scored at a rate of above 4.0 runs an over.

It was Dwayne Smith placed at number 7 in the batting order who recorded the highest strike rate in the match at 80 runs for every 100 deliveries he faced. And the highest run getter in the match for the West Indies team happened to be Denesh Ramdin who scored 23 runs no matter how many deliveries he faced. There were only 3 batsmen from the West Indies' side who could put up individual scores above 10, with extras taking its share of 10 runs. One thing that can be noticed for the West Indies' bowling chart is that the WI captain bought in just 5 of his bowlers who bowled their quota of 4 over each.

And on the other side, the Zimbabwean side bought in 8 of their bowlers, may be which is not of much importance when it comes to winning matches. But, the idea to experiment when things are not going in favor is always a welcome move from the captain. At the end, one thing that is worth to be noted is that there were 7 batsmen from the Zimbabwean side who returned back to the pavilion the way they entered into the crease. Out of these 7 batsmen who couldn't score a run, 6 of them were out. Another interesting fact is that Benn had 4 wickets, all of whom returned without scoring. I guess that this is the 1^st such instance where ducks have made headlines.