Friday, September 28, 2007

Kangaroos on Indian Land

Kangaroos on Indian Land

Those were the days when we waiting over 2-3 years for a cricket series against teams like Australia or West Indies and these are the days when even cricket wonder and genius like Sachin are complaining in direct way about the excess of cricket with words like Now it hard to get time for the overcome fatigue and recover from injuries when there are matches one following other at the interval of 2-3 or 4-5 days.

Things on and off the cricket fields went under the dramatic and speedy changes with the introduction of twenty-20 format. Indian team was still busy with felicitation for winning the twenty-20 world cup at Wankhede stadium Mumbai, when Kangaroos landed on Indian earth at Banglore for the seven matches ODI series. It is not easy to change from one format of game to other and that too when you are still under the hangover of winning the world championship of shortest version and going to face three time world champions as the opponent in the longer version of the game. India is fortunate in many senses, this series is home series in well known and familiar ground conditions with the support of home fans, which will be touching sky after the winning twenty-20 world cup [ this might work for increasing the pressure and may produce the adverse result], Three most successful ODI Indians players, Sachin, Sourav and Rahul are back to team, in all probabilities one among the world best opening pair Sachin and Sourav are going to open the inning for India, The famous wall Rahul Dravid is playing the inaugural ODI on home ground and has to prove how his bating is blossoming without the responsibility of captaincy, Irfan Pathan is in the mood of celebrating his come back where as aggression of Shrisanth is creating a concern in the opponent dressing room. The new find of twenty-20 cup, captaincy of hard hitter wicketkeeper M.S. Dhoni is shifting the pressure ball in the court of Australians. Even all these favorable, it is quite possible that India might loose the Banglore encounter just because of hangover of twenty-20 world cup win, failure in maintaining the dressing room and on the field energy level as some of the twenty-20 team players are being replaced and it needs time to reach with same energy level and interaction among the players. Unfortunately Indian team is not with time, players will be hardly with just 24 hours for all these adjustments. One thing is sure Indians are over 70% of chances of winning the series.

Australian are wounded with semis defeat of twenty-20 and history supports that kangaroos always become hard to defeat team after such humiliating defeats. Though some things are going against them, Australian attack is not looking as effective as it should be in the absence of Glen McGraw, Ricky Pointing is not in the best of form and health,there off the fields statements like "return of three senior players will make Indian team weaker" are not producing desired effect just because new Indian captain Dhoni says we don't believe in winning or loosing, we believe in enjoying our game. It is sure when you are enjoying your job success is intended to follow you. All these are not sufficient to write off Australia, after all they are ODI world champions and know the business better than any body else so this is going to be turn into battle that promises cricket at its best, just cricket and pure cricket with all its uncertainty and glory, Who ever loose the series but surely cricket is going to emerge as the winner.

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