Tuesday, November 08, 2011

The Kotla Test moves on

Yesterday on Twitter (@eyeonthepitch) I predicted India would win by four wickets on the fourth day. I'm still happy to stand by that: the West Indies were never likely to do well in the second innings against the spinners, and India were unlikely to bat as badly again. India are now 152-2 chasing 276, and with a well-set Dravid and Tendulkar at the crease you'd have to back them. But given that an out-of-form VVS and an always-shaky-against-spin Yuvraj are in the wings, things might get a little sticky if early wickets go down.

There is also the worry that MS Dhoni might offer a draw and even worse, Sammy might accept.

On India's bowlers: Both Ojha and Ashwin took five-fors in this test and strange as it might sound, it does my heart good to see Indian spinners dominant at home as they should be). Yadav's pace shows promise though his action is quite ungainly; he seems to derive little from his run-up and delivery stride and instead, gets all his pace from the upper body, a method that is unlikely to work over the long run. Coaching seems required, much as I hate to say it.

Meanwhile so much has been written about the incompetent ticket selling at this test that I can scarcely add more, but this neglect of common sense is no longer benign, it is positively malign as far as test cricket is concerned.

1 Comments:

Anonymous mallikarjun said...

Good work...
http://the-cricketnews.blogspot.com/

9:43 AM  

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