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Raina, Dhoni keep their cool to win it for India |
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Written by Akshay
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Friday, 31 March 2006 |
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It was another low scoring, but exciting one dayer at Faridabad. England Captain Flintoff won the toss and elected to bat first. The pitch looked to be a slow one and India seemed to have read it better as they included the extra spinner, Romesh Powar in their side at the expense of R P Singh. England went into the match with an unchanged team which meant they were banking on their quicker bowlers delivering for them. The English openers got off to a solid start this time around, clearly putting in some thought into their batting after their casual strokeplay in Delhi. Both Strauss and Prior were not overly aggressive and waited for the bad balls. Pathan bowled tightly but Sreesanth did not seem to have control over his line and length, tending to give away easy runs by straying in line as well as being on the shorter side. Dravid had to once again introduce the spinners early. He chose to bring on both Powar and Harbhajan together. Harbhajan struck the first blow trapping Prior lbw with a quicker delivery. Powar struck in the very next over getting Owais Shah caught brilliantly by Dhoni. Both managed to check the run rate as well. Kevin Pieterson once again came out positively and along with Andrew Strauss took England past 100. Strauss played a very sensible innings and got to 61. Dravid, then realising that he needed to break the partneship brought Powar back into the attack since Pieterson and Strauss were milking Yuvraj and Sehwag. Powar got a wicket with his very first delivery of the second spell. He lured Strauss out of his crease and beat him in flight to bowl him out. He struck again after a couple of overs as he got Flintoff out of his crease and beat him in flight and turn to hand Dhoni a stumping. England from a good position went to a mediocre one as they slumped to 143/4. Collingwood tried to stay there with Pieterson but was run out brilliantly by Dhoni while misjuding a run. Pieterson then unleashed some attacking strokes hitting a couple of sixes as well. He was looking very dangerous but got out to a soft dismissal flicking one to Dravid at midwicket off Yuvraj. There were still 7-8 overs to when Pieterson was dismissed but England failed to capitalise as they were tied down by some good changes of pace by the Indian bowlers. Sreesanth in particular bowled a beautiful second spell as he got 3 wickets in 2 overs with some yorkers and slower deliveries. Once again the England batting order lacked the depth after Flintoff and Pieterson were dismissed. They ended up getting bowled out for 226 in the 50th over. The Indians put down a couple of catches and were slightly shabby in the field but overall they did a good job as at one stage it looked as if England would end up getting to 250-260. The Indian reply started very well as Sehwag and Gambhir looked in no trouble. Sehwag looked be coming back into form as he played a couple of trademark shots on the offside. Gambhir played some good drives square of the wicket on the offside. They added 61 runs together and looked so comfortable that Flintoff chose not to take the powerplay and introduce his lone spinner Blackwell into the attack. The move paid off as Sehwag tried to paddle sweep a delivery on the leg stump but ended up guiding it onto the stumps. Gambhir looked set but after a couple of overs played a bizzare shot trying to half-flick, half-pull one from Anderson ending up skying it for the bowler to take the catch. Gambhir has been guilty of throwing it away after getting starts and he must consider himself lucky to be persisted with. India were at 70-2 at this stage. It became 72-3 as Dravid made a terrible misjudgement to be run out for 5. Kaif failed to trouble the scorers as he was trapped lbw trying to pull one that kept low from Plunkett. Plunkett bowled a very tight spell at this stage and was responsible for the middle order collapse. Yuvraj Singh seemed to be in tremendous form as he pulled and drove with authority before chopping one onto the stumps from Blackwell. It must be mentioned that either Ian Blackwell is a completely different bowler now or he's been allowed to bowl this well by the Indian batsmen who seem to over estimate what is very clearly a defensive bowling option more than anything else. Anyways, the Indians had got into a very precarious situation at 92-5 and Dhoni and Raina came together. Raina it has be said looked at ease from the very begining as he timed the ball sweetly from ball one. He was well supported by a sedate Dhoni, who as shown before can change gears when the team requires him to play defensively. Both of them cut out the big shots and played percentage cricket picking up singles and twos. Raina played the odd aggressive shot to get the occassional boundary but looked in total control whenever he chose to go for the big one. The partnership took India to the last 10 over requiring 6.5 an over with 5 wickets in hand. After this they opened their shoulders for a bit with Raina getting some crucial boundaries, Dhoni joining in with controlled aggression. Raina got to his maiden ODI 50 and continued to impress. Dhoni got out to a Flintoff slower delivery in the 46th over but by then India had already reached 210. Pathan and Raina gave the finishing touches to the Indian innings and got the target in 49 overs. Raina was awarded the man of the match award for his match winning effort of 81 not out. Powar also deserves special mention for his effort of 3-34 in 10 overs in his comeback match. It is good to see India win 2 matches without contributions from the top order but they need to fire sooner rather than later.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 02 April 2006 )
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