SLEEPLESS NIGHT
Here’s the good news : India won the videocon series by winning the 4 th straight ODI in the series. And the bad news is that I once more got the cricket fever. After a long time watched cricket live and that also an exciting game which was fought till the end. I started watching the match thinking, I would probably see the first innings and then sleep. But what can you do, game of cricket is so unpredictable, it kept swinging from one side to the other. With India bowling well in the first 20 overs and getting some quick wickets, I thought now it would be difficult for Srilanka to strike with Attapatu being out of form and Agarkar and other Indian bowlers bowling so well. But then Attapatu played a captain’s knock with getting in enough support Arnold. At around 40 overs, match tilted towards Srilanka. With 6 wickets in hand, they could have reached a total of 280 – 290, as by 40 overs they were already 200. A flurry of boundaries was pulverized by Attapatu and Arnold and but again Agarkar was brought in to attack and he struck gold one more time. and so by 47 over the match tilted back to India with agarkar and sehwag really bowling and tiding things up. In the end it was end it was Agarkar who wrapped up the srilankan team with a figure of 5 wickets in 10 over giving 38 runs.
And then it was india’s turn. The Indian batting started in a way srilanka would have wished. First 3 overs were maidens with just one run coming as a noball in the third one. After that tendliya and sehwag opened a little bit , but were nicely cramped eventually resulting in tendulkar getting frustrated. A very bad shot to get out , he completely misjudged the line from Vaas as step down the pitch and was bowled. And sehwag getting life two times and Yuvraj getting out soon after couple glorious shots. We started bitching about the whole situation it was 2.00 in the night and we really wanted to sleep as had to get to work next day. But how could we leave team India in a such a situation. And then came Dravid “the wall” and Venugopal, both played intelligent cricket with dravid doing what he does best, taking singles and Rao cracking a couple of great boundaries on the off sides and a flat six. And it was around 2.45, I thought now India is in safe hands and would win easily and we better take a good night sleep. And then the wall did that one thing which could have easily cost us the match, hitting a pull shot of delivery which was no where in the reach. In quick succession, lost both venu and dravid. And there it was 3.30 and me lying in front of my laptop, smoking to some how resist the sleep. Dhoni and Raina were on the crease and I had my own doubts about both playing sensible cricket. All they had to do was to play sensibly, take the singles. But Dhoni I doubted would be willing to shed his master blaster image. But no, in the end it all went according the plan with dhoni actually hitting his first boundary after playing some 30 odd balls. Raina at the other end showed tremendous capability to be a regular member of team India (He was playing as a Sub in this match). And it all ended in style with dhoni hitting two consecutive sixes of Arnold and by that time it was 4.30 am and man what a match it was... after a long time.
Worth waking up for, Worth blogging it ….
Anyways whoever dint see the match can watch the highlights online or download it from the following links
Downloadable Zip file:
If you cant wait and watch the streaming:
catchesAgarkar bowlingAttapattu BattingEnjoy...
