Saturday, March 15, 2008

Ups and Downs from India's Australian Cricket Tour

An Indian Fan's view of the ups and downs

Up

  1. India did well without their seniors in the ODIs
  2. Tendulkar helped India win two finals
  3. Dhoni led from the front
  4. Harbhajan Singh managed to dodge charges leveled against him without evidence
  5. India let Brag Hogg go, even though he used abusive words against the Indian captain
  6. Bad umpiring was penalized. Steve Bucknor got his well deserved punishment for bad umpiring (long due, he seemed biased against India)
  7. Hayden was reprimanded for denigrating an Indian player
  8. Australian public criticized the spirit of the Australian Cricket team for unfair play

Down

  1. Adam Gilchrist, a well respected cricketer retired
  2. Michael Clarke got away, even though he tackled Tendulkar in the finals
  3. Symonds seemed out of form
  4. Ricky Ponting seemed out of form
  5. Australian players got away by claiming catches that they really failed to hold on to
  6. Australian media for looking foolish after every charge they leveled against the Indian team players were waved off

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you sure the last down is really a down? I think it should come as an up.

BTW, Tendulkar winning India two finals is a down imo. The young brigade should have played a greater role there. Sachin is not going to be there for much longer.

Balbir said...

Yes, the last one was the action of the media in trying to act as referees. I don't think Tendulkar finally being worth the cost we pay for him is a down :)

I think he helped Sharma and others understand what it takes to win and got his first ODI century in Australia. How can that be a down?

jayakumar said...

From my point of view, the biggest up was that India played as a real cohesive team rather than as individual stars. The media may focus on some individuals, but the matches really felt like a team effort, including our spectators.

Balbir said...

Oh! yes and I loved the fighting spirit, despite going down in the test-series, just scraping through to the finals and all the bad publicity, we won 2-0. Everyone contributed, Kumar and Ishant bowled beautifully in the beginning. Harbhajan got his bunnies in the middle and then it was up to Tendulkar and Uttapa, Sharma, Yuvi, Dhoni.

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