Wednesday, June 9, 2010

WAITING FOR THEIR RETURN TO TESTS

Things are slowly getting back to normal. Bangladesh were comprehensively beaten (to put it mildly) by England in 7 sessions are Old Trafford. Zimbabwe lost (finally!) to Sri Lanka comprehensively (to put it mildly, again!) at Harare in the tri-series final. This chain of events imply that India should have 2 easy wins in the 2 Twenty20 Internationals that they are scheduled to play against Zimbabwe to end their African tour.

And there is a good chance that we may see a couple of one - sided matches as India, smarting from twin defeats to the hosts, may well come out all guns blazing to completely streamroll the opposition. Or... Or we may witness an upset or two more. That is a smaller possibility but there is a chance that India, wary of Zimbabwe after the ODI defeats, may look to play cautious cricket and allow the hosts to seize the initiative.


Whatever happens in the 2 Twenty20s... kudos to Zimbabwe (and Bangladesh of course) for the fight and the improvement they have shown in their cricket. These two teams do not have too many threatening names in their lineup... names for  whom the opposition teams sit for hours in a meeting formulating plans and strategies... but they are good as a unit. They have learnt how to fight... and these skills are helping them as they take on the bigger teams with bigger names.

It's good that the teams have become competitive... it will help the game grow. I am just waiting now for Zimbabwe to be allotted the Test status once again... I know Andy Flower no longer plays for them, but I do hope someone else comes along who impresses me just as much as Andy Flower did!

1 comment:

Soulberry said...

Zimbos may pull their weight in the test arena too but I'd be chary of extrapolating LOI performances to tests. No doubt they have done well against better ranked teams but a five day match is different. Zimbos might actually be doing a smarter thing than BD by avoiding spreading themselves thin and collecting a huge burden of defeat while redeveloping their cricket.

SAVE OUR TIGER!