Great Lunch, Good Dinner and a bad dessert

Like most of the Indians following cricket I was of the hope that the Team India would pull of another victory to return home with the trophy today. In that hope I had thought of naming a great English summer, but it didn’t turn out that way, never the less it was a good one.

After the disastrous world cup campaign no one would have placed their bet on India to win the test series. Even in the one day after being down 3-1 no one would have thought the series would run down to the last match. But anyways this series was a good team effort and atleast India has the silverware from the tests.

Two things that stand out from the both the series are one the victory whenever it came by was due to the team effort and the other is the contribution of the youngsters & new comers in the team. Karthick, Zaheer and R.P.Singh did very well in the tests and Piyush, Gambhir, Robin (match saving knock) were good in one dayers. Probably India can still have a decent enough team once the big guns decide to hang their boots.

The big four of India also had a great outing in the series. Kumble was among wickets, Dravid, Ganguly and Sachin all contributed to the cause. But one should say Sachin was rather unlucky not to get even a single ton in probably what will be his last outing in the English soil. Being out in the 90s five times in the series is rather unlucky. Couple of times (once while on 99) he got a bad decision and that denied him the much deserved ton. Ganguly was also unlucky to get couple of rough decisions in the tests when he was going great. It’s probably both the best and the worst time for the LITTLE MATSER of late, good for the amount of scoring that he has done in the series after much of debate whether its time for him to retire and bad for not been able to convert his scores to a century. Anyways both Dada and Sachin played beautifully in both versions and their partnerships were real beauty to watch. It was delight to watch Sachin play at his best, his innings in the one dayers reminded everyone of the terror he used to be in the late nineties. Probably “old warriors never die”.

This would have been a perfect English summer if India had pulled it of today, but the way they surrendered to England today spoiled the mood a bit. After having a great lunch (tests) good dinner (previous 6 ODI) the party was spoiled by a rather bad dessert. Anyways let’s cheer India and hope they do better against Australia and Pakistan in months to come.

RJ