India vs Australia -2nd Test

In the second test between India and Australia in the ongoing series in Brisbane. India made two changes in the team Umesh Yadav and Ashwin came back to the team replacing Mohommad Sami and Karan Sharma (also Dhoni came back to the team after missing the previous match with an injury). Both of them bowled relatively better than Sami and Karan in the previous test match. But what really cost India the test match was Indian bowling to the Australian lower order in the first innings . 

    Indians managed to take 6 Australian wickets for 247 runs, but the tactic they employed towards batsman Mitchell Johnson was to bounce him out and Johnson made the Indian quick bowlers pay for that. The Australian batsmen are brought up on bouncy pitches and they play short ball better than players of any other country. 

   Johnson comfortably hit the Indian quick bowlers all around the park and quickly got to a score of 88, if that was not enough Mitchell Stark contributed to the Australian total with another 52 of mere 59 balls. All Indian  bowlers had to do was to treat them as normal batsmen and they would have surely got the Australian tail out for a lower total. 

   Even If India had managed to get the last 4 Australian wickets for around 150 runs , India would have had an excellent chance to win the test match because in the second innings India manged to get 6 wickets. Australia had to score 128 to win they did manage to get but after losing 6 wickets. 

    If India had managed to get the last 4 Australian wickets for 150 runs then the Australians would have had to score another 130 runs with last 4 wickets in hand . That would have been a very though task under pressure of chasing and the  pitch has also deteriorated considerably. 

    One just hopes that the Indian bowlers learn that one fluke victory in England after bowling lots of short balls to the batsmen need not be repeated in the future. The Australians are a different kettle of fish, the bouncer and the short ball has to be used as a surprise weapon to them. Indian batsman must bat better and avoid such batting collapses. The tail needs to contribute a little bit more in terms of runs . 

India vs Australia - Adelaide Test

   The Adelaide Test between Indian and Australia ended up with the home team just managing to beat India with 48 runs. The match turned out to be more closer than expected and Michael Clarke was lucky that his courageous declaration did not backfire on him thanks to Indians going down to the offspin of Nathan Lyon. 

    The Adelaide pitch was totally flat and excellent for batting. This home team obviously has the home advantage of playing in these conditions and also got to make the best of the condition since Michael Clarke won the toss and elected to bat. 

    The Indian quicks were hit all over the park by David Warner. Warner managed to get a century in both the innings of the Test match. Indian fast bowlers like Varun Aaron and Mohommad Sami were absolutely ineffective in the first session. A lot was expected off Varun since he is the fastest bowler in India , he got an opportunity to bowl on one of the fastest pitches in the world and Sami was coming after getting lots of wickets this year. 

   In the entire match all the bowlers both from Australia or India failed to make any major impact except Nathan Lyon who got 12 wickets 5 in the first innings and 7 wickets in the second innings. Had it not been for Lyon this match would had been won by India . 

   Actually the success of Nathan Lyon was because of Indian fast bowlers and the pitch. Nathan Lyon was the only regular off spinner among the 22 players. The Indian fast bowlers bowled lots of balls round the wicket and their footmarks created a nice rough for Lyon to bowl on. The ball did all sorts of things after it pitched on the rough  some balls bounced very high, some balls kept low , some balls turned viciously. The Indians found very hard to play Lyon in the first inning itself and things got worse in the second innings. 

    Indians were going well at 242/2 when at the score of 99 Murli Vijay lost a bit of concentration and ended up giving his wicket to Lyon that opened the floodgates and the Indian batters could not last too long. The stand in captain chose debutant Karan Sharma over experienced Ashvin . Had Ashvin be picked in place of Sharma the story of the match could have been different . Ashvin could have made excellent use of the rough. The part time off spinners were not able to pitch enough balls in the rough to have any effect. 

Nathan Lyon

    Indian catching was not very good dropped lots of catches and Saha also missed a stumping . Well lets hope that with Dhoni coming back in the next test in Brisbane the fortune,team selection and fielding of Team India changes and we get to see a very very competitive Test Match. 

Day 3 - India vs Australia

It was really great to see the Indian batsmen coming out and batting so well in Australia. Just a few months ago Team India had a horrible time in the last 3 test matches in England. The batting didn't work at all . In fact they went down to an innocuous bowler like Moeen Ali. 

In this test at Adelaide didn't start well for India. In just first 4.1 overs Australia had scored 41 runs Varun Aaron and Mohommad Sami were hit all over the place by David Warner. Only Ishant Sharma bowled well. Indian did pick up the wickets but at the end of the first day Australia wee 352/6 with Michal Clarke retired hurt. 

On the third day Clarke came back to bat and scored briskly with Smith. But thankfully for India only 30 overs were possible in the entire day because of rain intervention Australia declared at 517. 

However India's luck has changed in the third day , the entire team batted well and managed a score of 369/5 with Virat Kohli hitting an excellent century and Murli Vijay, Chateswar Pujara and Rahane scoring 50 plus. India managed to get all the three sessions of the third day. 

One just hopes that last 5 wickets of India gives reasonable contribution to the Indian total and that Team India somehow matches the Australian score or even better if it surpasses it.

The pitch is excellent for batting but tomorrow is the fourth day so there is bound to be some help for the bowlers especially the spinners. The two wickets that Nathan Lyon picked up today was due to the ball pitching on the rough that was created by the footmarks of the fast bowlers who bowled round the wicket (and Indian quick bowlers did bowl and lots of balls round the wicket so they indirectly helped Nathan Lyon with the two wickets). 

Karan Sharma would have a bigger role to play in the Australian second innings since there is an excellent rough on the two sides of the wicket. 

It was interesting to the Australian players reaction when Virat Kohli was hit on the helmet by a Mitchell Johnson bouncer. The entire team gathered around Kohli including the bowler  to see if everything is fine . This has been an extremely emotional test match for the Aussies the palyers have been dedicating their centuries and fifties to late Phil Huges. Even when an Indian wicket fell they remebered Huges by thumping their chests. A wonderful gesture by the Australian players. 

Let's hope tomorrow will be a day of excellent competitive cricket. 


   

Phil Huges - gone too soon

The incident where Australian batsman Phil Huges died, after being hit by a bouncer in spite of wearing a helmet has really shocked the entire world of cricket. Phil Huges was really a promising cricketer who could have served Australian cricket for a long time . The youngster hit a century in each innings of his debut Test match, again in his debut one dayer he hit a century. 

     Huges was hit near the neck area just below the helmet. The blow was so severe that he fainted and fell headfirst onto the ground. He was taken to the the hospital where after struggling with death for hours, he died on Nov 27. This is the first time ever that a player died after being hit by the ball in spite of wearing guards including the helmet. Such deaths are very very rare.17 years ago while fielding in the forward short leg  Raman Lamba was hit by the cricket ball and he died because of the impact. But Raman Lamba was not wearing any helmet.

Philip Huges 

    .  In the early days of cricket even in 60 s and 70 s players never wore helmet. The techniques of batsmen was good enough to negotiate bouncers and short pitched stuff. While other guards were there but they were not of the same quality as today. In those days it used to be only 5 day cricket, the main focus of the batsman was not to score runs but to stay on the crease and then make runs at every possible opportunity. Times changed one day cricket came in the pressure on the batsmen to score runs increased as a result new shots came into the game. Batsmen started taking more risks as time was limited in 50 over cricket the focus of the batsmen was to score runs as fast as they can specially at the beginning and the end of the innings. New experimentations came into the game teams experimented with pinch hitters or sending someone in the opening slot who would get after the bowling right from the word go. 

       Again to make the one day format interesting and prevent bowlers from using the bouncers as a ploy to stop runs, bouncers were totally banned from one day cricket. This lead to a generation of batsman who are less technically sound, but are capable of scoring fast. Later on of course one bouncer an over was introduced that gave some teeth to the bowler. 

      As if one day cricket was not fast enough , a completely new version of the game Twenty-Twenty cricket was introduced. Each team got 20 overs each to bat. Now since the introduction of this format of the game batting styles have changed in a big way . The scoring became even more faster there is hardly any ball left by the batsmen these days, even when a bowler bowls a bouncer a batsman has to go for a shot since leaving the bouncer would mean losing a ball and if batsmen of a team leave all bouncers bowled that would mean that they would have left 20 balls in other words 3.2 overs out of the 20 overs won't had been scored of . Something no team can afford. 

     Playing this way over the years players are into the habit of scoring fast and this transpires even into the longer version of the game. Coupled with lack of proper defensive technique and an urge to score runs fast, players today get hit on the helmet quite frequently. But no one ever thought that someone would be hurt so badly on the neck , so badly that it would eventually lead to death. When you think about possible fatal injuries from the cricket ball you think about the head, the abdomen but never the neck.

      The injury that happened to Philip Huges was extremely unfortunate and very very rare. May the almighty give peace to his soul and I just hope such an incident never ever happens again. 

Third one day INDIA vs England

The third one day was simply a one sided affair India dominated in all the three departments of the game be it batting , bowling or fielding. England batted first and had to face accurate and excellent swing bowling from the trio of Bhuvaneswar Kumar, Kulkarni and Mohommad Sami. Bhuvi picked up two wickets in one over and then Sami picked up a wicket.

        After their spells as the spinners came in to bowl the English batsmen were exposed they were not able to play spin at all. Even part time offspinner like Suresh Raina picked up a wicket. The only English batsmen who played spin well was Moeen Ali rest all simply surrendered , the entire English team was out in 49.3 with a paltry score of 206.

      It was a sunny day and as observed when its sunny in England there is not too much lateral swing so in the second innings the pitch was great to bat on. Sikhar Dhawan and Ajinkya Rahane made most of the conditions there was not a single moment in the match when they were challenged the English team did not score enough runs to rattle them at all.

      Lots of sixes were hit by both Dhavan and Rahane. There was six hit by Rahane of Anderson coming down the pitch as if Anderson was bowling offspin. Anderson who dominated the Indian batsmen in the Test series was virtually ineffective , Finn has lost lots of speed and was bowling cutters but was not effective enough. The Indian batters effectively negotiated the left arm pace bowling of Gurney and played Wokes easily.

     Moeen Ali picked up lots of wickets during the Test series but Rahane and Dhawan played him easily and scored lots of runs of him. India scored 207 for one with more than 19 overs to spare. The majority of the runs of the bat were scored by Rahane and Dhawan. Kohli had to score just one run.

         England were far  away from being the side that beat India 3-1 in the Test series. Thankfully in the one day series India did not get complacent as they did after winning the second test. There is one more one day that is left in the series , India should not be complacent and give their best to win that match as well. One also hopes that the players who have not got a chance till now get to play that particular match.

       It would be nice to give Bhuvi a rest and bring in Umesh Yadav. The appointment of Ravi Shastri as the director of cricket has done wonders to India the attitude of team in the one day series has changed totally as compare to the test team. The fielding has been great , saved lots of runs and took very good catches. While in the test series India had dropped regulation catches.

      The world cup is not far away , one just hopes that Team India can maintain this form and successfully defend the title in Australia-New Zealand.

         

Second ODI - INDIA vs England

After the first one day was rained off . Its great to see India emphatically winning he second one day at Cardiff. The inclusion of Suresh Raina in the batting line up helped as he was the one who scored the 100 in just 75 balls the other guys who were out of form the likes of Rohit Sharma got back in form with well compiled 52.

       The technical problems that the Indian batsmen had during the Test matches especially the last 3 tests did not make any big impact in this form of the game. Also it exposed some of English bowling's flaws , England conceded 16 wides majority of them bowled by Jordan it not only means 16 balls extra but also it means that Indians got 16  more balls to score off. It also reduces the pressure on the batsmen when the bowler is gifting away runs like that.

     Suresh Raina had problems facing short ball he was tested but it seemed that he found out a way to deal with the short ball. Other batsmen also gave good support. Virat Kohli tried to be aggressive from the start and he hit a good shot coming down the pitch to Wokes  but luck was not on his side as the ball went straight into the hands of Alistair Cook.

      The start was slow the ball was seaming a lot but after quick loss of Dhawan and Kohli in the seventh over Ajinkya Rahane with his excellence defensive technique formed a good partnership of 91 runs with Rohit to give a good platform to the next batsmen to get an excellent total for the team and so they did. Raina who was not a part of the test team lead from the front scoring 100 of 75 balls supported well by Dhoni who scored 52.

      Indian fielding and bowling was much better as compared to the test series , the fielding saved lots of runs dropped noting. Again the little rain on the pitch helped the Indian spinners but it was the quick bowlers who did the initial damage. After scoring over 50 in the first 10 overs ,England kept losing wickets to the likes of Sami , Bhuvaneshwas even Mohit Sharma made scoring difficult. Their excellent bowling pushed up the asking rate and spinners cashed it on the advantage as the batsmen got out trying to score fast.

        One just hopes that the Indian team doesn't get complacent after this win as it happened after the win at lords and win the other 3 matches left in the series . This would be a great morale booster for the world cup scheduled the happen next year. 

INDIA vs England 3rd Test Match

          The third test match between India and England saw England dominating the entire test match , each and every session was won by England. There was not a single session in which India competed toe to toe with England. Just before the start Ishant Sharma  became unavailable for the Test match owing to knee injury. He was replaced by Pankaj Singh , the Rajasthan Pacer who has given consistent performances year after year in the Indian domestic circuit. The pitch was believed to be bowler friendly on the first day . Cook won the toss and took a bold decision to bat first. This gutsy decision did pay off assisted by some clumsy catching in the first session of the test match. 

        When Cook was batting at 14 he was dropped by Ravindra Jadeja off Pankaj Singh's bowling , Cook went on to make 95. Gary Ballance got a reprieve when he was adjudged not out but the replay and snickometer showed some nick. Pankaj Singh's tough luck continued when a clum LBW of Ian Bell was not given by the umpire. The first day ended with England scoring 247 for just 2 wickets the next 2 days the pitch was very good to bat on. England went on to make 569 for 7.

        Almost all Indian batsmen got a start except Sikhar Dhavan in the first innings but not a single one of them went on to make a big score. India had 8 recognized batsman (even Ravindra Jadeja must be regarded as a batsman , he has triple centuries in first class cricket) out of them 7 got a start , scored high 20s or 30s  at least one of them should have carried on to score a big hundred and at least one other batsman should have scored 70+ but unfortunately that didn't happen . The pitch was very good to bat on , It was sad to see Indian batsmen playing lose shots and giving away their wickets to the offspin of Moeen Ali in the first innings. India ended up with a score of mere 330.

       In the second innings the bowling was not penetrative enough , although Bhuvaneshwar Kumar got some swing his balls were not carrying to the slips or to the wicketkeeper. Mohommad Sami did not have a good test match either. However the English bowlers particularly Anderson, Broad and Moeen Ali bowled well and got the wickets. 

      It was really sad to see Indian batting in the second innings after a decent start Murli Vijay simply gave his wicket away taking a run casually. This opened the floodgates and on the evening of the fourth day Indian batsmen gave wickets to the likes of Joe Root and Moeen Ali. The fifth day did not see any real fight from the Indian batters wickets fell at regular intervals with part timer Moeen Ali being the pick of the bowlers making good use of the rough on the 5th day track he took 6 wickets in the innings followed by Anderson who took 2 wickets and Joe Root got one wicket . 

                 It was definitely a bad decision to drop Stuart Binny since India lost a medium pacer who could have been useful also Rohit Sharma's batting was far from anything to be called impressive. In the first innings he ended up giving a simple catch to the mid off fielder and in the second innings he chased a ball outside the offstump that could have been easily left. 

      I hope in the next Test Match better sense prevails and we see Stuart Binny and Ashvin replacing ,Rohit Sharma and Jadeja respectively. Jadeja is a batsman who bowls while Ashwin is a bowler who bats a bit also England has 6 left handed batsman , Ashvin is likely to be far more effective against them than Jadeja. Also India's batting has been a big letdown in this match the batsmen gave away the wickets when they were set in the first innings and in the second inning 7 wickets were taken by part time spinners, of batsmen who are believed to be the best players of spin in the world. Hopefully Ishant Sharma will recover from his injury and the batsmen will not repeat the same mistakes in the next test match . Hopefully we would see at least 2 centuries from Indian batsmen coupled with a good bowling performance. 

       

3rd Test in England 2014

The pitches of England as we all know assist swing bowling, actually its the English conditions that assist swing bowling. It normally cloudy and cold in England this conditions always favour swing bowling. When India won the world cup in 1983 , Indian team had medium pacers like Roger Binny, Madan Lal, Mohinder Amarnath and Balvinder Singh Sandhu  in addition to the great Kapil Dev . Roger Binny was the highest wicket taker of that world cup with 18 wickets and Madan Lal took 17 wickets infact it was medium pace swing bowling of Mohinder Amarnath that was instrumental in India winning the final against the then mighty team of West Indies . Except for the great Kapil Dev India did not have any other flat out fast bowler. For a long time England had such pitches that favoured medium pace bowling . Sometime in early 2000s they made their pitches more bouncy and after that bowlers like Harmison and James Anderson who were flat out fast came to the fore. 

             The English conditions have highly favoured the swing bowling of Bhuvaneswar Kumar , the swing meter is showing that he is able to swing the new ball by as much as 40 cms and that's why we saw him getting 11 wickets in the ongoing series till now. Indian fast bowlers are bound to do well in English conditions since the have bowled and picked up wickets in difficult Indian conditions. You invariably see Indian fast /fast medium bowlers do wonderfully well in foreign condition especially in Australia, England and South Africa. Although in domestic Ranji matches the groundsmen are now instructed to keep some grass on the pitch. That's why we have so many fast-medium bowlers coming up.

Looking forward to the third test against England one expects India to go with the same pace trio of Bhuvaneswar Kumar, Ishant Sharma and Sami Ahmed. All three have bowled wonderfully well and it makes sense to go with the same successful pace battery. The fourth seamer can be Binny who is a batting allrounder and the seaming conditions of England will help him although he had very little bowling to do till now in this series. 

     The young Indian side which does not have too much experience of playing cricket in foreign conditions is doing pretty well in England. In 2011 far too many experienced Indian batsmen got out chasing balls outside the off stump. In the two test matches played its great to see Indian batsmen actually leave the balls outside off stump and have left or pulled the short ball well. In the second test it was the English batsmen who fell to the short ball tactics of Ishant Sharma.
        
           After watching that the pitch is offering very little assistance to the bowlers Dhoni asked Ishant to use his height and bowl short on the 5th day Lords wicket. In the first session England dominated India the second slip was standing too deep and because of that few catches did not carry to the second slip. But off the last ball of the session which was a short ball that Moeen Ali tried to sway away the ball just struck the bat and went to the close in fielder's hand. 

         The English batting was terrible in the post lunch session all Ishant did was bowl short and the English batsmen got out pulling the ball or just playing at it , all the balls could have been left. 

       Its also great to see the form of Murli Vijay and Ajinkya Rahane and lets hope that Virat Kohli gets some runs in the next test match begining tommorrow. 

      Lets hope we get to see another great test match.

India vs England 2nd Test historic win at Lords

The just concluded test match at Lords, the second in a series of 5 test matches between India and England has been great for India. The English team had a great advantage on day 1 when it got a completely green wicket where the ball seemed around a lot but they didn't make good use of the advantage. The bowlers got too excited looking at the green wicket and bowled too short. With the sun out in the third session the English bowlers were tiring on one of the most hottest days in England at this time both Ajinkya Rahane and Bhuvaneshwar Kumar pressed home the advantage . Rahane went on to make a wonderful century , while Bhuvaneshwar Kumar contributed an excellent 36 runs even Sami and Ishant contributed 19runs and 12 runs respectively. The first seven wickets contributed 145 runs and the last 3 wickets contributed 150 runs. The lower order batting has been more than useful for Team India. 

      The English batsmen got better batting conditions in the second innings but Bhuvaneshwar Kumar managed to get good amount of swing and got 6 wickets ,England did manage to go beyond Indian score but only by a mere 24 runs. 

      In the third innings Indians did bat well but there was a time when India were 235 for 7 with Jadeja and Bhuvaneshwar Kumar on the pitch. Jadeja batted in his own flamboyant style coming down the pitch to the fast bowlers hitting them over the top he scored a quick fire 68 of a mere 57 balls on the other end Bhuvaneshwar was also making merry of his excellent batting form and scored 52 of 71 balls the 7 th wicket partnership of 99 runs turned out to be the deciding factor. Had this partnership not been there India would have surely lost the match. 

      The fourth day pitch was offering Jadeja some assistance from the rough the ball was turning, bouncing , keeping low  he got the first wicket and got a rough decision from the umpire . Ishant managed to pick up two wickets in two overs in the third session. Day 5 the first session the pitch was offering some assistance to the bowlers but the batter Moeen Ali and Root were negotiating it well , one edge of Joe Root fell well short of slip who was probably standing too deep. England were about to go to lunch without losing a wicket but Ishant Sharma bowled a short ball to Moeen Ali to which he tried to sway away but the ball struck the bat and went directly to the hands of the forward short leg. 

        After lunch runs were coming thick and fast for England the went up to 198 for 5 wickets at this time Ishant was bowling one after one short ball to both the batsman , he bowled a short ball outside the off stump to Prior which he tried to pull and ended up giving a catch to the fielder . After that all Ishant did was ball as many short balls that he could and the English batsmen tried to hook them or play at them eventually getting caught by someone. All these balls could have been easily left by them. Winning the match would have been difficult for England but the way in which the wickets were lost after lunch to balls that could have been left must have disappointed the captain and coach. England lost the match in spite of having the better conditions to bowl and field.   

      But it is really wonderful to see this performance of India overseas , Indians left lots of balls outside offstump , in 2011 India - England series many batsmen were getting out chasing the deliveries outside offstump. The bowling was very disciplined and and the fast bowlers kept the balls up to the bat. Bhuvaneshwar Kumar was good with both the ball and the bat. I just hope that India plays the same way in the next 3 test matches.

Shock of the World Cup(Brazil's 7 -1 loss to Germany)

The entire world looked forward to watching Brazil taking on Germany in the semifinal match at Estadios Minerios at Belo Horizonte. Everyone wanted to see an exiting an extremely competitive match but it turned out be the shocker of the world cup. No one could have imagined that the match between Brazil and Germany would turn out to be the worst performance ever by Brazil since it started playing football. Brazil had not lost a single international match in Brazil since 2012. The last time Brazil lost a competitive international football match in Brazil was in 1975. The worst scoreline Brazil ever had to face was in 1920 against Uruguay, that match was lost by Brazil 6 - 0 . 

           It is true that losing Neymar(spinal injury) and Thiago Da Siva (not playing the match because of two yellow cards )came as a blow to Brazil , but that was not enough to justify the performance Brazil delivered in front of the 67,000+ strong Brazilian supporters. Brazil looked completely out of sorts while Germany were clinical in their approach a well organised efficient unit whenever they got an opportunity the ball ended up at the back of the net the first goal came at 12th minute. But between the 22nd to 29th minute one after one 4 more goals were scored, throwing Brazil out of contention, when the fourth goal was scored one can see people in the stadium in tears they knew that their world cup dream was over. The defense was clueless as Muller , Klose , Kroos  and others got lots of space in the box to score. Never has anyone seen such a pathetic performance by Brazil. 

         The second goal was scored by Miroslav Klose' making him the highest goalscorer in all world cups and to his credit he also has a distinguished record that whenever he scored for Germany , Germany never lost that game. 

Klose after becoming the highest goalscorer in the history of World Cup

         The only goal that Brazil scored in the dying minutes saw virtually no celebrations at all , one can see many players in tears even while they were playing. Brazil did make some attacking moves in the beginning of the second half but all the attempts were saved by Noir and rest of the time they were hardly able to penetrate the German defense. 

A sobbing Brazilaian Fan

       Luiz Phelippe Scholari the Brazilian coach who dictated the team selection is the man who is responsible for this state of the Brazilian team. He did not include in the team players of the calibre of Kaka, Robinho and Ronaldinho . No other coach would have done that the presence of this three players would have made Team Brazil twice as powerful . What Scholari ended up doing was creating a team that was highly dependent on Neymar. Teams that depend on one player don't deserve to win the world cup.

       Now considering the wonderful German performance they become firm favourites to win the world cup after 24 years and if they do become champions it world be their first world cup title after the merger of West Germany and East Germany.

FIFA World Cup 2014 (Great Goalkeeping)

 The world cup has been very successful with billions of people tuning in  to see their favourite teams in action. It was expected that the soccer crazy nation of Brazil would give a tremendous response to the World Cup and so it turned out to be . Not a single match was boring , there was not a single match in this world cup when there was low crowd support . Soccer fans from all over the world converged to beautiful Brazil to support their favourite teams. Especially fans from neighbouring South American countries went o Brazil in large numbers. 

Ochowa saves during Brazil vs Mexico match

                     To me the thing that has impressed me the most about this world cup is the quality of goalkeeping. Goalkeeper's job is said to be a thankless job , people don't remember goalkeepers but after this world cup this may change . We saw some magical saves by Ochawa, Vincient Eniema, Navas,Tim Howard, Noir,Tim Krool,Romero. While Ochawa denied Brazil from getting 2 more points in a group stage match ,Tim Howard simply created magic by making save after save after save after save in all 16 of them in the match against Belgium. Had it not been for Howard I am sure the match would have been over in regulation time with a scoreline of 4 - 0 or more . Tim Krool was substituted in the 120th minute in the quarter-final match against Costa Rica and he made two excellent saves to see Netherlands through to the semifinals, Netherlands are normally very bad with penalty shoot-outs. However in the semifinals against Argentina Rudd Van Hall had some different idea and substituted all 3 players before 120 minute thus Tim Krool remained on the bench . It was Argentine goalkeeper Romero's turn to make the saves and he did save two of the penalty shots to makes sure that Argentina go thorough to the finals. I think it would have been a much more competitive penalty shoot-out if Tim Krool was there.  Goalkeeping is very vital position, most of the matches won by teams are won with a goal difference of 1 or two goals in such a situation saving a few goals can be the difference between a win and loss. I sincerely hope that after this world cup people also keep a record of goalkeeper's saves along with goals scored by strikers. 

Tim Howard in action

Navas saves a penelty shot

          The innovations that we got to see in this world cup is use of Vanishing spray to mark out the position of ball and the wall (Wonder why wasn't it used before). Secondly the use of goal line technology that determines whether the ball has crossed the goal line. Also the use of spider cam(it was already in use in cricket matches).But along with that we have also seen that there have been fouls committed that have simply not caught the eye of the referee. In hockey with a pitch of 70 yards they have two referees why can't the same be done in case of soccer. 

        The Brazuca ball has been very good and has lead to the scoring of many goals, probably we would have seen many more goals but the standards of goalkeeping have been simply stupendous. 

      So everyone enjoy the games and lets hope that the quarter-finals , semifinals and finals bring out some of the best football that the world has ever seen.