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.