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.