England Fade Away in Bad Light
As we say, fortune favours the brave, India deservingly won this match by 16 runs counting on the Duckworth Lewis method due to bad light. The match was seriously becoming very dull. It makes me remember the World Cup 2007 final.
It could be a bit unfortunate on England's part since they had a chance to rattle the Indian batting. Thanks, to the Indian captain MS Dhoni and Yusuf Pathan for surviving the rampaging Andrew Flintoff, and then scoring runs quickly to pass the 180 runs mark in 40 overs ( that were the required runs in 40 overs according to the D/L method), to see India home.
In the starting, the match was delayed by 45 minutes to fog. Though I feel, if floodlights were installed, then why didn't they use it ? The game was reduced to 49 overs per side. England won the toss and elected to bat for a change. There were a lot of changes in their batting line-up, with Ravi Bopara opening with Ian Bell, and Matt Prior coming down the lower order.England got on to a flying start courtesy Bopara and Bell. Just when Bell was eying his half century, when, he edged a delivery from Munaf Patel that was going just a bit away from him. Then came England captain Kevin Peitersen, who was also looking good, before edging a Harbhjan Singh doosra straight to long off. And after that all the England batsmen except Oawis Shah fell at regular intervals, and went on to be atleast 30 - 40 runs shorter than the expected total score after looking at their opening partnership.
India lost 2 wickets before crossing 50 run mark, when Rohit Sharma and Sehwag got India back on track. Unfortunately for them, they got out in quick succession, and the pressure was back on India, and especially Yuvraj Singh who was looking to become the fourth player in the world to score 3 consecutive tons in Odi's. Yuvraj scored a valuable 38 before getting out on a bouncer from Freddie who exchanged some heated words with Yuvraj on the previous delivery. Then came Pathan to support Dhoni, and saw Freddie off in the dying moments of the match by scoring 2 boundaries in the last over of the game.
Harbhajan Singh was judged Man of the Match for taking 3 important wickets in the England innings.
England are just one loose away from loosing the whole series. Will Kevin Peitersen and his boys be able to fight their way back to win the series ?
India are leading the series 3-0 and are just one win away from grabbing their hands at the Hero Honda Cup.
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