Posts

Showing posts from April, 2011

Mohali: winning hearts and minds

March 30 was a day everyone in the subcontinent and cricket lovers all over the world had been waiting for. The semi-final between India and Pakistan lived up to the cricketing hype. It was a match full of twists and turns. When India made 260 runs after batting in the first innings, many people thought the target was ‘gettable’ while others predicted that Pakistan’s batting would collapse as has happened many times in the past. The latter prediction came true. Even as our bowlers did their job well in restricting the solid Indian batting to an achievable target, our batsmen could not deliver the goods. This is not to say that the fault lies with the batsmen alone. Our main strike bowler, Umar Gul, did not fire on the day; in fact he misfired and gave away too many runs. Our spinners did a great job of containment and getting wickets while Wahab Riaz outshone everyone with his excellent bowling. Our fielding was perhaps the worst in this match. While dropping catches and misfielding is