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2011 Cricket World Cup


Stubby

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I watched some of the match and actually thought India's spinners were bowling excellently. Dhoni put the field back because he knew the Bangladeshis needed boundaries, Tamim looked unusually subdued and quiet, and the game just drifted away. Harbajan was particularly economical. Admittedly Sreesanth got pummelled, but apart from that it looked pretty good to me. I didn't see the closing overs though, so I guess they could have cut loose later...

ST

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I watched some of the match and actually thought India's spinners were bowling excellently. Dhoni put the field back because he knew the Bangladeshis needed boundaries, Tamim looked unusually subdued and quiet, and the game just drifted away. Harbajan was particularly economical. Admittedly Sreesanth got pummelled, but apart from that it looked pretty good to me. I didn't see the closing overs though, so I guess they could have cut loose later...

ST

Well, it wasn't an awful performance per se, but I would have expected them to strike some early blows into the Bangladesh lineup. Bangladesh at various points in the match were 1/129, 2/189 and 3/234, which wouldn't inspire much confidence against some of the stronger teams in the tournament. Some of the bowlers were ok, but Sreesanth was most definitely the weak link, he goes for too many runs.

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Hmm, I've never really thought of taking wickets as being the important thing in ODI or T20. I mean, obviously if you get all the wickets that's a plus, but if I had to choose between two sets of 10 over bowling figures, I'd take 0-30 over 2-60. Particularly in a high scoring game - I guess when you're defending a low-ish total there are times when it might be the other way round, especially since that would imply that batting was difficult on the surface. There was some turn on offer for the spinners (Harbhajan, in particular, got some pretty sharp tweak), but apart from that this pitch seemed like a pretty placid one.

When Bangla got to 50 runs after 5 overs, you thought there might be a game on, but then India just throttled the life out of them. They didn't need to take wickets because the bowling and fielding was tight enough that the batsmen couldn't cut loose. Even when the RRR was at a managable (if a little high) 8 rpo, they never looked like getting there. It just seemed very clinical from India - they had the big total to defend and they put it away in a no-fuss manner (Sreesanth excepted).

Then there's the fact that they used 6 bowlers - on sub-continental pitches they might be able to get away with just dropping Sree and adding an extra batsman! Yuvraj looked reasonably competent in the third spinner role (although he was noticeably easier to play than Harbhajan and Pathan). If they don't feel like trusting Yuvraj to bowl a full 10, who else have they got in the bowling cupboard?

ST

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Then there's the fact that they used 6 bowlers - on sub-continental pitches they might be able to get away with just dropping Sree and adding an extra batsman! Yuvraj looked reasonably competent in the third spinner role (although he was noticeably easier to play than Harbhajan and Pathan). If they don't feel like trusting Yuvraj to bowl a full 10, who else have they got in the bowling cupboard?

I've often wondered why Sehwag doesn't bowl that much anymore (and definitely not so much in ODIs). To me Sehwag is actually quite a good bowler, as far as part-timers go I would definitely put him up there as a decent threat and certainly one to get through his overs quickly enough if over rates are a concern. I remember the last time India toured here, there were sessions where I felt that Sehwag outbowled Harbhajan, even if it was only for a short spell.

When you look at India's part-time bowling options, they are all spinners. Sometimes it helps if you have a Collingwood-esque medium pacer who bowls stump to stump, and who the wicketkeeper can stand up to. Ganguly was never a world-beating bowler but he could sometimes get a few overs over and done with for not too many. In the home conditions I don't think the lack of a medium part-timer will hurt them though.

Point taken about the wickets and so forth for Bangladesh - I suppose in the grand scheme of things it wasn't all that important. I think in general I was just expecting India to roll them over quicker than they did, which may be doing a disservice to Bangladesh's improvement over the last few years.

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Hereward has raced to a very strong lead though...

Malt's in the lead at the moment, although Hereward has a lot of Aussies in his side so I'd expect him to retake his lead tomorrow. I'm currently regretting not changing my Captain to Sangakarra, if I had I think I'd be leading now, still going from 13th to 3rd in one day isn't too bad.

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I had one Aussie and he didn't play (Ferguson), so I've slipped from 1st to 6th. The 5 ahead of me all had Shane Watson.

Well, if you will stubbornly refuse to pick the finest cricketer of his generation, you deserve all you get.

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Not too keen on the BATTING pitches. Huge scores are fun, I know, but in these early stages they make for total and hence boring annihilation.

Or maybe I'm just being biased, because Pakis are woefully ill-equipped when it comes to batting. Bowling's been our forte since the glory days of the 2Ws. And we haven't had a true opening batsman since Saeed Anwar retired :(

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Not too keen on the BATTING pitches. Huge scores are fun, I know, but in these early stages they make for total and hence boring annihilation.

Or maybe I'm just being biased, because Pakis are woefully ill-equipped when it comes to batting. Bowling's been our forte since the glory days of the 2Ws. And we haven't had a true opening batsman since Saeed Anwar retired :(

I agree pitches that help the bowler a bit are better than completely flat tracks. Not sure it would have helped too much in most of the games so far, since most of them were always likely to be mismatches.

Stupid Goober, didn't get a hundred. :tantrum:

It was a bit predictable that he would. He did give me some useful points so I'm not complaining too much.

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I hope people realize that while player transfers are capped at 40, captain changes are unlimited. I have decisions to make, Petersen or Prior as captain for tomorrow? I think the former.

I didn't realise that, cheers. I'm trying not to get too into this so I've avoided any transfers or captain changes as yet, I still need to get some stuff done at work :)

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These first matches were bound to be walkovers. Australia weren't quite as convincing as some of the huge landslides in the other matches but I suppose that's ok at this early stage. It would have been nice for Ponting to get some runs though, he hasn't played much cricket recently.

It's a nice time to view it in Australia (matches start at 8pm) but I only ever get the first innings before I have to sleep. So yes, I am hoping Strauss bats first too. (Unless he bowls first and wins the match in 50 overs).

As for bowler-friendly pitches, they would be nice...but this is India, I doubt there are going to be many minefields out there. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a 400+ score at some point. With so many smaller teams out there, batting friendly pitches and no doubt more mismatches around the corner, it's quite conceivable that there's a 400 score waiting to come out.

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