Everybody was willing it to be a tight match. This will go down to the wire they said. India’s bowling was not good enough they said. India keeps collapsing in the powerplay they said. This is Australia and they don’t give up easily they said. Personally I was confident of a comfortable victory, and even though India tried its best to make it as tense as possible we won easily in the end.
1. The Australian batting at the end of the 1st over decided that 260 was a good enough score for them to defend. They did not take into account the depth and form of India’s batting and the inadequate nature of their own bowling.
2. India bowled well and fielded well almost above par. This ensured that Australia did not get 280. We have to remember that this was a Ponting playing for pride. They kept saying he played his part. The fault lay with the others. Haddin hit his par score. Hussey failed. Clarke and White were unimpressive. An out of form White should never have batted so high up yesterday in the first place.
3. India batted easily. The Oz bowling never threatened. Lee was consistent. Tait and Johnson were consistently bad. Krezja is their best spinner? Sorry not enough for the best batting team in the world. There never was a real fight from the Aussies. No fantastic catch, no match turning direct hit run out, no pressure to prevent singles in the middle overs. This was not a typical Aussie trench fight. A bad shot from Kohli and some mad running made the game more interesting than what it actually was.
4. Finally when Yuvi and Raina smashed the winning runs it finished a “supposedly” tight match.
5. Some thoughts from the match – Raina was a good pick over Yusuf after all the chances he was given. Munaf is getting predictable but should be persisted with I think. Bhajji needs to step up with a few wickets. Dhoni did a great job by getting Sachin and Kohli to bowl. That should help in case one of the main bowlers get hit. Sehwag & Raina can also able to chip in if necessary, the team looks more settled. I just hope Mohali does not encourage Dhoni to pick Sreesanth for the next game, but then who knows what he can come up with!
Sanjay
i3j3Cricket :: A blog for fans of Indian cricket... 
India did win comfortably in the end but Dhoni played a poor shot and that really put us under a bit of pressure for a couple of overs. It was a bad shot from someone who wants his players to play for the country and not for spectators.
Well played india.
India outclassed australia. though india slightly gave the match for a while in australia hand as dhoni played that awkward shot but raina and yuraj handled presur nicely.
Being a pakistani i shal gve credit to yuraj who made possible a clash of two rivals.
well done india! Afridi’s boys are waiting for u at mohali. see u there
Well said, Sanjay. These are exactly my thoughts also. Dhoni must click in the next match. We must have a plan for Afridi, Uma Gul and the rest of the Pak bowlers. Hope team India will watch all of Afridi’s videos in the next 5 odd days, understand his pattern of bowling and get ready for a counter attack. Hope we will not play “kabbadi” while getting quick singles 🙂 Simple basics such as if the ball goes behind the wickets, it is the runner’s call to get the singles; in front of the wicket, it is the batsman’s call – how do they forget fundamentals! Hope India will learn from the errors and return as champions, go India!!!
Looks like India is the only survivor from Group B. Given that SL made mincemeat of NZ in their Group A match (NZ were skittled in 35 overs and MM got a 4-for), we will have an all sub-conitent final for sure. Just hoping that it will be IND-SL.
It marked an end of era in Cricket World Cup, with Australia for the first time since 1992 not able to reach world cup final and also losing their 34 match winning streaks in world cup against Pakistan.