World Cup 2011 - India vs Ireland

India vs Ireland

The leading newspaper’s headline said, “India packed a powerful punch to steamroll Ireland”. Yeah, right. The only powerful punches were that of Yusuf Pathan and Zaheer Khan. Except that, everybody scores less than 5 out of 10.

Winning the toss and opting to field. All good. Zaheer Khan bowls a super ball in the very first over to clean bowl one of the opening batsmen. Another wicket fell in Zaheer’s next over when Dhoni took a decent catch to his low right. After that the bowling was exposed. For 23.2 overs, none of the Irish batsmen gave India any control or any chance of a wicket. The supposedly good bowlers were milked around easily for singles and occasional boundary, and the runrate almost touched 5 at one stage. That included Harbhajan Singh. The fielding was as if a lower level Ranji match was on. There is absolutely no pardon to any of the bowlers who bowled during that stage. This raises a question mark on the exclusion on Ashwin. The only sense I could make out is that Munaf Patel and Piyush Chawla were given a chance to prove themselves after the England fiasco and they failed big time. I hope this mistake is not repeated for the Netherlands match and Ashwin gets to play. The Irish innings meandered to 207 after that when circumstances gave Yuvraj Singh some wickets, which supposedly made his best bowling figures. I am not sure why he was so upbeat and pumped up taking a wicket every time. I am sure Dhoni must be laughing in his head. All in all, the best performance with ball by far was that of Zaheer Khan. He was the only one who bowled at Ireland like a top notch bowler should have. Miserly, and bang on target, and absolutely no boundary balls.

But wait, the match wasn’t over yet. Indian batsmen were not to be left behind the bowlers. Sehwag fell to a careless shot. Sachin and Kohli never got going, only grinded out those runs at a batting strike rate of 65-70. Gambhir fell to a laughable delivery. Things were not looking much shiny when Yuvraj Singh and Dhoni were at the crease at 100/4. A couple of wickets and Ireland could well have dished out another surprise in two weeks. That is where they lacked – at incisive bowling. Yuvraj and Dhoni knew that Irish bowlers cannot get them out unless they make a mistake and with plenty of time on offer, played a sensible innings, only just. Yusuf Pathan was lovely. He came as all powerful and stayed all powerful until the end of the innings. Those two sixes and a four in the five balls he faced, after THE Sachin Tendulkar was out off the first ball, were a treat to watch. Normally, any Indian batsman would just knock the ball around in the over Sachin gets out. He would not. He played his game, and did just to the bowling and the crowd by rightly dispatching them out of the park. Thank you, Sir. Rest of you all, including you Yuvraj Singh, you better pick up your game before the SA match. And in your favour, you have Netherlands to play in between.