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Cricket Fans

Mustafizur Rahman gave too many against India

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Mustafizur Rahman had a reality check against India at Mirpur on Wednesday as he was taken for plenty on a bowling conducive deck.


It was for the first time in his short career that Mustafizur had been belted around the park like that.

Mustafizur had done some severe damage to India when they had last toured Bangladesh.

But, this time around, the Indian batsmen looked to play him differently. There was a pre planned approach to try and attack him.

At the start though, the Indian batsmen struggled to get him away as he was getting the ball to move around.

But, later on Rohit Sharma and Hardik Pandya dealt with Mustafizur in a very harsh way as they dismissed him with disdain when he returned in the death to finish his quota.

He was probably trying to use too many variations and thus, was faltering a bit in terms of his accuracy and for the batsmen of the quality of Rohit and Pandya, those were easy pickings.

Mustafizur could have been more expensive if the umpires had not been a little generous to him towards the end of his spell.

A couple of his deliveries which he tried to slip in wide on the off side could so easily have been called wide deliveries and India could have got extra runs and extra deliveries, but, he got the benefit of the doubt as the umpires let those go. Continue reading “Mustafizur Rahman gave too many against India” →

Cricket Fans

Ravindra Jadeja has made a memorable comeback in white clothing for India

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Ravindra Jadeja has made a memorable comeback in white clothing for India as he has managed to grab a total of 12 wickets in the three innings in the presently going test series against South Africa.

The most pleasing thing for Jadeja’s fans is to see that he is bowling with a straight arm again. After the shoulder injury which he had sustained playing in the 2013 season, he had started to bowl with a slightly round arm action which was harming him. Bowling that way, he was not being able to bring his natural variation into play and was going for plenty.

His performance on the tours of England and Australia and also, in the World Cup was disappointing prompting the selectors to drop him and ask him to go to the drawing board again and figure out his problems.

And, the Shaurashtra southpaw indeed did quite a bit of work on his game after being left out. Now, he is looking as confident as he has ever been and most importantly, he is bowling his straight deliveries, or the arm balls as people often call it, with the same devastating effect.

Batting wise too, Jadeja made a decent contribution in the first game in Mohali. The scoreboard would show only 38 to his name, but, those 38 runs were like gold dust in the context of that game as the pitch there was a square turner. Continue reading “Ravindra Jadeja has made a memorable comeback in white clothing for India” →

Cricket Fans

Andrew Strauss is not going to be hesitant to make any decision

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It looks like Andrew Strauss is not going to be hesitant to make any decision in his new role as the England chief.

There were talks that Strauss will not be able to work ruthlessly.

But, with his handling of the Kevin Pietersen matter, Strauss has shown that he is not worried about public opinion and he would do what he thinks is in the best interests of the England team.

It would have been very hard for Strauss to call Pietersen and tell him straight on his face that he’s not the guy who is to be trusted and thus, there’s no chance at all for him to be given a recall as far as the international Cricket is concerned.

Pietersen had just smashed more than 300 runs versus Leicestershire and the entire media was hyping him. The pressure was immense on Strauss and ECB to take him in consideration for the New Zealand series.

But, Strauss was very clear what he wanted to do and straightaway after taking the charge, he set up a meeting with Pietersen and made him aware of the situation.

Of course, people will have different things to say on this. Some might think that Strauss took personal grudges into account when he made the call.

But, at least he had the courage to make the call and he was brave enough to come out in the press and explain everything. Continue reading “Andrew Strauss is not going to be hesitant to make any decision” →

Cricket Fans

English top order batsmen must make sure that they don’t go too much

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In the test series against Pakistan, the English top order batsmen must make sure that they don’t go too much into their shell against the new ball.

Normally, anywhere in the world, batting against the new ball is the trickiest thing, but, in subcontinent, the scenario happens to be a little bit different.

If you are playing in subcontinent, your best chance of scoring runs fluently is when the ball is hard and new and has shine on it because that’s when you can play your shots on the rise. You don’t have to worry about swing because it won’t be there.

If you are too watchful at the start and don’t take advantage of the hardness of the ball, you will not help yourself as batting will only get tougher and tougher with the ball getting softer and older.

It’s a mistake that England actually made on their last tour to Emirates. Their openers at that time adopted an immensely circumspect approach and just did not score runs when the fast bowlers were on with the new ball only to go on and find later on that scoring against the spinners was virtually impossible.

In one of the games on that tour, England just required 145 to win and their opening pair hung in there for 90 deliveries in that chase. But, what they scored in that duration was just 21 and once they got split, the spinners waved their magic and in a matter of 50 more runs thereafter, the whole team was back in the hut.

Had the openers been a little more attacking there, it would have kept Pakistan in the game.

This time around, England however, has picked an attacking opener in Alex Hales who would not hang back at all and that would do the Three Lions a lot of good. Continue reading “English top order batsmen must make sure that they don’t go too much” →

Cricket Fans

Problems for England Cricket are just not getting any lesser

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The problems for England Cricket are just not getting any lesser. Last year, ahead of the World Cup, they found themselves in a desperate position of making a change in the captaincy and now when the Ashes series is just weeks away, they can’t quite decide whether they should persist with the head coach or not.

Peter Moores’ second tenure as England coach has turned out to be an absolute failure.

If the test series against India is barred, England has been pathetic in every tournament that they have played under Moores in the last one year or so.

Of course the coach does not go out there on the field to perform and thus, he can’t be entirely responsible for the team’s performance, but, he remains in charge of the tactics and selections and if those things wrong, then the blame falls on him.

Moores’ selections have been baffling in all forms of the game, whether you talk about playing James Taylor in a finisher’s role in the World Cup or playing Jonathan Trott as an opener in the third match of the recent series against West Indies, they were all rubbish decisions. Continue reading “Problems for England Cricket are just not getting any lesser” →

Cricket Fans

Afghanistan Cricket team carries Best Bowlers

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The Afghanistan Cricket team is fabulous in terms of fast bowling. If they work a bit on their discipline and start pitching more balls on line and length, they can cause some issues for even the test sides in Australia/New Zealand.

They played a practice game against India at Adelaide Oval the other day and though the score line of that game does speak too highly of them, the fact is that they had the men in blue under a bit of pressure.

They were clocking 90 miles on the speed gun with new ball and were beating the Indian batsmen in pace.

Had the boundaries been a little more stretched and had some of the top edges gone to hand, India might have been bowled out for not too many in that game. Continue reading “Afghanistan Cricket team carries Best Bowlers” →