Howzzat!

India moving up the ladder

Been quite some time since i wrote for this blog. During this hibernation two series featuring india have come and gone with india being sucessful in both. Though it is not such a great acheivement as it sounds it has helped propel the indians to the best position they ever were in the icc test rankings ; third spot , just a point behind england. The victories were expected because the teams were south africa and bangldesh. Although saying the two teams in the same breath makes SA look real bad , they arent that good either.

It wasnt long back that sa and australia reigned supreme. South africans can no longer boast of being the second best team and i'm not just refering to the facts which have been galling.As a team they dont look menacing or intimidating. Absence of alan donald?. They dont look that spirited side they were. Johnty rhodes?. and above all their batting depends too much on Smith and Kallis. As good a batsmen he is Kallis is the sort of bed rock to support the more dashing players and south africa dont have those species. All this made the 1-0 series victory of india a decent series win not a great one. Moreover they had the home advantage. Looking at it from the other side it was no-win situation for the indians. A loss to this weak side meant a lot of ridicule while a win was carelessly brushed aside.

The bangladesh series thankfully didnt throw surprises and the indians duly finished the given task of whitewashing the hapless team. The bangladeshis just added to their record of defeats. This is not good. How long do they get before they either have a victory or are stripped of the test status , which they didnt deserve in the first place. If bangladesh were good enough to play tests then so were the kenyans or canadians for the matter. I might take my own team and claim test status!

Indians werent complainig. They helped boost their record books by amassing runs and picking up a lot of wickets. This has put them in the third place breathing down on england's back. But considering the fact that england have a full series against south africa they may just feel secure of their spot unless the south africans pull a miracle.....

posted by Tyagarajan S @ 3:44:00 AM