"Tigers at home, lambs abroad", well team India did certainly live up to this age old adage and more caving in tamely before the might and barrage of short pitched bowling that the marauding Proteas speedsters unleashed without as much as a by your leave........
The much vaunted and adulated Indian batting simply succumbed to the wiles of the South African fast bowlers and batsman after batsman uncannily resembled a cat on a hot tin roof as the rampaging pace bowling quartet (Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, Lonwabo Tsotsobe and Ryan Mclaren) along with the up and coming Wayne Parnell soon combined to put the Indian batsmen in their place and comprehensively proved their superiority over the Indian batsmen........
Skipper Mahender Singh Dhoni, the dimunitive and dapper Virat Kohli and left arm trundler Ravindra Jadeja were the only three Indian batsmen to put up some semblance of a fight before eventually capitulating to the red hot skills of the bowlers from the rainbow nation........
Dhoni's inexplicable and deeply mystifying decision to field first after winning the toss only served to compound the Indian teams collective miseries as the swashbuckling South African batsmen rode roughshod over them, yes one may grant Dhoni the fact that the conditions were overcast and the grass on the pitch certainly seemed to suggest that it had something to offer the Indian fast bowlers.........
One wonders how Dhoni conveniently overlooked the fact that the very same bowlers had conceded over 300 runs in 6 of team India's last 9 ODI outings and also the fact that two out of the three Indian fast bowlers were still wet behind the ears, yes this fact and the Indian bowlers propensity to bowl length balls in the final overs of the innings when the opposition batsmen are more often than not running riot did certainly cost team India dear.........
Thanks to the pyrotechnics of Messrs, Quentin De Kock who notched up his second ODI hundred in his 20 th game or so, his partner in arms Hashim Amla who was an equal partner in the century plus opening partnership and the gung ho duo of skipper AB De Villers and J.P.Duminy who really took the Indian bowlers to the cleaners and more, team South Africa ended up amassing the gargantuan total of 358/4 and left them at least 85-90 runs to the good.......
84 runs came from the last five overs of the innings bowled by the immature Indian bowlers and more than 125 runs were conceded in the last ten overs of the innings, Mohammed Shami was the only bowler who looked the part and ended up with the fairly creditable figures of 3/68 from his bowling stint, as for the ;rest the littler said the better..........
Team India certainly needs to curb this profligacy and also take a good hard long look at the continuance of Messrs Yuvraj Singh and Suresh Raina in their playing eleven; these two notables failed to cover themselves in glory in the recently concluded series against the West Indian minnows and their struggles continued yesterday, Ambati Rayudu and Ajinkya Rahane might just prove to be adequate if not better replacements for the struggling duo.........
All said and done, team India needs to get it's act together within the next couple of days if they want to avoid yet another "whitewash" or then should I say "brownwash" in alien conditions and foreign soil; come on team India show the rest of the world and the doubting Thomases out there that you will and you can, best the Proteas at their own game and take the world by storm once again......
The much vaunted and adulated Indian batting simply succumbed to the wiles of the South African fast bowlers and batsman after batsman uncannily resembled a cat on a hot tin roof as the rampaging pace bowling quartet (Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, Lonwabo Tsotsobe and Ryan Mclaren) along with the up and coming Wayne Parnell soon combined to put the Indian batsmen in their place and comprehensively proved their superiority over the Indian batsmen........
Skipper Mahender Singh Dhoni, the dimunitive and dapper Virat Kohli and left arm trundler Ravindra Jadeja were the only three Indian batsmen to put up some semblance of a fight before eventually capitulating to the red hot skills of the bowlers from the rainbow nation........
Dhoni's inexplicable and deeply mystifying decision to field first after winning the toss only served to compound the Indian teams collective miseries as the swashbuckling South African batsmen rode roughshod over them, yes one may grant Dhoni the fact that the conditions were overcast and the grass on the pitch certainly seemed to suggest that it had something to offer the Indian fast bowlers.........
One wonders how Dhoni conveniently overlooked the fact that the very same bowlers had conceded over 300 runs in 6 of team India's last 9 ODI outings and also the fact that two out of the three Indian fast bowlers were still wet behind the ears, yes this fact and the Indian bowlers propensity to bowl length balls in the final overs of the innings when the opposition batsmen are more often than not running riot did certainly cost team India dear.........
Thanks to the pyrotechnics of Messrs, Quentin De Kock who notched up his second ODI hundred in his 20 th game or so, his partner in arms Hashim Amla who was an equal partner in the century plus opening partnership and the gung ho duo of skipper AB De Villers and J.P.Duminy who really took the Indian bowlers to the cleaners and more, team South Africa ended up amassing the gargantuan total of 358/4 and left them at least 85-90 runs to the good.......
84 runs came from the last five overs of the innings bowled by the immature Indian bowlers and more than 125 runs were conceded in the last ten overs of the innings, Mohammed Shami was the only bowler who looked the part and ended up with the fairly creditable figures of 3/68 from his bowling stint, as for the ;rest the littler said the better..........
Team India certainly needs to curb this profligacy and also take a good hard long look at the continuance of Messrs Yuvraj Singh and Suresh Raina in their playing eleven; these two notables failed to cover themselves in glory in the recently concluded series against the West Indian minnows and their struggles continued yesterday, Ambati Rayudu and Ajinkya Rahane might just prove to be adequate if not better replacements for the struggling duo.........
All said and done, team India needs to get it's act together within the next couple of days if they want to avoid yet another "whitewash" or then should I say "brownwash" in alien conditions and foreign soil; come on team India show the rest of the world and the doubting Thomases out there that you will and you can, best the Proteas at their own game and take the world by storm once again......
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