West Indies have brought out open India’s Weakness

Dhoni misses Sehwag at the top for sure. Gambhir, in the absence of Sehwag is altogether a different player. He is restricting his normal shot making somehow or at least his authority is absent in the middle. Rohit Sharma is in good form, but when he has a bad day, Indian’s top order collapses for sure, if top order collapses, Indians are having a bad day. Dhoni has not helped the team’s cause by shuffling the batting order in preliminary matches. It only made situation tough for Suresh Raina when he came at the top against West Indies.

Yuvraj’s innings was a legendary innings. An innings like the one he played against West Indies differentiates him from rest of the players in the world. He had to counter attack when the chips are down and at the same time build a partnership with other batsmen playing along. Dhoni failed miserably to stay till the end. Yusuf Pathan is really coming off age. He provided the able support which Yuvi needed at the most crucial juncture. Taking the score past 150 was no mean achievement, when your top order collapses like that.

West Indies’ fielding effort was simply out of the world. The catch to dismiss Gambhir by Simmons was one of the best and tough, simply because he had to run against the ball dropping in no man’s land and to pull it off so simply was stupendous. He took three catches and scored crucial runs and helped to chase down the score by having a partnership with Bravo.

Dwayne Bravo had a fantastic outing on the day. His 4 wickets, along with 66 not out was the best all round effort on the day. Gayle did a fantastic move to send him up the order ahead of Sarwan and Chanderpaul and Bravo grabbed it with both hands and played a blinder to make life difficult for Indians. Chanderpaul stepped in and provided Bravo the accelerator peddle to run through with the match, with lots of balls to spare.

A fantastic match and this has ensured that Indians have to play out of their skins just like the last world cup to come out of misery and be a part of Semi finals.

Lets see, whether they will live up to it.

Thanks,

Prashy.