Indian eves go down by 2 runs to Pakistan, while men in blue defeated our old enemy by 6 wickets to keep our hopes of a semi-final berth in the World Cup T-20 Championship now underway alive. Despite this facile win, Team India is lagging behind in run rate with a showing of -0.895, whereas table leaders New Zealand and number two Pakistan side are having + run rate to boost their morale. The facile win against Afridi’s side is commendable but at the same time the big loss against an underdog Kiwi side turned the tables against India. From now on we will have count up to the other sides show in the remaining matches and pray both the leading sides lose few matches to give us a backdoor entry if we happen to lose against Australia. In all, this year’s T-20 matches are tricky and rain play spoilsport to go according to the plan. We could have achieved the target much earlier had Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan and Suresh Raina had stayed long enough. Early jitters prevented us from going hammer and tong to build up a better run rate. In all it was an emphatic win but the cloud around for qualifying for semi stage is to be cleared.
S. Abhishek Ramaswamy
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
