India Bat
WI Bat I
WI Bat II
Watch cricket highlights - India vs West Indies - the 1st ODI played at Kingston Jamaica on June 26, 2009.
Scoreline: India 339/6 Yuvraj Singh 131 (102), Dinesh Karthik 67 (77), Dhoni 41 (46), Yusuf Pathan 40 (38)
WI 319 all out: Chanderpaul 63 (59), Sarwan 45 (42), Gayle 37 (33) - Nehra, Pathan 3 wickets each
It’s amazing how T20 cricket changes the way we look at a high run-chase, with 60 odd to get in 40 seemingly gettable nowadays.
The over-hyped short ball against Indian batsmen reared up today again. A lot has been made of it, when the reality is Raina is the only one in the current team who has consistently looked awkward - in fact, it’s surprising, it took so long for bowlers to stumble onto this fact as a consistent weapon against him. Rohit Sharma has been getting out to the pull shot, but those who’ve seen his initial career will recall his performances against Lee and others in Australia. Gambhir too has had his own successful method to combat the short ball which includes the flay over/through slips and the pull shot.
The Yuvraj-Dinesh thing was scratchy initially, almost like they were trying to adapt to ODI cricket having played back-to-back in the IPL and T20 WC - Dwayne Bravo looked the most dependable of the WI bowlers today, while his half-brother (Daddy same, Mummy different) Darren who obviously seems to have watched a lot of Lara made a pretty neat debut. Now if someone could whack some sense into the selectors and get Lendl to replace Morton at the top, WI could well bounce back into the series.
Pregame: A pretty meaningless 4 match ODI series is about to kick off today. No test matches. One good thing with this series is that its end marks the beginning of a decent break for the Indian team. No Sachin, Sehwag, Zaheer (through injury) for India while WI miss Edwards (injured) and Lendl Simmons (shockingly cast astray). Darren Bravo, younger bro of Dwayne makes his debut though, while Raina has been given a break for India - a good time for him to work out the short ball rather than be embarrassed any further in the Windies and lose the confidence he’s built up over the last couple of years. Smart move, that one. Irfan too is not in the Indian squad, but Abhishek Nayar finally gets a call-up.
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