SriLanka-13 Vs India 11 ...?

Cricket, India played a 5 match one day series against Srilanka. India won the series 4-1, besides winning the only T20 (Twenty-Twenty). It was very nice to watch the Indian team playing with a lot of spirit and confidence, against the Srilankan players and their umpires. It was not a slip in writing, yes their umpires. The newspapers mentioned that the umpiring was "just not upto standards", but if we are putting in an unparliamentary statement, they were just lobsided.

Sachin was given out LBW (Leg Before Wicket), 3 times in a row, all wrong decisions. The (little) young master is a great player and even a greater "human being", he just did not show any sign of frustration. I was just raging with anger. If the Srilankan umpires thought, as in good old days, Indian batting would collapse after Tendulkar's departure, then it was proved wrong. The *real* Indian batting started after Tendulkar's unlucky dismissals. Raina, Dhoni, Yuvaraj, Yusuf, ... impressed with their bat. Zaheer, Praveen and Ishant, impressed everybody with their length bowling. In Munaf, the Indians have found someone who can boul line and length everytime (some call him the Indian McGrath). Anyway, the umpires decisions did not affect the outcome in anyway. Team India just overwhelmed the Srilankans in all aspect of the game.

In the last game, the T20, the umpires went mad, I lost my cool, when the umpire did not give LBW a couple of times, when the ball was pitching in line and was about to hit the middle stump. I thought, as in the one dayers, the Indian team will win comfortably. But there was a (slight) hiccup in the middle overs, and it made me think for sometime that the umpires won it atlast. The SL-13, had some fun till the Pathan brothers decisively swung the bat in India's favour.

Truth always *WINS*, and this was proved once again in the India-SL match.

Test cricket's more interesting than ever before ...

Recently South Africa chased a mammoth 413 against the mighty Australians in their own backyard. While many are happy to discuss the reasons for this Australian defeat, I am happy to see that few teams have already started outplaying the Aussies, and this will make cricket more interesting than ever before.

On a philosophical note ...
Recently, I was watching the movie Matrix, in which Neo defeats "Agents (Smith)" when he starts "believing in himself". In this note, it's just that more team think that they can chase huge totals instead of playing for a mostly sure "defensive defeat" ...

On the other hand, Australia will be alright once they start believing that "they are invincibles, no more"...

387 scored in the fourth innings ....

This is great news for the "shell shocked Indians", especially after the Bombay carnage.

Tendulkar (is from Bombay) and he once again did it for India. From now his critics will have to find a new reason. What an Innings from our "little master"?

I attribute this test to the entire Indian team.