Cricket News: A look into this summers cricketing action
The Asia Cup may have come to an end, however the summer cricket season is just picking up momentum, as world champions Australia who are playing against hosts England in a 5 one day series lost their third consecutive one dayer yesterday and thus the series.
The Pakistani team has reached England to play against both Australia and hosts England, whereas at the same time the Indians look set to start ofg their test match series against Sri Lanka and then participate in a triangular series which will see New Zealand in action as the Sri Lankans continue playing hosts.
But before giving you details of what is to follow, let us look back at the Asia Cup and analyze how it might have helped Asia’s best cricketing teams, who make the majority of the worlds cricketing pie in their for next year’s ICC World Cup 2011.
The 2011 ICC World Cup will be played in similar conditions with everyone except Pakistan playing host, due to Pakistan’s security concerns. Pakistan, after constant security problems, was stripped of its’ hosting rights a couple of months back from the biggest cricketing event which takes place every four years.
The Asia cup brought about positives for all teams except Bangladesh. The event displayed good competitive cricket and one important aspect of the Cup was that it managed to highlight the fact that despite the popularity of the T-20 format of the game, One Day International’s will always maintain their aura.
India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, in the 50 over format, proved to the world that the excitement and flavour of the conventional format still prevails as every match went down to the wire, thus keeping the excitement and nervousness of the fans to the limit.
Another aspect of the tournament was that it helped the teams decide their line ups for the World cup as well as experiment with a few players both young and old.
India won the tournament from favourites Sri Lanka. Thus Dhoni added another feather to his cap, however not all was answered for the Indians as apart from their senior batsmen, none of their youngsters managed to perform as per liking.
Sri Lanka, seemed to look all prepared for the World Cup as they won all the games in the tournament except for the one that mattered. Thus, after having an excellent series their batting and fielding collapsed in the finals; something they need to come up with a strategy of avoiding in future games.
Then comes in Pakistan who despite not making it to the final and losing close games to Sri Lanka and India did have a few positives to take home.
The first of-course being that their newly elected captain Shahid Afridi seems to be riding on great luck ever since getting the captaincy and Pakistan will be hoping that his good form continues.
Another commendable area for the Pakistanis was that they looked united as a team especially after the recent internal team problems and lastly there was the return of the “Rawalpindi Express” who after staying in the berth for some time finally returned to the tracks and from the start looked a much disciplined bowler then he ever has been before.
Thus the only team which does not seem to be making any progress and bringing a sad name to the sub continents cricketing dominance is Bangladesh.
Not only did the team under-perform but disappointingly there was even no individual performance from the Bangladeshis to be proud of either.
However, what is done is done and they must now look to seriously improve themselves before the ICC rethinks it decision of granting Bangladesh a Test status and gives it to some other better deserving team.
India will now go on and play 3 tests against Sri Lanka starting from the 18th of July and in preparation for the tour, ace Indian batsmen Yuvraj Singh who had recently been dropped due to a lack of fitness and form has been recalled to India's squad.
In the bowling department India has asked Ishant Sharma, Sreesanth and Zaheer Khan to handle the new ball.
Pakistan have reached England and in their first warm up game have looked good. They will go up against Marylebone, Kent, Essex and Northamptonshire before playing two T-20’s and 2 test matches against Australia followed by 3 tests, two T-20’s and 5 one dayers against England with the tour to continue all throughout July, August and end in late September.
At the same time in England, the hosts have found good form and have defeated arch rivals, Australia, in the 5 one dayer series being up 3-0 after yesterdays tense game.
England yesterday managed to restrict the Australian batsmen to 212 with the help of Graeme Swann who took 4 wickets for 37 runs.
However in the batting department England did lose momentum, luckily for a brief moment only as they slid from 185 for 3 to 203 for the loss of 9 wickets as they needed 10 additional runs to win.
However for Engalds sake, Tim Bresnan managed to hit two desperate boundaries and thus seal the victory and the series for the hosts on a day when their national soccer team were wiped out of the FIFA World Cup 2010 by Germany.
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