Match Analysis, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750 v England - Englishmen stamp their authority in the World Cup
Cricket fans witnessed one of the best One Day International (ODI) in the history of the game as a crunch match of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 group B, between the hosts India and England ended as a tie. The match was completely dominated by the batsmen
all the way as Sachin Tendulkar and Andrew Strauss struck amazing hundreds to entertain millions of cricket fans all around the world.
England would be the happier of the two sides with this result as no cricket analyst was giving them a chance half way through the match when the home team had posted a mammoth total of 338 runs on the board. English reply was even stronger and they were
cruising towards victory before they lost way in the batting power-play to hand over the advantage back to India.
Strauss and company should have won the game quite easily as they needed 57 runs off 45 balls with eight wickets in the bank. However Andrew Strauss decided to take the power-play after 42 overs which back-fired as England lost four wickets during the five
overs and scored only 25 runs. However a late assault by Bresnan, Swann and Shahzad made sure that their team gains at least one point, which could prove to be decisive at the end of the group stage.
Andy Flower would be happy with the form his batsmen have shown so far in the two World Cup matches and the most promising thing has been the fact that Strauss has been leading the team from his own example. If ever there was a captain’s knock played, it
was today as Strauss made a magical 158.
English bowling and fielding remains the concern for Strauss and Flower as they leaked too many runs, especially James Anderson who gave away 91 runs in his 10 overs. He was particularly expensive against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Netherlands-c753 as well giving away 73 runs. Based on
his poor performance he might lose his place in the playing eleven for the upcoming crucial ties.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/MS-Dhoni-c2028 on the contrary would be extremely upset with his bowlers as they failed to defend a huge score. Indian bowling has been under a lot of criticism off-late and it was badly exposed against England. Apart from Harbhajan, all the bowlers went for more
than six runs per over which is not acceptable in ODI cricket. India is rated as the hot-favourite of this tournament but they would have to do some serious work with their bowling combination if they are to do well in the knockout stage.
The sort of strength India has in their batting might prompt Dhoni to bring in an extra bowler in place of a batsman. Most probably Yousaf Pathan will make way to http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Ravichandran-Ashwin-c84208 in the upcoming matches.
Indian batting was exceptional once again as the batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar scored his 47th ODI century to help his team post such a big score on the board. He seems to be getting younger every single day as his hunger for runs even at this
stage of the career is quite extraordinary.
All of a sudden, England has become a real force in this World Cup after this result as India was the clear favourite of this encounter. Group ‘B’ is now evenly poised as India, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/South-Africa-c757 and England would want to end up at the top position after the
group stage so that they can play the weaker team of group ‘A’ in the quarter-final.
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