Yusuf Pathan
India beat New Zealand by 5 wickets in the 4th ODI in Bangalore.
New Zealand started the match with a bang, you could tell that they looked determined and had no interest of going back empty handed.
The opening batsmen, Martin Guptill made a reasonable 30 and Brendon McCullum made 42. The middle order also contributed well with Scott Styris’s 46, Ross Taylor’s 44 and most importantly James Franklin’s 98. Almost all except 3 put up a fight.
The Indian bowling today was highly ineffective, Ashish Nehra might have taken two wickets but he was hit for 70 runs and the same goes for Ravichandran Ashwin who also took two wickets but got hit for 66 runs.
The element of surprise today was Yusuf Pathan. New Zealand was probably so busy strategising for the likes of Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir that they probably didn’t anticipate getting so badly beaten by Yusuf Pathan.
He stole the show with his 3 wickets and 123 runs ensuring that India doesn’t have a single loss in the series so far. Virat Kohli seems to have decided to give others a chance in this match since he got out a duck, and even Gambhir made only 27, he probably wanted to put pressure on his middle order for once, which thank fully worked, when else would he or anyone else for that matter get a chance like this again? Parthiv Patel was seen after a long time in International Cricket, made a steady and helpful 53runs.
For the first time in this series you could think that India were actually at a stage where victory wasn’t going to be easy against the Kiwi’s.
But no matter how much New Zealand tried, no one could stop Yusuf Pathan today.
His one over of countless boundaries is what ultimately put the match far from New Zealand’s reach. Saurabh Tiwary seemed to be calm and collected and rotated strike whenever necessary, it was obvious he was being of assistance to Yusuf and not trying for personal glory.
Tiwary snuck in a boundary towards the last few over’s when Yusuf was showing signs of fatigue. He ultimately ended the match with a 6, a common phenomenon these days amongst younger players.
Yusuf seems to have grabbed this opportunity with both hands as this was his last chance to show the team and the selectors that not considering him for the World Cup would be foolish indeed. Well whether it worked or not we’ll know in a few days. But surely he must at least be in the final 16?
So on a day where the Bowlers are having a dry spell the batsmen seem to have stepped up, that is a positive to take out, a negative however would be that the bowling still doesn’t seem piercing, not enough for the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup 2011.
Tags: Cricket, India, Indian Cricket Team, New Zealand, ODI Match, ODI Series, Saurabh Tiwary, Yusuf Pathan
