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PAKISTAN vs SOUTH AFRICA

The knock out stage has arrived and the first semi final was played between Pakistan and South Africa at Trent Bridge, Nottingham. Pakistan won the toss and elected to bat. They opened their batting with Kamran Akmal and Shazab Hasan. It was a dry track and Pakistan were 22 for 1 after 2 overs losing Hasan and later Kamran was caught by Morkel of Styen for 23 runs. Spin was introduced in the 8th over and both Van der Merve and Botha bowled well and after 11 overs Pakistan were batting at 86 for 2. Afridi played a gem of an innings and was caught by de Villiers b Duminy for a well made 51. Pakistan had nudged the ball around and managed to get singles also. The South African fielding was far from satisfactory and it appeared that the men in green were absent wherever the ball went. Boundaries flowed frequently. Shoab Malik was out for a well compiled 34 caught by Botha of Van der Merve. Younus and Razzak were not able to hit boundaries in the last five overs as the South Africans held them back and Pakistan could compile only 149 in the allotted 20 overs setting a target of 150 runs for SA to enter the final. (more…)

India is out of world cup T20 tournament 2009. I still don’t know what happened but India were cruising along smoothly at 48 for no loss against South Africa (who had made only 130 runs) when I slept hoping for sure that India would at least win this match and save their faces.  But the 8 AM news next morning told me that they had lost by 12 runs.

Every cloud has a silver lining. Someone out there had to tell Dhoni and company that they need to improve their game and not to be too complacent. Do you know what would have happened had India won this tournament? Had India won the T20 title, Lalit Modi would have announced eight IPLs in one year. What would have happened then? Utter chaos. (more…)