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India bowed out of the ICC T20 World Cup Championship with a five-wicket defeat by Sri Lanka in the match held in the Caribbean on Tuesday. Team India had lost all of their matches in the Super eight fight and stand last in the  list. On paper, Team India looks one of the best in the world, but when it comes to ground reality, they have fizzled out in their application to the assigned task. 

What happened there is hard to pin point, but if we do a collective soul searching, it was a combined responsibility of the selection committee in the first place and the team management on the ground in the second place. 

With hats off to Krish Srikaant for his splended contribution to Indian Cricket, he should have infused young legs into the 15 players selected for the World Cup. Anyone, who can do a Gayle or a Pollard on the pitch from India was Robin Uthappa, and he did not find a place in the playing XI.  (more…)

Sri Lanka skipper Kumar Sangakkara won the toss and elected to bat in the fourth ODI against India played at the Eden Gardens, Kolkata, on Thursday.

A superb catch by Virat Kohli  brought the end of Dilshan as Sri Lanka lost their first wicket for 31 after 8 overs. Jayasuriya also looked in fine nick in his  15 runs before he edged Zaheer in the first slip.

For the Sri Lankan’s, Upul Tharanga hit his seventh ODI century and participated in a 126-run partnership with  Kumar Sangakkara (60) as Sri Lanka posted 315 for six, the highest score at the venue till India overhauled it. (more…)

Tillakaratne Dilshan reached 41 from just 18 balls, and with Tharanga and Kumar Sangakkara continuing the run riot, Sri Lanka were on the path of another massive total after deciding to bat first in Cuttack on Monday.

 But from 165 for 1 after 22.2 overs, they collapsed like nine-pins and were 239 all out. They had lost the remaining nine wickets for 74 runs. Srilanka were 51 for no loss in 4 overs.

The spinners controlled the run riot after the pace bowlers, Ashish Nehra & Co. were slammed to fences and the fielders sent on the leather hunt. It was left to Virender Sehwag, captaining in place of MS Dhoni, to give the team some respite, having Sangakkara stumped for 46, despite Dinesh Karthik initially fumbling to collect the ball.  That success was built on soon after, with Tharanga losing his off stump in Jadeja’s opening over, when he was at 73. (more…)

Electing to bat, the Lankans lost Tillakaratne Dilshan (1) early with Ishant Sharma producing a delivery to knock down his leg stump and the crowd went into raptures.

Ishant managed to pick up 2 wickets for 42 runs and Yuvraj managed to bag 3 for 23. India once again put up an extremely sloppy fielding display to allow Sri Lanka to post a mammoth 206 for seven in the second and last Twenty 20 international here on Saturday. (more…)

Replying to Sri Lanka’s first innings total of 393, the 31-year-old Sehwag set the Brabourne stadium on fire by plundering runs at will to post a record score of 443 for one at close of second day’s play.

Sehwag notched up his 17th Test ton, his sixth 200 plus total,and laid the platform for India to push for victory which would take them to the number one position in the ICC Test rankings. Even though cricket is unpredictaable – Sehwag has set his eyes on the third triple century which will another feather in his cap. Sunil Gavaskar, who was in the commentators box, jokingly asked his colleague – is this a net practice or a Test match? A great compliment to Sehwag. (more…)

India’s biggest victory over Srilanka also gave them their 100th Test win at the Green Park stadium at Kanpur on Friday. They achieved this milestone after playing 432 test matches. Their tails are up and will take on Srilanka in the third and final test at Mumbai with courage and confidence. (more…)

India won the toss and captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni opted to bat at the commencement of the first test match being played at Ahmedabad. But only after a half an hour into the proceedings, Indian players tails were no where to be seen – forget wagging. They were 32 for 4. Three wickets fell to the speedster Chanka Walegeda and all the three batsmen misjudged the in-swing deliveries and were clean bowled. The sound of the timber rattling time and again was nerve wrecking. At that moment it appeared that India had already lost the test match in the first hour itself. (more…)