Cricket Viewpoint - News, Opinion, Analysis

Kumar Sangakkara scored a patient, but valuable century as Sri Lanka edged ahead on day 2 of the third Test match versus India at Colombo. In reply to India’s first innings score of 249 all out, at close of play Sri Lanka were 251 for the loss of 6 wickets.

Nightwatchman Chaminda Vaas played a valuable hand of 47 runs, before being dismissed by Harbhajan Singh, who took two quick wickets. Zaheer Khan took two wickets, those of Michael Vandort for 14 and Thilan Samaraweera for 35.

Anil Kumble dismissed Dilshan for 23.

It has also been an injury prone Test match for the Indians. Yesterday, VVS Laxman twisted his ankle, whilst Sachin Tendulkar jarred his left elbow whilst fielding. Then wicket keeper Parthiv Patel was hit in the face by the ball off an edge from Sangakkara’s bat. Ishant Sharma had also limped off the field with an injury, although it was not serious.

The day’s play has been absorbing and tomorrow’s events could decide the course of this series.

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In a pulsating match that went down to the wire, India beat Pakistan in a bowl off, after scores were tied at the end of 20 overs.

India started badly losing 4 early wickets, before Robin Uthappa & Captain MS Dhoni guided India to a score of 141 for 9 (Uthappa 50, Asif 4-18). Pakistan looked to be on track early on, but India came back into the game with wickets and eventually Pakistan made 141 for 7 (Misbah 53, Pathan 2-20). Misbah was run out off the last ball of the match.

In the bowl off, Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh and Robin Uthappa all nailed the stumps, but the Pakistan bowlers while Yasir Arafat, Umar Gul and Shahid Afridi all missed as a sell-out crowd celebrated an enthralling finale.

You can view a video of the finish at the official world twenty 20 site here.

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Rahul Dravid photo courtesy of Flickr and Rajaram S

The pressures that go with captaining the Indian cricket team are enormous. And it has just taken it’s toll on ‘The Wall’, Rahul Dravid.

In a move that surprised everybody, Dravid stepped down as Indian captain today from both forms of the game. The move is to enable him to focus on his batting. The BBC quoted him as saying, “I enjoyed the captaincy, I loved it, but it can get tough after a while and some of the enjoyment can go away. So, I thought it was the right time to step aside.”

According to the BCCI “Rahul Dravid met Sharad Pawar (the Indian Board President) at Delhi on September 13 and expressed his desire to step down as the captain of the Indian team and requested that he should not be considered for the job from the ensuing Australia series.”

The 33-year-old Dravid assured that he would extend full co-operation to his successor and contribute as a batsman and senior player, the statement added.

BCCI president Sharad Pawar said he has forwarded Dravid’s resignation to the Board.”

The big question now of course is, who will captain India going forward?

In my mind, the contenders are:

Mahendra Singh Dhoni - the current India 20 20 captain. However he is quite inexperienced in Test Cricket. Wearing the gloves, looking after his batting and undertaking the captaincy would be too large a burden.

The other two options are Sachin Tendulkar and dare I say it, Sourav Ganguly once again. Purely looking at the series coming up, against Pakistan and Australia, either of the two would be the best for the job - if they want to do it.

Sachin’s batting did suffer when he was captain, as did Ganguly’s. However Ganguly has a very good captaincy record.

It will be interesting to see which way the board goes.

Stay tuned for more on this….

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