Its Only Cricket

3rd Test: Australia wins Sydney Test (scorecard), South Africa won Test Series 2-1.. T20 & ODI series follows.
Current Cricket Series : South Africa vs Australia, West Indies vs New Zealand. Coming Up : India in NZ 2009.

4th ODI Port Elizabeth : The Preview.


What they are doing is pitching the balls up when our batsmen are expecting short balls..

The only Indian batsman not wearing "chest guard" is Zaheer Khan and he bats at #10. Everyone else seems to be scared of being hit by the ball, at a time when they should have got hit 4 times and then start playing pull/hook shots.

What Indian batsmen have forgot is that they are boundary hitters. They always have preferred hitTeam India Practicing.jpgting the ball rather placing them and running quick between the wickets. At a time when South African grounds are so small and pitch so beautiful to play your shots - our batsmen are left wanting short pitch bowling when they should have first got one and then have reacted.

It's good that Virendra Sehwag will be captaining India in this 4th ODI at Port Elizabeth. We can expect him hit that "out side off" ball a little more harder than he did at Durban. And I hope team management persists with Karthik and gives a try to SHANTHAKUMARAN SREESANTH - may not be the fastest but definitely most aggressive.

Our plan : Attack, defend or take blows, but just bat 50 overs. If we play our full quota of overs, I bet we'll be the winners.

Here are a few things you may need to know --

The weather forecast : is good. It says clear, 27 degrees and west wind at 10 km/h which will decrease to 7 km/h during the night.

The pitch report : Yet another good for batting stripe. If the batsmen aren't prepared to play their shots - no curator can make runs for them.

The ground realities : Last International one day match at St. George's Park was between Australia and South Africa where Aussies batted first (254) and won the match by 24 runs.

But if you talk about the last 4 domestic matches played at Port Elizabeth, none of them have produced big runs. Teams have scored less than 200 and defended it.

They say it's something with the wind that even a good pitch don't help the batsmen

The timing : Fourth India vs South Africa ODI is a Day/Night match. Thus it will be starting at 6pm India time, 4.30 am Los Angeles time and 12.30 UK time.

Indian team plays a twenty20 match on 1st december. Read this.






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