Indian Cricket
Gautam Gambhir is a man who was said to be currently out of form. When he was made stand in captain for the New Zealand series, many people believed that it will add on to his pressure and will affect his batting. But, cricket makes words so unexpressive, that’s the beauty of the game. In the second ODI at Jaipur Gambhir looked as if there was no drub in his form and it seemed like he was in exquisite touch right from ball one.
He played the role of three men in one ODI, as stand-in captain for MS Dhoni, a reliable opening batsman and a man with the touch of Saurav Ganguly on the off-side….he was so brilliant. Anything pitched outside off was punished to the boundary rope by Gambhir just like Ganguly used to do. Gambhir displayed splendid fluency and fluidity in his shots which were destined to reach the fence as soon as he played the ball.
He scored 138 quality runs and remained unbeaten providing the momentum and the start that India required to chase down 256 runs. The total was chased easily but Murali Vijay struggled initially. It seemed as if Daniel Vettori got under his skin and outclassed him with some superb off-spinners. Vettori was denied Vijay’s wicket thrice for L.B.W appeals but finally got his man with a full length delivery that Vijay tried to slog to get out of pressure but instead the ball rattled the stumps. Gambhir on the other hand looked comfortable to the Kiwi attack.
Virat Kohli stepped in and again made a superb 64 runs. He started his innings right where he left in the last match with aggressive strokes. He got out at a point when the win was almost ensured and he had very less opportunity to make a century. Trying to finish the match in style he handed one to Ross Taylor and went back to the pavilion as if he returned home after a holiday.
The remaining twenty odd runs were completed in a hurry as Yuvraj Singh started in gear 3 and made 16 runs in of balls. Gambhir was unstoppable from the batting point of view but from the bowling perspective Shreesanth was excellent as he took 4 wickets.
New Zealand were impeccable in the field or the match would have ended five overs earlier. India has only positives to take from this match and one more win will ensure a dominant series victory.
Tags: Cricket, Gautam Gambhir, India, New Zealand, ODI Match, ODI Series, Sports, Vadodara, Virat Kohli, Zaheer Khan
