da apostebet： This was a disappointing cricket match at the Goodyear Park,Bloemfontein
Erapalli Prasanna22-Jul-2009
©AFPThis was a disappointing cricket match at the Goodyear Park,Bloemfontein. Kenya were completely outplayed by a resurgent Indianside, riding on the wave of a convincing win against the heavyweightSouth Africa at the Centurion.Kenya had lost the match much before it started, for they came inwithout any kind of a game plan or strategy. The decision to bat firstmust have been done with the hope that they can put up a decent total.The uneven bounce of the wicket upset their confidence and theattempts to hit their way out of trouble, made things more difficultfor their comfort.It is in such difficult times that you need batsmen to dig deep andplay sensibly. Kenyans showed no such trait of applying themselves,they went about trying to blast their way out of this quagmire byplaying across the line, a recipe for disaster, which manyinexperienced team falls for.What else can I say? It was an abject surrender of a side, which didnot have any self-belief. At times the Kenyans looked like that theywere in a hurry to get over with the match. Kenya clearly lacks it inthem to make an impression at the highest level; overall it was apathetic performance by the minnows from Africa.Having said that; let me not take anything away from the Indians. Theydid what best they could do to keep the momentum going. The winagainst South Africa seems to have instilled a lot of confidence inthis young team. Nothing succeeds like success and I think SouravGanguly and John Wright deserve to be commended after this wonderfulturnaround of fortunes in the African continent.The present team management has shown a lot of faith in the abilitiesof one man, Ajit Agarkar. There was no doubt in my mind that Agarkarwill have to deliver the goods in South Africa. The young man has donewell so far in all the three outings and has looked the most potent ofthe bowlers.It was heartening to see Agarkar realise the importance of bowling agood line and length on a pitch with uneven bounce. The benefits werethere to be seen, four wickets! This should have boosted his moralefor the games to come. © CricInfoOn the contrary, Javagal Srinath, with so much experience under hisbelt, bowled a disappointing line. The two wickets he got, though,were purely on line and length. Anil Kumble is always a dangerousbowler on such a wicket. He looked sharp enough and the three wicketshe picked will help him a lot during this tour.I think that the Indians used this opportunity to give Virender Sehwagand Deep Dasgupta a chance to get used to the South African battingconditions. The two batsmen played well to take India to a mostconvincing win and also to show the depth of the Indian batting.This was not a game that one will want to remember for a long time. Itfailed to throw a challenge to the resources of the Indian side and itturned out to be a dismal one-sided affair.