I would call this an upset for the Rajasthan Royals but rather it should be an eye opener for them. After losing quick two wickets at 42 runs, Sanju Samson and Riyan Parag took the game to nearly 200 runs which was a very good score and at that moment of time, everyone thought that Gujarat Titans would need to bat very well or they would just lose the game easily.
To everyone's surprise, the GT team rose to the occasion. It was not an easy going chase for them as they lost too many wickets in the middle of the innings but still they managed to find a win in the end and that's what matters the most. Rashid Khan was a difference between the tow teams. He took 1 wicket but scored an important 24 runs on only 11 balls. Again it was Rashid Khan who put the four on the last ball of the innings that drove the win for the Gujrat Titans.
Gujarat Titans scored 88 runs from the last 6 overs. Sanju Samson completely lost it, and allowed GT to walk away with the match. Keshav Maharaj would have been a good option to control the flow of runs, but he used him only for 2 overs. Persisted with the expensive Avesh Khan and Yuzvendra Chahal, and it didn't worked very well. Rahul Tewatia and Rashid Khan made valuable contributions down the order and Samson completely failed to stem the flow of runs. Asking Kuldeep Sen to bowl the penultimate over was a big blunder. He conceded 20 runs, and by then the outcome was all but certain. |
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I think that the wonderful work that the United States of America did in their Cricket team is just that when they will play with Sri Lanka, West Indies, Zimbabwe, and some other small teams so then their real strength and weaknesses will be exposed and this is how they can become the more stronger team for the United States of America and they picked many things from them that how they play, how they bowl, how they field, and taking tips with them which cause of their this type of wonderful victory against other teams.
These small noticeable things can bring to a point where a weak team perception can be changed to a good and high performer team. These things if the Canada team picks then maybe in a few years, we see them as emerging cricketing nations.
USA is a rag-tag team consisting of former players from different full member nations. I really doubt the morale of the players in representing the new country. Shadley van Schalkwyk and Andries Gous played first class cricket in South Africa. Players like Gajanand Singh represented first class sides in West Indies. Only three out of 11 players were born in the USA and same is the case with Canada as well. This situation is not very sustainable. Unless they have native players, no one is going to support them either in the US or in Canada. |
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A lot is being talked about nowadays regarding Sanju Samson. Some people claim that he can be the next captain of the Indian national team. However, I am not very impressed with his captaincy tactics so far in the Indian Premier League. Yesterday's match was something that Rajasthan Royals could have won. When Vijay Shankar got out, Gujarat Titans were struggling at 111/4 after 14 overs. They needed another 86 runs to win from 6 overs, with most of the top and middle order back in pavilion. Still they won, because of Samson's stupid bowling changes.
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^^ While the Lankan women are touring South Africa, their U-19 squad is participating in a tri-series against Australia and England at home. And they managed to win a match against England yesterday. So it is not all doom and gloom for the Lankan women. Sri Lanka managed to score just 226 batting first, but then they surprised everyone when they bowled out England for just 118 runs. Sri Lanka lost the first match against Australia, but then it was expected. In women's cricket, Australia are like invincible.
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If you ask me so I will say that.. that was a big target. Because that is women cricket team who made 270 runs in 50 overs. And did not you see Yazmin Brits. How she played. She made 116 runs on 128 balls. Means she hit a century which could help South Women team to win but unfortunately the match finished without any results. By the way on the other hand SriLanka was also doing well but they collected 23 runs with any loss. They played only 7 overs. And this is really difficult to say which team would win if the match completed. But I think South Africa could win.
The match got washed out, else South Africa would have won it. 270 is a match-wining total in women's cricket. On top of that, Sri Lankan women are not in great form with the bat recently. Vishmi Gunaratne and Chamari Athapaththu got them to a slow but steady start, but looking at the scoring rate, it was very unlikely for Sri Lanka to win the match. Anyway, they should now focus on the second match, which is scheduled to take place at the Diamond Oval in Kimberley. Unless there is rain interruption, chances look slim for Sri Lanka. |
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Tough luck for Punjab. Still, it was good to see a close match with a score of 180. Even though they lost, I have to give credit to the outstanding innings by Shashank Singh and Ashutosh Sharma. Their impactful batting in a tough situation brought the game closer for Punjab. Punjab Kings' lower order has been performing well, but their opening pair remains unstable. Unfortunately, Dhawan and Bairstow, the worst-performing pair, failed once again. Punjab needs to address their issues to avoid being on the losing side.
Nice to see the younger players performing so well, when the more experienced players failed. Shikhar Dhawan, Jonny Bairstow, Sam Curran and Sikandar Raza were unable to make noticeable impact, while it was Shashank Singh and Ashutosh Sharma who lit fireworks towards the end. That said, the SRH pacers were impressive. I am not just talking about Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Pat Cummins, but also about Thangarasu Natarajan. Nitish Kumar Reddy was expensive, but then he got the wicket of Jitesh Sharma, which was very crucial. |
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Looks as if Punjab Kings are going to lose this match as well. Most of their star batsmen are back in pavilion, including Shikhar Dhawan, Jonny Bairstow and Sam Curran. The pace trio of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Pat Cummins and T Natarajan ripped through their batting lineup. Not much depth in PBKS middle order. Sikandar Raza and Shashank Singh are at the crease with Jitesh Sharma and Ashutosh Sharma to come next. After that the tail starts with Harpreet Brar. 8 overs need to be bowled by Nitish Kumar Reddy and Jaydev Unadkat. Punjab will be looking to target these bowlers.
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Sri Lankan women are in fine form. They won the T20I series by a margin of 2-1, and that too after losing the first match. However, South Africa has set a formidable target for the first ODI. Laura Wolvaardt and Tazmin Brits added 94 runs for the first wicket, and then Anneke Bosch joined Brits. Oshadi Ranasinghe and Kavisha Dilhari bowled decently, but received not much support from their team-mates. Now we need to see how the Lankan women will chase down this huge total. Required run rate is close to 5.5 now.
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PS : Fans might get cooked in hot day matches because didn't notice any sheds.
Fortunately most of the matches are scheduled to start at 7:30pm Indian time. By then, it is cooler out there. Anyway, Asian cricket boards hardly care about the fans. Facilities are poor, and all those who are involved (state associations, police, caterers, contractors.etc) treat the fans like cash cows. But then, cricket sells in India like no other sport. You can easily get tens of thousands of fans, even on weekdays. I was hoping that things will get better under Jay Shah and Anurag Thakur, but the situation hasn't changed a lot. |
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After getting into a poor start, Sunrisers Hyderabad finally ended up at 182/9. They were losing wickets at constant interval, but then Nitish Kumar Reddy stabilized the innings, with some help from lower order batsmen such as Abdul Samad and Shahbaz Ahmed. Abhishek Sharma got out early, which is going to impact his chances of getting into the national squad for T20 world cup. BTW, SRH subbed Travis Head with Rahul Tripathi. This means that they are going to be short of one bowler. Else Natarajan could have bowled in the second innings.
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Kolkata Knight Riders batting line was strong but they did not perform well. In the end, Kolkata scored 137 runs in the stipulated over. In the T20 format, the target of 138 runs was not enough to win, it was very easy to score 138 runs in 120 balls.
Chennai Super Kings went into bat with a target of victory and won by 7 wickets in 17.4 overs. Ruturaj Gaikwad batted very well, he was unbeaten on 67 off 58 balls. Chennai performed well at home and managed to beat strong teams like Kolkata. Chennai's batting and bowling lines were both good.
Their batsmen are either out of form, or inexperienced. Phil Salt, Sunil Narine, Shreyas Iyer and Venkatesh Iyer are not performing consistently, despite having played international cricket. On the other hand, it increases the burden on Ramandeep Singh and Angkrish Raghuvanshi, who doesn't have much experience. And their star batsman Rinku Singh is also in terrible form. He scored a grand total of 9 runs yesterday, from 14 balls. Andre Russell also failed to lit the fireworks towards the end. Despite yesterday's defeat, KKR are still at the second place as far as points table is concerned. |
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Yesterday, it was the battle between two spinners - Ravindra Jadeja for Chennai Super Kings and Sunil Narine for the Kolkata Knight Riders. And in the end, it was Jadeja who emerged victorious. He restricted Kolkata Knight Riders to a total of 137/9, which was at least 40-50 runs short at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chepauk. By the time Narine came to bowl, the match was all but over. None of the KKR batsmen got going. Shreyas Iyer in particular struggled and his strike rate was too low, while wickets kept falling from the other end.
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First of all this is a huge win for the Namibian team. Their batsmen set a big target of 212 in 20 overs. That was a very good target. Their batsmen gave this target with hard work and struggle. Their batsmen did well in the match and played the match with interest and their bowlers did not waste their hard work. Their bowler stopped the run of Oman batsmen and took wickets and won the match. My congratulations to the Namibia team for the win and may they continue to play like this and win matches. And the Oman team should emphasize its performance.
This time their star batsmen clicked, and as a result they got to a huge total of 212/3 after 20 overs (which was tough against a bowling attack that consisted of Kaleemullah, Fayyaz Butt, Ayaan Khan and Mehran Khan). JP Kotze and Malan Kruger managed to build a first wicket partnership of 76 runs, and then Gerhard Erasmus and David Wiese took over. Bernard Scholtz excelled with the ball. Despite all this, a 3-2 series win is not enough for Namibia. Their T20I rankings will go down by a lot. |
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Oman vs Namibia 5th T20
Today will be the 5th match of T20 series between Namibia vs Oman. There have been 4 matches so far, where both the teams have won two matches each to tie the series 2-2. So today's match is going to be the final match for them. The team that wins today will win the series and the team that loses will lose the series. As both the teams have the ability to beat each other it is very difficult to predict which team will win this match today. Let's see which team can win the series today.
This series was entirely unnecessary and will have an impact on the T20I ratings for Namibia. They were in a comfortable position before this series. However after they lost two matches against Oman (who are ranked much lower), their position has slipped down a lot. And it is not like they went with a second string side. All of their regular players were included in the squad, such as David Wiese, Ruben Trumpelmann, Bernard Scholtz and Gerhard Erasmus. Qualification for the next T20I world cup is going to be tough for Namibia. |
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FAF had poor form while coming into this year IPL and now it's clearly evident that RCB batting unit also struggling while their bowling unit may not defend even if their batters score above 200 runs.
All the blame should be on the team management who picked wrong players and not really into building a right team, even now they got a slight chance if they go with Will Jacks who is destructive opener and can bowl a couple of overs.
About this particular match again Kohli has to score all the runs while big names departed and struggled.
Do you really think that RCB management has enough courage to drop Faf and Maxi? Will Jacks would be an excellent choice, as you rightly pointed out. He is young, and destructive in T20 format. Two months back, he hit a century for Comilla Victorians in Bangladesh Premier League. He made 108 from 53 balls at a strike rate of 203.77, against an attack that included Bilal Khan and Al-Amin Hossain. Apart from Jacks, they also have Mahipal Lomror who is also a T20 specialist. Suyash Prabhudessai would be another option at the top. |
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"WPL has been biggest revelation for women's cricket": Sania Mirza
Well.. I don't know whether WPL was a revelation or not. But what I know is that Sania Mirza completely failed as the mentor of Royal Challengers Bengaluru women. I would have rather preferred someone like Diana Edulji or Jhulan Goswami, who have some experience in cricket at the top-level. Even Mithali Raj would have been a great choice. What is the point in having a tennis player as the mentor? What did that achieved for the RCB-W? WPL has been a grand success, but Sania doesn't have much to do with it. |
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Not really, out of 5 matches Faf played, he has crossed double digits 3 times. He looked really good in first match itself against Chennai, meanwhile, Maxwell and Green are actual strugglers.
RCB has 0 chance to lift trophy this time either, even if their trio makes runs they don't have bowlers to back it up.
LOL.. so misleading. When I posted, he had scores of 35, 3, 8 and 19. This is far from being impressive. 5th is today's match, and he managed to get 44. It is a good comeback from him, but I would have been happier if he had hit a half-century. Green is an all-rounder and he managed to pick up a couple of wickets in the first match. He scored 33 against KKR, but apart from that he was off-color. Hopefully he will get a chance to bat today and might manage to hit a few sixes. At the moment, RCB seems to have slowed down as they struggle against the RR spinners. |
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RCB captain Virat Kohli is batting brilliantly and thousands of Virat fans are cheering in the stadium after seeing his batting. If Virat Kohli can play today's match in the end, surely we will see a century from his bat, Virat Kohli is batting brilliantly. This player is unbeaten with 75 runs off 53 balls. Maxwell is batting with King Kohli but we have not seen Maxwell's batting so well in IPL but if Maxwell can bat well in partnership with Virat Kohli in today's match then surely we can enjoy some great batting from Maxwell.
Maxwell failed once again, but du Plessis managed to get a decent score. Kohli as usual batted like a one man army. I am not sure why Samson is using the spinners more often, as they were economical till now. Apart from Ravichandran Ashwin and Yuzvendra Chahal, Riyan Parag also bowled well when he was given the chance. Royal Challengers Bengaluru need to step up scoring rate, and the plus point for them is that Virat Kohli is still out there. Saurav Chauhan is at the other end, with Rajat Patidar, Cameron Green and Dinesh Karthik yet to come. |
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Once again, Kohli is doing the heavy lifting, with Faf mostly silent at the other end. The good thing for Royal Challengers Bengaluru is that they didn't lost wickets in the initial powerplay, which is extremely hard when facing Trent Boult. I think this is the only match so far in this season where Boult didn't picked a wicket in his first over. Nandre Burger went for plenty as well. Samson has now turned to spin of Ravichandran Ashwin and Yuzvendra Chahal, and so far this duo has kept things decent enough (14 runs from 3 overs).
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If Chennai Super Kings could have batted responsibly in yesterday's match then maybe Sunrise could have won the match against Hyderabad. Dhani always bats late If Dhani batted early Chennai Super Kings might have added some more runs. The main reason why Chennai Super Kings lost the match against Sunrise Hyderabad is their poor batting because Hyderabad batsmen are batting very well.
Why blame Dhoni when other batsmen batted like tortoises? Apart from Shivam Dube, not a single batsman from Chennai Super Kings had strike rate above 150. Ajinkya Rahane was the worst, while Daryl Mitchell was wasted at lower order. They need to think about Rahane. He is an excellent test player. But in T20 format, he is not that great. Also, Dube needs to bat up the order and definitely Dhoni also need to bat at no.5 or at least no.6 Jaddu seems to have lost his mojo and it will be better if he is demoted down the order. |
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