With a heigh, ho, the Windies and the Rain
The Indian cricket team’s loss to the West Indies in the DFL series’ second cricket one-dayer seems chiefly a product of bad luck. The Windies won their first game of the series, after ceding to Australia by a margin of 78 runs in Tuesday’s opening match. Mr. Duckworth and Mr. Lewis’s method ultimately gave the West Indies an edge of 29 runs over India.
But the Indians played a spectacular game, with Sachin Tendulkar emerging as the match’s hero, whose dazzling unbeaten 141 rocketed the team to 309 for five. All eyes were on Tendulkar, back in after recuperating from an injury, and he responded phenomenally, smashing thirteen fours and five sixes. The master batsman an 41 singles and nine twos, a testament to his fitness. Irfan Pathan’s 64 in the middle overs and Suresh Raina’s 34 in the final overs combined with Tendulkar’s stellar performance for a strong showing from the entire Indian team. Still, the day was Tendulkar’s, who got his 40th ODI century—some great pictures are available at India Daily.
But it was all for naught, when the rain came pouring down on Kuala Lumpur’s Kinara Oval. The Windies garnered 141 runs for two in 20 overs, which exceded the required par score of 112/2. The rain’s arrival was importune not only for the endscore implied by the D/L method, but also because a spectacular game of cricket was set up. Chris Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan, with 45 and 37 runs, respectively, were paving the way for Brian Lara, warming up with 27 runs.
The stormy weather, which was also the bane of the earlier Sri Lankan series, was hardly the only complicating factor, either. A faulty pitch appeared to be the cause of awkward bounce, which, in turn, was blamed for at least three of the five Indian wickets that fell. Captain Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag, and Mahendra Singh Dhoni were out bowled due to balls that were kept low. Dravid and Tendulkar also recieved forceful blows on their wrists from sharply rising balls.
The Indian team lodged an informal complaint, leading to concession by ICC Match Referee Chris Broad that the uneven bounce was caused by a “fault” in the pitch. Though the next two games will be played on the adjacent pitch, instead, nothing can be done now to compensate for India’s loss. The “uneven bounce from the Pavilion End of the ground,” said Broad, “has not been ideal, [but] it has not prevented India from scoring 309 runs.”