India tame England in 3rd ODI
Friday, November 21, 2008 at 4:11 am Under Sports News 108 views
India has effectively won the Kanpur One-dayer by Duckworth-Lewis method against England after bad light stopped play. After an early jolt, Virender Sehwag and Rohit Sharma steady the Indian innings as the home team chase 240 runs to win the Kanpur ODI.
India were 198 for 5 when play was called off due to bad light. This win gives India a strong 3-nil lead in the 7-match ODI series and another win will give the hosts a victory in the series.
Virender Sehwag top scored for India with 68 and Yuvraj Singh and captain MS Dhoni scored valuable cameos as England’s misery continued.
Chasing 241 for a victory, the hosts were less dominating but were conscious of the Duckworth-Lewis requirement as they scored 198 for five in 40 overs before fading light necessitated an early end to the game.
India needed to score 183 for five in 40 overs under the D/L method and were declared the winners when bad light came into play.
For the hosts, Virender Sehwag topscored with 68, while Yuvraj Singh scored a brisk 38 off just 31 balls. Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni remained unbeaten on 29 to steer the team to victory in a more keenly contested tussle at the Green Park stadium.
After the early morning haze delayed the start and reduced the tie to a 49-overs-a-side affair, England captain Kevin Pietersen won the toss and had little hesitation in opting to bat first.
India now need to win the next match in Bangalore on Sunday to clinch the series by taking an unassailable 4-0 lead.
A rejigged batting order saw Ravi Bopara (60) walking out to open with Ian Bell (46) and the openers put on 79 runs before England lost the plot in the face of some disciplined bowling by the Indians and folded for 240 in 48.4 overs.
For India, Harbhajan Singh stood out, scalping three for 31, joining the 200 ODI wicket club in the process.
For the home team’s in-form and awe-inspiring batting order, the target of 241 should have been a stroll in the park. However small the target, they still needed to score those runs but a jittery start jolted them out of complacency.
A reckless Gautam Gambhir (14) and Suresh Raina (1) perished in quick succession and for India, reduced to 34 for two inside 10 overs, the chase for a modest target wasn’t a cakewalk anymore.
Andrew Flintoff banged his fifth delivery short and Gambhir charged out only to guide it to third man where a grateful Broad pouched the catch.
Flintoff tormented Suresh Raina (1) as well but it was Broad who got the left-hander when the batsman, rooted in the crease, dragged a ball onto his stumps.
Sehwag read the situation well but did not allow it to bog him down. Boundaries still came thick and fast and Sehwag enjoyed the fortune of the brave as well when Samit Patel almost caught him off his own bowling before the ball popped out of the left-arm spinners palm.
Sehwag celebrated by clobbering Graeme Swann for a six to complete his fifty and raised 67 runs with Rohit Sharma (28) to lend some stability before trouble came in pair and both the batsmen returned in quick succession.
Rohit once again failed to convert the start and fell to Swann and then an airborne Paul Collingwood silenced the choc-a-bloc stadium by pulling off a stunner at point off.
Sehwag left unhappy with himself, having scored 68 off 75 balls with eight fours and a six in it.
England nemesis Yuvraj Singh walked amid thunderous applauds and joined by captain MS Dhoni and the duo had just steadied the ship before Flintoff again turned the game on its head by removing the left-hander.
In deteriorating light, Dhoni and Yusuf Pathan (12 not out) played smart cricket to keep the team ahead in the Duckworth-Lewis chart before bad light interrupted match.
Earlier, for the first time in the series, England got off to a strong, if not spectacular, start with the
Bell-Bopara duo raising 79 runs for the first wicket inside 15 overs.
It was a marked improvement by the visitors, considering the fact that the opening stand had yielded 12 and six runs respectively, in the last two matches.
With Zaheer Khan and Munaf Patel maintaining a claustrophobic line, runs were not easy to come by, let alone boundaries. To their credit, Bopara and Bell did not panic.
The run rate was nothing to write home about but England crossed the 50-mark in 11 overs without any loss.
Bell greeted the erratic Ishant Sharma with two boundaries in the first over, upsetting his rhythm by repeatedly stepping out of the crease.
Bopara proved the perfect foil for his partner and helped himself to occasional boundaries, including a couple of streaky ones.
A change in end and Munaf finally drew the first blood in the 15th over when Bell perished caught behind, four-run shy of the half-century. Bell’s 47-ball 46 included eight hits to the fence.
With the opener laying the perfect foundation for a big total, England required a big knock from either Pietersen (13) or Flintoff (26) but both let the side down.
Pietersen hoicked Yuvraj Singh for a massive six to signal his intention but it was the same unbridled aggression which did him in when he went for an encore of the shot, this time against Harbhajan and ended up finding Zaheer at long-off.
Harbhajan sorted out Paul Collingwood (1) with a doosra and almost caught Flintoff off his own bowling with the ball dropped marginally short.
Yuvraj ended Boparas vigil by luring him out of the crease and Dhoni had a world of time to whip off the bail. Bopara hit eight fours en route to his 82-ball 60.
With Flintoff still in the crease, Englands hopes of a big total was very much alive, till Yusuf Pathan trapped him with his second ball to pre-empt any batting fireworks by the talismanic all-rounder.
Owais Shah (40) added 36 runs with Samit Patel (29) before holing out in the deep, giving Harbhajan his 200th ODI wicket, but that was not enough in the end to reach the 250-mark.
Brief Scores:
England: 240 all out in 48.4 overs
India: 198 for five in 40 overs. (Virender Sehwag 68, Yuvraj Singh 38, MS Dhoni 29 not out; Andrew Flintoff 3/31).
Harbhajan becomes sixth Indian to claim 200 ODI wickets
Kanpur, Nov 20 (PTI) Off-spinner Harbhajan Singh today became the sixth Indian and 30th in the world to take 200 wickets in one-day internationals when he removed Owais Shah of England in the third one-dayer in Kanpur today.
Playing in his 178th ODI today, the Punjab offie dismissed Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood as his 198th and 199th victims to return with 3/32 and win the Man of the Match award.
The 28-year-old Harbhajan, who began his ODI career against New Zealand in Sharjah in April 1998, is now behind Anil Kumble (337 from 271 matches), Javgal Srinath (315 from 229), Ajit Agarkar (288 from 191), Kapil Dev (253 from 225) and Zaheer Khan (214 from 152) in the list of highest Indian ODI wicket takers.
The feisty off-spinner had also become the third Indian — behind Anil Kumble (619 from 132 Tests) and Kapil Dev (434 from 131 Tests) — and 22nd cricketer in the world to claim 300 wickets in Test cricket during the final Test of the four-match series against Australia in Nagpur this month. He has played 72 Tests for India so far.
(Agencies)
( This post is from an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by APakistanNews.Com.)
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