hey guys nope unfortunately it was just a quick visit. i would love to be back but i've started a new career and dont have any net access. plus while i was away from my old home cricket 05 got thrown out. if ea made a new decent game id think about trying again but after having a quick look at the forum it doesnt look like thats the case.
loving the fact you all still remember me after about 20 months out of the story writing "job" so to speak
hey mate. i know its a bump of a thread that hasnt been posted in for a while but just a quick message to say how remarkable it is that you have kept this going for so long. its not an easy thing to do but it looks like youve done a great job. unfortunately 277 pages is just too much to read.
It's wonderful to see you back again! :hpraise Without any hesitation, I would say anytime, your story has been the inspirational one for me to start this story and with all the members support here, it has reached this level of success. And, thank you a lots for the compliments as well.
hey guys nope unfortunately it was just a quick visit. i would love to be back but i've started a new career and dont have any net access. plus while i was away from my old home cricket 05 got thrown out. if ea made a new decent game id think about trying again but after having a quick look at the forum it doesnt look like thats the case.
loving the fact you all still remember me after about 20 months out of the story writing "job" so to speak
India In SouthAfrica IndiaVs SouthAfrica Series Summary
India Vs SA - ODI Series.
Hello and a warm welcome to all the viewers of Star Network. Before going into anything in detail, we would like to apologize for the inconvenience caused in the telecast of the ODI series between India and SouthAfrica. Due to technical problems, we were not able to bring you the live coverage of the last two OD games. This has never happened before in Star Network history till now and once again, we would like to say sorry for the inconvenience caused in the telecast problem.
Series Summary.
India(0) - (3)SA
After the dominating victory over India in first ODI match, the hosts continued their dominance in other two matches also. The visitors remained clueless against the SouthAfrican pace attack throughout this ODI series. Another worrying factor for India was, their bowling never showed any improving curve. The fast bowlers never showed any pace and variation while the spinners struggled to get any turns on the SouthAfrican conditions.
Second ODI : In the second ODI, South Africa were put into bat first by Indian captain. The hosts never looked in control against the Indian bowlers right from the beginning. The ball was smashed all over the ground. Also, there was a healthy opening partnership once again(150+ runs) between Smith and Gibbs. However the part timer, Sehwag managed to get rid of Gibbs. But from that, Kallis and Smith stole the show. To be specific, Smith was smashing the spinners in terms of 6's. He reached 140 with 8 sixes under his name and then was dismissed by another part timer, Yuvraj Singh. Kallis/Boucher continued the momentum and finally SA ended up with healthy 340 runs for the loss of just 2 wickets. This brought down the confidence level of Indian players. And they failed to survive against the SA quality pace attack. Tendulkar and Ganguly got dismissed for duck... And Sehwag getting dismissed cheaply in single digit. However there was a slow recovery work from Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh but it did not last long either. Indian batting order fell like a pack of cards and managed to put only 102 runs with all the wickets lost. South African Prince bowler, Pollock got his career best 6 wickets stealing the later part of the show in this match.
Thus the visitors were crushed by the hosts in second match leading to another dominating win this series and securing the cup for the hosts.
SA(340/2) defeated India(102) by 238 runs and Smith was declared as 'Man Of the Match'.
Third ODI : With 'nothing to loose' situation South African team went with the same combination against the visitors in the third and final game. However, confidence level was found too low in Indian dressing room. There seemed to be no happiness and no understanding between the players in dressing room.
In the third game, South Africa won the toss and elected to bat first. They wanted to show the same dominance like their previous game. However opening bowling spell started off in promising way with three LBW shouts turned down and tight spells. South African captain, later, started to go over the bowlers and continued his dominance. Though, SA lost couple of wickets in first 20 overs, Smith lead from front with his second consecutive ton of the series and took South Africa to a promising total of 289. Smith remained unbeaten of 132 runs. South Africa ended up with 289 for the loss of 7 wickets.
The visitors were expected to show some promising fight atleast in this last game. But Tendulkar and Ganguly failed to fire and got dismissed in single digit itself. However Sehwag,Dhoni, RohitSharma and Yuvraj Singh provided entertainment to the spectators. In particular, Rohit Sharma took India close to the target but Indians fell short of 10 runs to get their first OD victory in this tour. India were all out for 279 with Rohit Sharma unbeaten on 65* runs. Though there was some improvement from India in putting a great contest against the hosts, South Africa never lost their balance in this ODI series.
SA(289/7) defeated India(279) by 10 runs and Smith was once again declared as 'Man Of the Match'. SA white washed the visitors grabbing this ODI series cup.
End Of Era of the Big Guns ???
Dravid, Tendulkar and Ganguly never remained consistent in this series
Though Tendulkar stole the show in the very first game of this series, his mode of dismissal in next two games showed some sort of dis-interest/uncomfortness in the game. Or we can say like some sort of uncommitted way of playing the game.
The same thing was observed in Indian captain,Dravid's and Prince Of Kolkatta,Ganguly batting displays too. Indian senior players were supposed to guide from front, especially when the world cup is near the corner. But this lack of spirit in the game-play frustrated all the Indian supporters. Some of the supporters went even wild to such a extent that they got involved in some sort of riots asking the senior players to step down and leave way for the youth players.
All these issues have made the BCCI selection panel to break their heads in selecting the team for the World Cup 2007 and have made them to postpone the selection.
Indian Bowling Weakness!
An Issue to be Seriously Considered
The failure of Indian bowlers became yet another burning issue among the cricket spectators of India. Bowlers never looked extra ordinary(In fact, they exhibited less than a feeble performance). No pace or variation among pace bowlers, Spinners looking very ordinary.. All these have kindled the frustrations among the Indian cricket fans further. There have been frequent mails to our Star Network from the Indian cricket fans like, 'Indian team is currently looking weak and they don't seem to be ready for 2007 World Cup either. In fact, they are weaker than minnows of cricket! Indian senior as well as junior players can very well opt 'NO' to play cricket and 'YES' to acting in television advertisements:'.
Some sources do reveal that BCCI has already pressed panic button and they seem to involve in frequent meetings regarding the selection of Indian cricket team and its strategies to World Cup 2007.
Further Panic For BCCI!
Coach's resignation due to personal reasons.
After this crushing defeat in SouthAfrica, Indian coach has announced his resignation all of a sudden. This resignation news reached India even before the players reached India from SA. The sources do tell us that the coach has stated some personal reasons for his resignation.
But the original cause of this resignation,whether Indian coach resigned because of the poor performance?... or was he unhappy with the team?.. or was there any mis-understanding between players and coach?... or any other reason?, is still to be known!
This news should have caused the insecurity in feelings among the players as they are being left alone with World Cup round the corner. What's next for Team India? How are they going to put up a fight in World cup - With new coach or With No coach? Mystery behind Coach's resignation before the contract period?
Wow!!! What a return Suren!!!. Thtas brilliant summary of the series. Sad to see India easily been defeated by the Proteas. Big Guns like Sachin, Dravid and Ganguly didnt really perform in the series. And yeah even the bowling looked poor. And its good Guru Greg has resigned hope some one new and good comes to coach the might Indians.
Great Written really loved that this story is back hoping for more from you Suren. :happy
Well this descision had to be taken and I think with the World Cup approaching this could be the final straw for Dravid and co. Also I wonder who the new coach will be.
Hello and Warm welcome to all Star Network viewers. With some sudden unexpected happenings to Team India like shocking whitewash in SA ODI series, some misunderstanding within team players itself, coach's resignation it kindled mixed disturbances among all Indian cricket fans and BCCI. At one side, some fans went wild showing their agitated feelings out and in other end, BCCI started to break its head for the selection of next coach to prevent the unsecured feeling among the players.
Furious Cricket Fans.
This is expected where cricket
has been treated as a R-E-L-I-G-I-O-N!
In different areas of India, cricket fans went wild without any sense. They started burning the players pictures in public places and in front of the players' residence. They never thought of the disturbance to other people living there. Instead they were only bothered about in burning the pictures as the sign of end of their era.
In particular, the things were even more worse in front of Dravid's and Ganguly's residence gates. So no-sense wild fans were throwing stones on the gates and windows breaking them. Though Indian police were trying to control them those fans remained wild.
This disturbance created in many places of India, though it was very stupid thing expected in a S-P-O-R-T, turned the things even more worse for BCCI.
Sachin's Anger Expressed Out!
Its very rare to see Sachin
expressing the feelings to Media
The media reporters, with great difficulties, managed to catch hold of Sachin Tendulkar for couple of minutes.
While addressing to one of the questions asked by StarSports spokesman, "what may be the reason for such a shocking performance in SA?", Sachin Tendulkar said,
"When there was no guidance to guide the players, we players had to decide our own roles and play accordingly rather than as a team and hence the loss of team spirit!"
With such a general statement, everyone thought that it was captain's fault for not playing as " Lead from front! " role, but immediately Tendulkar continued,
"Even our skipper Rahul suffered to come up with a strategy because of the confusions/misunderstandings between us and our coach. In my 17 years of cricket I have never felt so 'Let Down' feeling in me while playing and I felt it for the first time in the last series!"
This puzzled all the reporters there and they started to ask more and more questions regarding this issue to reveal the exact cause behind the failure. But Tendulkar replied immediately,
"Anyways past is past... Its better to think about the future now and hope we get a better mentor next time!"
And he walked off.. StarSports spokesman, running behind Tendulkar and with great difficulty fired a question, " Any thoughts of taking over the captaincy from Rahul especially at this crucial time? ", Tendulkar replied,
"Rahul has worked hard for the team.. And definitely there are better captains than me!"
and walked off. None of the players stopped to answer media reporters except Tendulkar. And Sachin expressing his feelings in public like this.... Its the first time happening in Indian cricket.
So with all the things looking confused for Team India, there was an immediate meeting of BCCI chairmen where Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and some more were called with great emergency next day!
An Emergency Meeting!
Who is going to be the next coach?
Who is going to be the next captain?
In the meeting held under lot of confusions, the discussion was mainly about the next coach and the next captain. The meeting continued for around 4 hours from 10 Am in the morning to afternoon 2 PM.
After the meeting was over, the sources did reveal Dravid also had resigned his captaincy job. And infact some sources do believe that he is quiting the ODI cricket too. Nothing has been confirmed on these informations received though.
But the coach selection was surprisingly over. There was no selection process also between the number of nominee for the Indian coach post. BCCI secretary only revealed that the coach they selected was based on the personal interest of the candidate for a long time. It seems that candidate has already written to BCCI about his interest in taking over the team after the contract of Greg Chappell.
BCCI secretary mentioned,
"Under panic situations like this, we had no other way other than this trial and error method of selecting a coach. With the world cup coming up, we didn't find any better person than this as a nominee for this Indian coach post and hence we all discussed and selected Steve Waugh as the coach of India till the world cup!"
Steve Waugh ~ Indian Coach Till WCup 07!
Another Aussie replacing an Aussie???
Has BCCI gone mad?
Immediately on the same evening, Steve Waugh expressed his happiness to StarSports on being selected as the Indian coach. Infact, he did say that, it was his long term intention of becoming a coach to Indian team and also said that this intention developed in his mind after his retirement itself.
There was one question raised immediately among all the cricket fans.. Is it wise to go with another Aussie coach inspite of seeing all the things that happened lately to Indian team? Can't BCCI go with any Indian experienced players as the coach rather than a foreigner? But with the late panic situations, Indian cricket fans remained calm a bit to see whether any changes will happen in the structure/strategy of Team India.
Inspite of his good charcter, it's not that easy for Steve Waugh to survive in a place where cricket has been treated wildly like more than a religion. But we have to wait and see how this man, S.Waugh is going to reformat the team for the World Cup 2007.
With all these things happening inside India, Australian Cricket board has invited Indian team to participate in CommonWealth Bank Series since Zimbabwe has withdrawn from it all of a sudden due to political reasons. Its to be noted that CB series was scheduled earlier between Aus-Eng-Zim. Since Zimbabwe has withdrawn, ACB through ICC, has asked Indian team to participate in the CB series after which is the mega tournament, WorldCup 2007. In response to the invitation, BCCI discussed with all the players and Steve Waugh and accepted the invitation.
So, Indian team will soon fly to Australia to play a CommonWealth Bank series(Ind-Aus-Eng) and it will be a preparing tour for India to the World Cup 2007. Also, the new coach, Waugh has got an immediate opportunity to prove the confidence on him among all the Indian cricket fans which depends mainly on the success of Indian team. Lets see what happens next.. Stay Tuned to know more about the squad selected for the Aussie ODI tour.
Wow brilliant update first of all Suren. Really cant forget the day when Sachin came to the media and spoke the words after the World Cup. Guru Greg was and is always a useless coach. Well yet another Australian hmm...Hipe Waugh does well..Hope the new captain is Dhoni or Ganguly. Good luck for the upcoming Commonwealth bank series. Tough test against the Australian for the Indian coach...:happy
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