DLF Cup - Chanderpaul Dazzles but WI loose

There is an old saying in cricket 'Don't take anything for granted until the fat lady sings'. The Aussie outfit, even with a load of upcoming talent simply refused to cave in to the aggressive tactics of Gayle and Chanderpaul(Gayle -not a great surprise, he is a dasher but Chanderpaul took a new Avatar and the 4s and 6s that poured from his bat looked unreal, almost - a la Saeed Anwar kind of swaps and slaps). Anyway, the end result was pretty much as expected - an Aussie win. After a woeful and horrendous batting display by the rest of WI bats, the familiar story of Green bags winning repeated itself. Mcgrath looked sharp enough in his come back and the rest were a decent professional lot in the field to close out an easy win in the end.

India begins their 1^st match on Thursday without Yuvaraj Singh but even with him, the chances of an India win against the reserve Aussie outfit looks slim at best. The type of wickets which might suit India are the slow and low tracks but the Malaysian pitches look anything but that. India can at best not repeat its mistakes against West Indies in the recent tour (when they were trounced 1-4) and hope for some significant luck to favor them in the finals against Aussies. All eyes will be on SRT but my own guess on his form is that he will need more time in the middle than the school boy stuff at Lashings or created situations like the practice matches in MAC last week. All in all, I feel that another disappointment awaits Indian cricket lovers.