Gambhir comes thro' (At last !!)

Gautam Gambhir was frustrating his followers and himself by being a LBW bunny and was unable to cement his place, even after a 4 year span that began at the same B'desh, when India toured after their 2003 WC campaign. The conditions were ideal - docile pitch, friendly bowling and most important - 60% of bowling by spinners. All Gambhir had to do was to overcome the heat and humidity and the rest was easy. Gautam always played the spinners with ease in domestic cricket (unlike Yuvi) and hence it was relatively easy for him to pick the 3 left armers. Viru threw it off once again and Yuvi fell to another spinner (so, what is new?). India managed 285 but a good 15-20 short of where they should have been.
Once Tanim got out, B'desh was never in the hunt. There were the odd bright spots - like the 4 sixers by Morteza but that is that and B'deshis were not in the reckoning for most part. I watched Piyush's bowling with keen interest and thankfully DD allowed Bruce Yardley, the former Australian spinner's English commentary (otherwise, it was Rajender Amarnath's Hindi speak for most part and it was common place, as usual). Yardley said that the rotations and the arm speed Piyush imparts is not comparable to that of Murali or Warne. After he made this point, I watched keenly and yep, he was right. Piyush is a work in process and has a long way to go, before reaching such levels. He has a decent googly but his spin is not the baffling type. He also floats too many and will go for a few, if one uses his feat a bit more. Anyway, India took a win but I am not impressed since if some one is kidding me that this is India's future bowling plan - my 2 cents - won't fly far, even against the next level of cricketing nations.