#365DaysOfWriting — Day Forty-Two
Something very important happened yesterday. Something I missed.
Zimbabwe beat India by 2 runs in last evening’s T20 game.
They’ve won two out of the last two T20 games against India.
Out of context this seems damning for India, although there is no real cause for worry — India have sent a second-string team. There’s no Kohli, no Rohit Sharma, no Ajinkya Rahane, no Ashwin…
But does that put the shade on Zimbabwe’s performance? Absolutely not. Last year, when Zimbabwe beat a slightly stronger Indian team by 10 runs, you could put it down to a bit of complacency and a rush of blood from the Indian batsmen. This victory though, was the result of some great batting and bowling by the Zimbabweans, particularly Elton Chigumbura.
Karthik Krishnaswamy of ESPNCricinfo has written a great article about how this Indian team has batting pedigree, but no power hitter. You can read it here. For me the problem also lay somewhere else. The Indian bowlers had done a great job to pull back Zimbabwe from 88/1 in the 11th over to 115/5 (with another batsman retired hurt) in the 16th over.
What happened after that has been an age-old problem for Indian bowlers. The one true world-class hitter in the Zimbabwe team, Elton Chigumbura, got the Indian bowlers’ number, and he didn’t take them out on a nice date. Instead, he proceeded to blast his way out of trouble with a barrage of sixes and plundered 55 runs off the last four overs. Chigumbura ended on 54 (26), and the Indian bowlers’ figures were beaten well out of shape. Zimbabwe had reached 170, a perfectly defendable score.
But this is the Indian team we’re talking about right? Even the second-string or third-string team has batsmen of pedigree. But can they hit sixes? They have a captain who is considered one of the best finishers in the game.
Elton Chigumbura hit 7 sixes on his own. The entire Indian team hit 6.
And the Indian captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, couldn’t score 8 runs off the last over.
This is the same MS Dhoni who, among many other great innings, took 15 off the last over to help India beat Sri Lanka in a tri-series final. Here’s the scorecard. Since then though, Dhoni has also faltered against South Africa’s Kagiso Rabada in the final over, and now against Madziva. It clearly seems that his powers are waning…
