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Originally Posted by John I wander if the time has come to drop Gayle down the order? Maybe Chanderpaul can open? |
I don't know if Shiv can open - but I'm certain Hinds can, I'd be tempted not to move Gayle down the order, if he can pull his camoes off he can take good advantage of the fielding ristrictions, and give you great launching pads. I do though, feel really sorry for Xavier Marshall - around the world selectors can sometimes be soo ironic. In Xavier's case they could have done nothing better for both him and West Indies then drop him after he'd struggled so badly all season - but no, just when its the perfectly wrong time to show faith in someone's ability do they exactly that! Xavier's a young lad, probably a good player too, but when you throw him international cricket this early, when he's only 19 and have barely got a handful of first class matches under his belt - in all probabiliy you'll either get a dream start or an absolute shocker, a big risk in other words to take as a selector - potentially putting the whole career of a young man at stake, because when you have such a bad start, you tend to land in the selectors and fans' no go books for a long time. I would personally hesistate to take such undue risks unless that particular player has been rated really highly by one and all and has always been (through various age groups of cricket, under 10, 15, 19 and so on) regarded as a future player for his country. Xavier's body language at his dismissal said it all for me (and the commentators) - he was clearly embarassed quite badly. In the unfortunate case that he never goes on to play cricket for West Indies again, he can justifiedly put part of the blame on the selectors for exposing him to international cricket at the wrong time - and he'd find my sympathies too.
It's turned out to be a pretty good game for Pakistan again. Although we again didn't bat as well as one would have hoped, finishing with 258 despite (once again) plenty of starts (although it was a somewhat slowish out field, good wicktet otherwise, hard and consistent in bounce) probably about 25-30 runs shorts of a very good total but still got about par. But it's the bowlers that once again did their job exceptionally well or in other words its West Indian batting (or selectors rather) making the same mistakes yet again. They were bowled out for 218 just shorly ago giving Pakistan their first ever victory against WI in a series on Caribbean soil. Pakistan's main wicket taker was Shahid Afridi who made up for his batting failure by grabbing figures of 4-38 in his 10 overs. Rana Naved ul Hassan though continued to grow from strength to strength with 2 more wickets to his name. Shabbir Ahmed also bowled with quite a lot of control, and the ball that brought him arguably the most important wicket for Pakistan, that of Chris Gayle, was one that could have bowled over many a great batsmen, pitching outside leg it strengthed and hit top of off, unplayable. One wicket also for Rao Iftikhar whose also continued to gain more reputation as an useful medium pace bowler. Generally we bowled well to a plan, but Woolmer would have liked to see that extras column come down a bit - 13 no balls is a little bit unacceptal to me in a space of 48 overs.
I'm somewhat unable to derive the sort of pleasure I usually do from seeing Pakistan do well, primarly because of what happened today at Cardiff and that I have an exam on Monday. One has to feel for the Windian fans though - difficult to argue how any team could have had a worse season than they have had! (Although losing to Arsenal on penalities in an Cup final when you've dominated the match from start to finish feels pretty disgusting all the same).
21-05-2005, 01:47 PM
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