the dismal England tour finally ends and CLT20 starts ..............

In the final One dayer India made their first score of 304 losing only 6 wickets with a century by Kohli and good hitting by Dhoni in the end.  It rained at Cardiff and India lost the match in the target reduced by DL scoring 241 for 4 with debutant Bairstow making some fast runs. From today on, it will be a different league – a different ball game. There will be two matches at Deccan, Hyderabad.  At 1600 local time, Ruhuna play Trinidad & Tobaggo and at 2000 local time Auckland play Kolkatta Knight Riders. 

The terrible tour has finally ended and Indians have been left battered and bruised with no win at all.  Test Series lost 0-4; solitary T20 lost; ODI series lost 0-3 (one no result and one tie).  India displayed poor game, poor planning, poor grit and nothing went right – but have any lessons  been learnt ?   England did not boast of giant killers but Indians were outplanned and outclassed and was injury ridden.  They persisted with Munaf  who is rated a corridor bowler preferred over Varun Aaron in the last match also.  He played in all 5 bowled 27.4 overs gave away 178 runs taking two wickets at an economy rate of 6.43 ! Worser still, ended up with an injury  !!  This is the  time for some soul searching and harsh decisions but everything will be eclipsed by the Champions League T 20 where some of the players might perform well and everything else would be swept under the carpet.  After the defeat, the need is to be aggressive thinking and investing on future finding some good bowlers who can be asset for the future.  There is no point in recalling spent force of RP Singh, Sreesanth  and keep persisting Munaf.

It has long been held against Sachin that his centuries have not come when Indian won ? – that is a myth is a different fact and that is not the subject matter of this post.  Virat Kohli produced a good century and will it ever be asked ‘what use’ – when he was instrumental in our finishing at 304 – but losing due to yet another lackluster performance by the bowlers and a fine cameo by Jonny Bairstow in his debut.  Kohli's  good 107 from 93, shadowed the swan song of Dravid’s close to 350 match  carrer effort of 69 off 79.   Dhoni,  went slambong making 50 off 26 balls.  Trott struck Munaf straight back for a six (reportedly his first in ODI career).  Munaf slipped in the outfield (he hardly moves) twisted ankle and left the field.  Ravindra Jadeja went for 21 runs in a single over and the die was cast.   

Officially,  Champions League Twenty20 2011 will begin on Friday, September 23, 2011 – there will be  23 Twenty20 Matches between Sept 23 – Oct 9 on which date the finals will be held at Chepauk.   There are 10 teams in the fray :

Group A	Group B
Chennai Super Kings	Royal Challengers Bangalore
Cape Cobras (South Africa)	Warriors (South Africa)
NSW Blues (Australia)	South Australian Redbacks
Mumbai Indians	Q1
Q2	Q3

23 matches of daily cricket as the Officials try to encash the enigma and exhilaration associated with the new brand of cricket – the sponsor being Nokia this time.    There are teams from India  (Chennai Super Kings, Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians), Australia (NSW Blues and South Australian Redbacks) and South Africa (Cape Cobras and Warriors).  The remaining 3 teams will be decided after a qualifier between teams from the Caribbean, New Zealand, India, England and Sri Lanka.

For the 3 spots, there are 6 teams : Auckland,  Trinidad & Tobago,  Ruhuna, Somerset, Leicestershire and Kolkatta Knight Riders. 

1)     Kolkata Knight Riders is captained by  Jacques Kallis and would heavily depend upon  Yusuf Pathan and Ryan ten Doeschate, Brad Haddin, Manoj Tiwary, Shakib Al Hasan and Iqbal Abdulla.

2)     Auckland  from NZ are the winners of HRV cup.  Captained by Gareth Hopkins and has Martin Guptill, Andre Adams,  Chris Martin, Kyle Mills and Daryl Tuffey

3)     Trinidad & Tobago captained by Daren Ganga are without Pollard and Dwayne Bravo - but has  Adrian Barath, Darren Bravo, Ravi Rampaul and Lendl Simmons

4)     Leicestershire from England is captained by Matthew Hoggard and had Abdul Razzaq, Will Jefferson, Claude Henderson and Paul Nixon.

5)     Ruhuna is from Lanka the  Winners of the SLC Inter-Provincial Twenty20 tournament.  Captained by  Mahela Udawatte and has Dinesh, Sanath Jayasuriya,  Tillakaratne Sampath and Janaka Gunaratne

6)     Somerset from England is  captained by  Alfonso Thomas; has Peter Trego,  Trescothick,  Craig Kieswetter and Jos Buttler.

3 of these will join the others to be part of the 10 and there would be entertainment for the cricket lover.

For the avid Indian fan who were given such a dismal performance by their National Team, it would be better to stay away from this event – making it a non-event

Regards – S. Sampathkumar.