Sachin and Indian cricket

Sachin Tendulkar did it again. He alone took on Australian might when others fell wayside. He led an age-defying lone hand charge against a confident Australian bowling attack after Australian batsman had scored a mammoth 350. When Sachin fell, that score looked like in danger of being overhauled by 49th over.
What an innings that was ! He scored a huge 175 out of 347 scored by India. Next highest score was 53 by Suresh Raina.
Gambhir, Yuvraj and MS Dhoni left the field to leave Sachin battling alone.
Time and again, we saw in this series that middle and top order left quickly
to let someone else do the work for them.
Every match it was someone who took the responsibility and scored runs.
In Guahati .. none was available to take the responsibility - check the score 27/5.
We need someone who can just stand and take on the bowling.
The top and middle order seemed batting in a T20 match - as if they need to bat only few overs and not 50. Wonder what they will do in Test matches.

Look at the batting order - Sehwag, SRT, Gambhir, Yuvraj, MSD, Jadeja, Harbhajan, Pravin Kumar. I would say this line up can take on any bowling attack and decimate it.
In fact they did it on two occasions in this series. But that is not enough - that is less than 50%. If India plans to be no 1. in near future, then they need
to be consistent over a longer period of time. Need to be consistently responsible.
Being responsible means not leaving the job to someone else.

We all fans would like Indian team to fight till the end .. something Sachin
did a few days ago. Not give an inch to the opposition.

Come on guys ! We are all with you. Go ahead and fight from heart.

Australia derailed

Australia has gone down the test cricket rankings to #4. That is quite a slide .. and was quite expected. After the stalwarts of the Australian cricket retired one by one, the new foundation will take some time to set in.
And this is the chance all the other cricketing nations like South Africa, England, India, Sri Lanka and to an extent Pakistan should be looking forward to.
South Africa is #1 ranked test cricket nation right now. But Sri Lanka and India are not far behind. Sri Lanka has got a chance to stay there for quite some time
with a win over New Zealand.
India will need to wait for few months before they can claim the crown.
But India has a chance to go to #1 in ODIs, where they are behind South Africa.

This has thrown the field wide open. Whoever puts some planning in place and follows it up with efforts, will be crowned as #1.