Future Cup 2008 was shared by India and South Africa

Hi friends, the 3rd day play between India and South Africa was very interesting. India won the match by 8 wickets and leveled the series 1-1. Earlier, India denied the last wicket for the South African bowlers in the first session of the day. Sreeshant & Ishant Sharma played an important knock and helped India to gain a lead exact 60 runs.

South Africa started its second innings very badly. The wickets started falling regularly and Indian bowlers tighten the line and length. South African batsmen weakness against the quality spin bowling had been exposed again by the Indian spinners. The first wicket of McKenzie was taken by Sreeshant and after that all the remaining batsmen got out cheaply.

The turning point of the match in second innings was the dismissal of J.Kallis. Shewag was surprise bowler for South Africans. I was disappointed with the performance of Piyush Chawla. His lack of experience clearly showed while he was bowling. Ishant Sharma extracted some bounce from the pitch and quickly removed the dangerous Boucher and Morkel. Earlier, Harbhajan Singh picked up 4 crucial wickets. He opened bowling with Sreeshant with the new ball.

South Africa scored 121 runs in the 2nd innings and gave a target of 60 runs for India to win the test match. Shewag as usual played aggressively and scored 22 in 12 balls. Shewag and Jaffer got out quickly and the score was 32-2. Ganguly and Dravid scored the remaining runs.

M.S.Dhoni’s captaincy was good and he is one of the luckiest captains of India. What ever move he does in the match will click, for example: Dhoni introduced Ishant Sharma when a good partnership is building up between Prince and Boucher. Ishant Sharma suddenly picked up 2 wickets.

Harbhajan Singh was named as Man of Series. Ganguly won the Man of the Match award.

I expected this kind of performance in Ahmedabad but Indian team disappointed me. The first innings collapse had made India to lose the game. This time in Kanpur it is the turn of South Africa. India remains at the 2 spot in the ICC team ranking in test matches…