Mother of Cricket – from top dogs to underdogs

Nothing is constant in this world—neither success nor failure, neither pleasure nor sorrow. This universal fact has been visible in cricket world since last couple of months. First, India, which stunned all by winning the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011  in
April, disgracefully lost their No. 1 Test rank unexpectedly and then England, which clinch top Test slot from India last month, fell into the ditch of failure. This dramatic exchange of success baton between the two teams was shocking and surprising to many.
England’s wounds were still bleeding when Pakistan sprinkled sour salt on them by winning the 1^st Test match of the ongoing bilateral series.

It had not been too many days when the Poms utilised their home grounds factor best to their favour and won all the games over the Men in Blue including four Tests and three ODI, empathetically placing themselves on the top of the International Cricket Council’s
ranking table. This record breaking series was held in August-September 2011. The World Champions returned home with baggage of humiliation, injuries, defeats and criticism in their pockets.

The entire English nation was excited to have accomplished their long-cherished dream which, they could not even image, was going to turn into nightmare in no time.

After a rest of a few weeks, the Mother of Cricket flew to India to take an acid test of their spirit, momentum and form, and prove to the world that they had become an invincible nation. But the hosts, filled with wrath and revengefulness, were already
desperate to regain their lost form.

India and England commenced a five-match ODI series on October 14 at Hyderabad. Both the teams seemed to be pouncing upon each other. To surprise of many cricket fans and followers, the hosts badly beat the guests by 126 runs at the end of the day.

The English took the first failure light but the Indians came to know that they were destined to bag a magnificent triumph in the coming days.

The 2^nd ODI was held on October 17 at Delhi. India replicated the same legacy and defeated England by 8 wickets. This time, the tourists realised that they how tough challenge they were facing. The Indians gained more courage and confidence with
this victory, and made up their minds to not only win but whitewash the series.

Paying back to the Poms with the same coin, the Asians demonstrated outstanding performances in the remaining three games and had a clean sweep on October 25 at Eden Gardens, Kolkata—the same venue where the same two teams could not play a high-profile
fixture of World Cup due to the ground’s pathetic preparation.

Thus, the English, who hit the headlines for almost a month, were forced to search for a place to hide their mourning faces. Along with their fans and supporters, the English cricketers were even themselves unable to understand that why and how they had
moved from boom to doom.

These nerve-rending failures might have put some of the English players in stress and pain but their wrinkle-faced coach, Andy Flower, has strictly warned that no chicken-hearted player can have a place in the team as he wants to build a steel-nerved playing
wing.

Let us see what happened with the English in remaining fixtures of this series.

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Posted by Sharjeel Ahmad on Jan 20 2012. Filed under Opinion, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry