Kapil Dev's comments that Yuvraj is not hungry enough seem to have provoked Yuvraj to get back in form and perform to show the legendary Kapil that Yuvi can perfom. Yes, Yuvi can comeback.
Yuvi had his sceond heroic performance in two ODIs against England. In both the ODIs, he was, mainly, responsible for crushing victories against England. He scored 118 in the second ODI while grabbing 4 economic wickets. If you can recall, he had scored 138 not out during the first ODI. Two consecutive centuries in ODI - wow!
In the second ODI, it was a real heroic performance. When Yuvi joined Ganmbhir, India was reeling under pressure at 29/3 in the early overs. Together, they played a very pationate innings, controlling themselves. They played quock singles and doubles to keep the score board trickling and consistently raising the run rates.
Later, England collapsed to 238 all out
after Yuvraj ended a 96-run second-wicket partnership by removing Owais
Shah (58) and Matt Prior (38) in successive overs before returning 4-28
bowling slow left-arm spin on a sluggish pitch.
He returned to dismiss Andrew Flintoff (43) and skipper Kevin
Pietersen (33) in the same over after their racy 74-run fourth-wicket
partnership had kept alive England hopes before they lost four wickets
for eight runs.
Yuvraj
Singh is expected to perform superbly during the ODI series against Sri
Lanka, starting August 18. Currently he is placed at 15th spot of ICC
batting chart and is expected to move upward within first 10.
Indian ODI captain Mahendra
Singh Dhoni has the best potential to inch closer to top spot of ICC batting chart if he continues his
good form of the.
Dhoni is 19 points adrift of table topper South African Graeme Smith in
the latest ICC ODI batting list with 773 rating points to his kitty.
Gautam Gambhir (19th) is the other India batsmen in the top 20. He is well
placed to move upwards if they perform well in the forthcoming matches.
Sixth-placed Sachin Tendulkar is likely to lose ground after an
elbow injury has sidelined him for the ODI series. A player loses one per cent
of his rating for missing every match.
Sri Lanka's 10th-placed Kumar Sangakkara can cause some reshuffling
in the top 10 while veteran teammate Sanath Jayasuriya (15th) also has the top
10 spot firmly within his sights.
In the bowlers' list, headed by
Australian Nathan Bracken, off-spinner Harbhajan Singh is the highest ranked
Indian at 24th and is well placed to enter the top 15 with his current form and performance in Sri Lanka.
If India wins the series 5-0, it will go ahead
of New Zealand on 118 ratings points to third place and seventh-placed Sri Lanka
will drop to 98 ratings points and eighth position on the ladder.
On
the other side of the coin, India could drop to as low as seventh with 105
ratings points if it looses all its matches while Sri Lanka can climb three
places to fourth position.
If India wins 4-1, it will stay in fourth
place but will reduce the gap with New Zealand to one ratings point while Sri
Lanka will slip to 101 ratings points.
India easily cruised into finals with their batting might. This might be sounding so easy and that's how it was in the final 15-20 overs. It was more of singles than 2s and 4s and 6s in the final 15 overs, between Yuvi and Sharma.
Gautam Gambhir and Virendra Sehwag provided a blazing start to the Indian innings. Sehwag scoring 42 in 34 balls and Gambhir going for 68 and 61. The games slowed a bit with Dhoni and Raina but ot for long. Both of them provided a good middle order support carrying all the way to 253. Dhoni scored 67 off 62 balls with a towering six and Raina had 54 off 66 balls.
Batting first, Sri Lanka scored a massive ton of 308/8 in 50 overs. Indian bowlers had no support from the pitch. Captain Dhoni tried his best, but it was all futile. Specifially, the pacemen had no role to play on the pitch.
Kapugedera's 75 with Jayawardene and Silva with 50 a piece contributed to Sri Lanka's 308.
Today's game against Sri Lanka was a repeatation of yesterday's game
between India and Pakistan, to the extent that their scores were with
in the difference of 1.
Karachi's pitch had no support for bowlers. It's like dead pitch that helped batsman score at their will.
India 301 for 4 (Sehwag 119, Raina 84) beat Pakistan 299 for 4 (Malik 125, Younis 59) by six wickets
Sehwag smashed a 95-ball 119 and Suresh Raina hit a 68-ball 84 to seal a thimping victory over arch rival parksitan.
Earlier, Shoaib Malik hit his first century as captain to help Pakistan post a challenging target.
However, Sehwag and Raina's knocks proved it to be a cake walk for India who were indebted to some lusty batting
by Sehwag and Raina as the duo tore apart the home bowling, which lost
its bite after frontline paceman Umar Gul broke down with a side strain.
South Africa will stick to their aggressive bowling strategy of drawing
India's heavyweight batting line-up out of the comfort zone, and will
take a call on a second spin option only after having a look at the
Kanpur pitch on Wednesday, revealed Mickey Arthur, the team's coach.