YOUNGSTERS EXCELL AS THE CRICKETING ELITE FAIL..

As the afternoon sun shone on the Barabati stadium Saurav Ganguly and his men again tried to make a mess of yet another run chase with some irresponsible shots and silly run-outs, but this time Hemang Badani stood tall among the rest. He shouldered the responsibility of guiding India home in a very graceful manner. Badani playing only his fourth match played an innings of character under pressure that even Sachin Tendulkar would envy. On a day when Indian arieal fielding was at its worst, debutante Reetinder Singh Sodhi and his Punjab Team mate Yuvraj Singh tried to lift team morale by putting a good show in field. More than four catches were dropped in all and even the ground fielding elicited indiscipline. The catch-dropping repertoire started with Ganguly making a mess of a simple catch in slips and thus providing Marillier a good opportunity to prove his worth. But Marillier didn’t improvise on this golden chance and soon he was back to the pavilion. Alister Campbell and Stuart Carlisle had a fruitful 124 run stand, which give Zimbabwe a respectable score of 253 to defend. Indian run chase began in an outstanding fashion with Sachin and Saurav giving yet another century opening stand. But Sachin was victimized by loss of concentration while Ganguly was out to an irresponsible shot. Rahul Dravid and debutante Reetinder Sodhi were undone by terrible mix –ups and Yuvraj Singh hardly disturbed the scoreboard. The score board read 144 with half of the team back in the pavilion. Zimbabwe just needed to breakthrough the lower middle to taste victory, but Hemang Badani held one stand with tremendous determination while wicket keeper batsman Vijay Dahiya eased some pressure with his aggressive batting. Suddenly, the once Herculean task now seemed feasible with some unorthodox hitting by Ajit Agarkar. Finally it was brave Hemang Badani who scored the winning runs with 16 deliveries to spare and took India 1-0 up in this five match series.

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