Quote:
Originally Posted by Bengali_bradman
Just want to add, 146/4 is a pretty much plausible situation when you are chasing 250 ... 96 out of 60 balls with 6 wckts in hand ... It happened quite often in hand ..and we had players who could do that ...say, Bashar, Rafiq, Masri, Alok ... But they could not make it this time ...just that ...But the recovery by JO, HB and KM to 146/4 in 40 ovs was really a good shot!!!
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Sorry, I should have clarified. We were actually 146/4 afer 39.4, but lost KM's wicket the very next ball, leaving us with 96 runs off 60 balls with just 5 wickets in hand. If you consider that we eventually went on to lose:
5-146 (Khaled Mashud, 39.5 ov)
6-157 (Habibul Bashar, 41.3 ov)
7-159 (Mohammad Rafique, 42.1 ov)
Then it does not leave much to the imagination. I think we would have been better off
after Rafique fell to bat out the overs, and I think in this case Alok should have 'batted for his average', so to speak, just so more people would have been convinced with his inclusion into the team. He's a good player. (Although some of you may have still chastised him for not making an effort).
Also, considering we were 7-159, and eventually were bundled out for 183, 6 overs later (24 runs, 6 overs), it shows that slogging at the end really wouldn't have made much of a difference - we left ourselves with too much to get, and the pitch made it very difficult to chase down a total like 250 from the offset - we gave away too many runs in the last 5 overs of Australia's innings! (45 runs in 5 overs - If could have restricted it to half that, the game may have been more interesting).
But I'm over it. We've pushed them, in patches, in every game thus far this series. That is an acheivement in itself. Heres to going one better in final ODI on Friday!