This Week In Cricket (8/25/2008- 8/31/2008)

India – Srilanka one day series

India won the one day series against all expectations mainly due to the presence of Dhoni in the middle order and some excellent bowling performances from Zaheer & co. The manner in which India lost the last match drives home the point that ‘toss’ should have been the man of the series. Day/night matches provide lot of advantage to teams winning the toss ; considering the fact all major tournament finals are day/night fixtures, we need a better system to provide equal chances to both the teams even after the toss.

My idea: Allow teams to choose alternately what they want to do in a series and if the last match is an odd number then allow the lowest ranked team to take advantage of the toss. This will make matches/series interesting and evenly contested. Even we can go one step further and have the visiting team start with an advantage in the first match.

England – SA one day series

What a surprise, this is the reason we follow cricket. England’s dominance in the series has been exceptional. KP's dream run with captaincy continues and England are leading the series 4-0 with a chance to climb to second place in ICC one day rankings if they win the last match. KP’s personal batting form has been excellent and makes me seriously wonder what he would achieved by now if he had started playing international cricket when he was 21/22 instead of 26.

On lighter note, main motivation for England players to do well in this one day series may to secure places for the Stanford 20-20 match and stands a chance to earn big money!