Chak De, India and Chak De, Sachin too

As you all know, India won the last edition of the Commonwealth Bank series in Australia. This series win is historic in many aspects, the major one being the fact that this was won against the Aussies, world no. 1, in their own homeland. And this win is important because the Aussies tried to degrade our players a lot. Overall, this series win can attributed as a team work but the final two matches were dominated by Sachin in batting and Praveen in bowling. Praveen is a talented young chap who’ll conquer quite a few milestones in his career. But it’s Sachin who stood in the news most of the time. Being an ardent fan of him, let me write a few words about him. After all, this is my blog and if it’s not here that I write, where can I write about him?
Before the final three matches of India, Sachin did not play upto his mark. His best scores were a crucial 44 and a blistering 32. He even scored a couple of single digit scores and a duck in the process of the tournament. Then some so-called pundits of cricket raised their voices against him and almost demanded that he has to retire and give chance to youngsters. It was then that the volcano erupted.
India had to win their last league match against Sri Lanka to advance to the finals. No one expected Sachin to play well because (I’m sorry to say this) he had a bad reputation of not being able to perform in crucial matches. But die-hard fans like me were praying for him all the way. Our prayers were answered. He blasted the opposition’s bowling attack with his stroke-play and India easily won the match. But this is just a sign of the storm to come.
The finals for this tourney were in the format of best-of-three matches. In the first final, India was chasing a tempting total of 240. But no target is in reach, if you consider the pace-attack of the Aussies. It was then that the maestro came into rescue. After losing some early wickets, Rohit Sharma joined Sachin in the run chase and they both took the team into safe waters. Sachin was not out till the end and scored 117 off 120 balls. Fittingly, he was adjudged the Man of the Match.
India batted first in the second final and scored a total of 259 runs in their allotted 50 overs. But this score was far less then what was expected at the time Sachin was out. He scored 91 in this innings. We won this match fairly just because of Praveen Kumar who took 3 early wickets and finished with the match figures of 4-46.
Sachin regained his No. 1 rank as the world’s best batsman after quite a few years. He proved to his critics that he’s still the best in the trade. As ardent fans of Sachin, we all hope that he conquers many more heights in the cricketing history.