A thriller

Well well well, if you are a cricket buff and if you missed last night's World Cup match between India and England, you missed something really spectacular. So far, most of the matches in the tourney are one-sided (almost every match was predictable) and people were losing interest in the complete event itself. Even I was satisfied with seeing the live scores on the Internet rather than watching the match on TV. I read somewhere that ICC gave a press release saying something like "this tourney is an acid test for the One Day International (ODI) cricket". And then, yesterday happened. This match provided the necessary kick to the tournament and to ODI format.

For those of you who missed the match, let me tell you what exactly happened. India scored a mammoth total of 338 thanks to the masterful century by the Little Master, Sachin Tendulkar, himself. The innings of the master was masterful because of the way he paced his innings. When Sehwag was around, he just played on without much authority. Once Sehwag was out and Gambhir was settled, the master unleashed a fierce attack on the English bowlers. Greame Swann, considered as the best among the current spinners on the world, was hit for two successive sixers.

Indians would've scored more if it was not for the mad tumble of 5 wickets in the last couple of overs. However, 338 on Indian tracks is considered to be a tough score to chase and thanks to the recent form of English batsmen in ODI, everyone thought that this will be a cakewalk for the Indian bowlers. But the English captain had some other thoughts.

Strauss and Pietersen started things off very well in a classy way, fetching easy runs off the harmless Indian bowling. It needed a special bit of fielding from Munaf Patel to break this partnership. Then one more wicket fell and things looked OK for a few minutes. Then the pair of Strauss and Bell played calmly and the tide shifted slowly but gradually towards the English side. Strauss deserved an huge applause for his first century in World Cup and his career best score of 158.

With just a few runs to score that too with 8 wickets in hand, the English win seemed inevitable. Then Zaheer struck with two wickets in two balls to change the course of events and now the scales pointed towards India. Even though few more wickets fell and the bowling and fielding departments of India increased their momentum, the lower-order batsmen of England held their nerve and hit a few lusty blows in the end. After two sixes in the penultimate over and one more in the last over, the English team were left to score with 5 runs in 3 balls. A bye came in the first ball and couple in the second.

The match got tied after the batsmen had to settle for a single off the final ball.

After all, it was ODI cricket which won the last night's encounter. An epic match to bring the focus back on ODIs. I hope we get to see many more thrillers like this in the tourney.

Nirvana

Another set of wonderful moments passed by, as I finished my short trip to India last month and returned to Bahrain. As this was my first trip after marriage, most of my time was spent by visiting the relatives with my wifey. Counted the number of times I boarded a train, and the result came as 6 times in 20 days. Interesting. But hey, please don't ask about the number of buses I've boarded!!!

Coming back to reality, this vacation was sort of an eye-opener for me. Let's say I attained NIRVANA during this trip. Felt like I was missing out something in life by staying in Bahrain. I desperately felt the need for a change of a job, or even career. I just looked at the past few years of my career and found that I seem a bit back dated in this competent world. Even though I've enough workload to keep myself busy and the pay packet is OK, I feel that I'm doing the same routine work and there's nothing new to learn and develop myself. Seems like I've to clean the dust off my MBA dreams and seriously consider this option.

Taking such a decision might be a gamble now, as I am married recently and have to look after someone who looks after me. But I am sure that this gamble might be worth it.

Well, other than this, life is all OK. During my 3 week trip to India, I had the privilege of spending max time with my new-born niece who's now almost 2 months old. She's such a darling that I couldn't give her to anyone else from my arms.

As promised earlier, I look forward for posting lots and lots of quality posts this year and revive my blog. Last month, I couldn't do much as I was too busy in India. With the Cricket World Cup just a couple of weeks ahead, expect some decent cricketing posts too.