SURPRISING RESULTS ARE emerging from the Carribean land, the venue of cricket’s biggest event – the World Cup. Two matches that were held on March 17 have sent shockwaves across the Indian subcontinent. The two stalwarts of cricket world suffered heavy defeat at the hands of the not-so-well-known teams – Bangladesh and Ireland, which had also succeeded in drawing its first match with Zimbabwe.

 

Bangladesh handed a five-wicket defeat to the Indian team at Port of Spain, Trinidad. Having won the toss, Indian captain Rahul Dravid elected to bat first in the Group B match and the entire team was out at 191. A good bowling display was put up by Bangladesh. Mashrafe Mortaza and Syed Rasel of Bangladesh claimed 4 wickets in 19.3 overs, giving just 69 runs, which was indeed a decisive factor.

 

Virender Sehwag was out at the very beginning making 2 runs in the company of Sourav Ganguly. The consecutive players Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid also could not weave any magic and got out very soon. MS Dhoni was ducked out of the match. The highest run partnership was between Ganguly and Yuvraj Singh.

 

Bangladesh exhibited brilliant batting skills from the very. Indian bowlers Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Munaf Patel bowled 26 overs giving 119 runs with 3 wickets in their pocket. Three of the Bangladeshi batsmen scored fifty. Tamim Iqbal scored stunning 51 from 53 balls with the help of two sixes.

 

Without Pathan, Kumble, Karthik and Sreesanth the Indian bowling team had started giving runs to the Bangladeshis from the very beginning. The Indian team was under immense pressure trying to stop Bangladesh batsmen from swinging the ball with ease but failed miserably. The team emerged victorious by reaching the 192 target with nine balls still spare.

 

The same was the fate of Pakistan against Ireland. The highlights of Ireland’s performance were some very scintillating catches, some great stops in the field.

 

Pakistan has now been knocked out of the World Cup 2007, courtesy Ireland, and India has now been thrown in a situation where it will now have to win both of its next scheduled matches i.e. with Bermuda and Sri Lanka.

 

For the team India captain it is now time to rethink about his decision to include Sehwag in the team after cajoling the chief selector. The Pakistan captain after suffering this huge defeat has announced his retirement from one-day cricket.