Jayawardene survives a scare as Dhoni rolls his arm over
Expect the unexpected when Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the captain. The Indian seamers gave their team a brilliant start by sending the Sri Lankan top-order packing.
Sri Lanka were reeling at one point when they were 58 for 3 when Dhoni decided to bring himself on by surprising not only the press box along with the crowd but also his team-mates.
It was a short burst of 4 overs where he had figures of 0/17, pretty decent given the fact that he is not even a part time bowler. The conditions were ideal for a seamer to bowl as it was a cloudy afternoon and Dhoni almost picked up a wicket when a little in-swinger came back in and wrapped Jayawardene on the pads. The umpire reacted in the affirmative to the appeal only to find out that Jayawardene got an inside edge and the decision was reviewed.
In fact, this was not the only time he came close to picking up a wicket. He went past the outside edge of Jayawardene's bat as he tried to steer it through short third-man and almost picked up Angelo Mathews when he played inside the line of the ball and missed the inside edge of the bat by a whisker.
Although a net bowler, this is not the first time Dhoni has surprised everybody by thinking to roll his arm over. In 2012, when India were touring England he decided to pick up the ball and bowl a few overs. His first success as a bowler came in the previous Champions Trophy where he picked up the wicket of Travis Dowlin, his first one-day wicket.
Sourav Ganguly was in the commentary box when he decided to bowl and he just reminded his co-commentator, Nasser Hussain that he had figures of 3 for 40 in the 1999 World Cup match against England and Hussain was one of the batters to fall prey to Ganguly in that match. Both Ganguly and Dhoni are pretty similar kind of bowlers, although Ganguly was a lot more regular to the bowling crease.
In these conditions the dibly dobly bowlers can turn out to be very effective and don't be surprised if you see Dhoni picking up a couple of wickets in the finals. He can be pretty handy with the ball in these conditions.
Post new comment