As expected before the finals, the Indian players are nervously energetic.
None of the Indian players has any idea of how the final will play out for him.
Sehwag returns back to his room from a special lecture by Ravi Shastri on "Hitting deliveries to the boundary like tracer bullets" and immediately feels this tension. Being a social animal, Sehwag has no intent of withstanding this uneasiness alone. He has set up an Facebook invite to a nail biting party for all his mates. Ex-captain Sourav Ganguly is the Guest invitee.
About 12 suo-moto responses came promptly from Sri Lankan players volunteering to join the party but Sehwag had to refuse the invites.
Papparazzi saw a controversy in that refusal but the story turned out to be less engaging than was initially thought.
The hotel staff have only agreed to clean up KILOS of bitten off nails resulting from the party. TONS of nails will be out of the agreement and the room owner will have to clean it himself. As we all know, Sehwag prefers to sweep Sri Lankan deliveries ONLY on the cricket field.
13 other Team India players have accepted Sehwag's invite for nail biting party ahead of finals. Tendulkar's acceptance reportedly came within 13 seconds of sending out invite...making Sehwag tweet on it.
All except one man.
Suresh Raina.
He is not chewing his nails for a change. He is unaffected by tension.
Why?
Because he knows EXACTLY what he will be doing in that match as the 7th batsman.
How does he know that?
He has a secret crystal ball that has given him his secret brief in all EXACTNESS.
This is his brief:
Raina reopens the cricinfo statsguru page. He wants to check the number of times he passed 34 in ODI's with a new filtering criteria he just thought of. He would next go to the ESPNcricinfo camp to ask for those videos.
[End of story]
Don't you believe me on Raina's brief? Check up for yourself on the QF with Australia and SF with pakistan - you already know that India scored 260 in both matches. Now see the over# and team score at which 5th wicket fell - and also Raina's score in each of the 2 games:
QF: http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/engine/match/433601.html
SF: http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/engine/current/match/433605.html
Are you an Indian? Then pray that Sri Lanka do not bat first and get > 260 ;-)
[Acknowledgement: This is an expansion of cricinfo's stats article today on no. 7 performances in India & SL teams]
None of the Indian players has any idea of how the final will play out for him.
Sehwag returns back to his room from a special lecture by Ravi Shastri on "Hitting deliveries to the boundary like tracer bullets" and immediately feels this tension. Being a social animal, Sehwag has no intent of withstanding this uneasiness alone. He has set up an Facebook invite to a nail biting party for all his mates. Ex-captain Sourav Ganguly is the Guest invitee.
About 12 suo-moto responses came promptly from Sri Lankan players volunteering to join the party but Sehwag had to refuse the invites.
Papparazzi saw a controversy in that refusal but the story turned out to be less engaging than was initially thought.
The hotel staff have only agreed to clean up KILOS of bitten off nails resulting from the party. TONS of nails will be out of the agreement and the room owner will have to clean it himself. As we all know, Sehwag prefers to sweep Sri Lankan deliveries ONLY on the cricket field.
13 other Team India players have accepted Sehwag's invite for nail biting party ahead of finals. Tendulkar's acceptance reportedly came within 13 seconds of sending out invite...making Sehwag tweet on it.
All except one man.
Suresh Raina.
He is not chewing his nails for a change. He is unaffected by tension.
Why?
Because he knows EXACTLY what he will be doing in that match as the 7th batsman.
How does he know that?
He has a secret crystal ball that has given him his secret brief in all EXACTNESS.
This is his brief:
- Irrespective of whether India bat 1st or second, the fifth wicket will fall EXACTLY at the score of 187.
- The fifth wicket falls in EXACTLY the 38th over too.
- After coming in, Raina will be required to take the Indian total to EXACTLY 260 by playing cautiously at the start and aggressively at the end.
- And in the process he will get to an unbeaten personal score of 34 (not EXACT for a change, but thereabouts) in those overs.
Raina reopens the cricinfo statsguru page. He wants to check the number of times he passed 34 in ODI's with a new filtering criteria he just thought of. He would next go to the ESPNcricinfo camp to ask for those videos.
[End of story]
Don't you believe me on Raina's brief? Check up for yourself on the QF with Australia and SF with pakistan - you already know that India scored 260 in both matches. Now see the over# and team score at which 5th wicket fell - and also Raina's score in each of the 2 games:
QF: http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/engine/match/433601.html
SF: http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/engine/current/match/433605.html
Are you an Indian? Then pray that Sri Lanka do not bat first and get > 260 ;-)
[Acknowledgement: This is an expansion of cricinfo's stats article today on no. 7 performances in India & SL teams]
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