Ponting’s World Cup Gamble Backfires

I was a bit torn today between who I wanted to win between Australia and India. On one hand I’m sick off Australia winning the world cup and wanted them out, I also wanted to see India take on Pakistan.

But on the other hand I kind of wanted to see Australia win for the great innings played by Ricky Ponting, and in the unlikely event of England making the final I think we would have a better chance against Australia than India (don’t know why after the recent ODI series, just a feeling I have).

Ponting always seems to be under fire and it was great to see him fight back today with his well paced, magnificent innings. I know he has his faults, but I think on the whole he gets a lot of unnecessary flak.

I think that Ponting judged the wicket today while batting and settled on a score of around 255-275, believing he had the bowling to defend a total in that region. In hindsight it was a gamble that backfired.

It may have lost, but at least Ponting had a game plan and he stuck to it. Sometimes when I watch England batting first it looks fairly obvious that they have no idea what a good total is.

If his bowlers had fired, his gamble might have paid off, but they didn’t. Another massive Australian gamble that failed was having Shaun Tait and Mitchell Johnson in the same side.

It was always going to be a hugh risk when you add the possibility of Brett Lee going for a few as well, mainly due to his pace and the pitch conditions, rather than accuracy reasons like the other two.

What off India and their world cup chances?

Well I thought that they had a great go at chucking it away. If at 1st you don’t succeed, then try again. If you don’t succeed the 2nd time, then try again. Then Gambhir finaly managed to get himself ran out at the the 3rd attempt, congratulations to him from all at Cricket Betting Blog.

Virat Kohli’s shot was non too clever and MS Dhoni gave his wicket away cheeply when cool heads were required. Along with the run out, it looked like India were trying their hardest to give it away. Thankfully for them, Yuvraj and Raina kept cool heads.

In the field they also used their reviews appallingly, they were both joke reviews and when Harbhajan had Ponting plum when he was in the 90’s it looked like it might cost them dearly. Luckily for Dhoni, Ponting didn’t do much more damage.

I’m not convinced by India’s overall gameplan though, I just get the feeling that it is based on winning the toss and batting the other side out of the match.

According to one of the commentators on TMS today, there was a stunned silence from the Indians in the pressroom when they lost the toss. There must be more to the match than winning the toss?

They seem to be over reliant on their batting, although it could be argued that they are only playing to their strengths. And lets be honest, their batting is bloody strong.

They also showed today that they can chase with Yuvraj the key man in the middle order, playing the role of India’s finisher.

But on the downside they must give the opposition 10-15 runs in the field every match and their bowling is over dependent on Zaheer, these two alarming weaknesses could easily cost them the world cup.

India are now into favourites again at a best price of 7/4 with Paddy Power and Sky Bet. We also have the mouth watering semi-final with Pakistan to look forward too.