Chak De India!!!!!!!!!!!!

What an amazing performance for Team India to beat the Aussies hands down and lift the CB Series. It was a brilliant series for the Indians and they emerged deserving victors. The Aussies claim that they dominated the group phase and lost out in the finals but that was not the case at all. All the matches between India and Aus in this series were close affairs with the Indian bowlers troubling the Aussie batsmen in all the matches. The difference in the finals was that the little master turned it on and the Aussies had no hope.

This was a young Indian team and most people (myself included) thought they were going to lose pretty badly and even doubted if they would make the final. They have proved everybody wrong and have played some unbelievable cricket. The stand out point for me has been the performance of some of the young players like Gautham Gambhir, Rohit Sharma, Ishant Sharma, and Praveen Kumar. When the big players like Sachin,Sehwag,and Yuvraj were not making big runs these youngsters stood up and took the responsibility along with the captain MS Dhoni who has shown immense maturity in his batting this series. This bodes well for the future and Indian cricket and lets hope the youngsters continue to perform in the same vein.

One thing that was evident in the finals was the hunger that this Indian team showed. They wanted to win desperately and that is something we have not seen much of in the past. Some part of it might be attributed to the foolish comments made by Hayden which really worked to spur this team on. Harbhajan was targeted by the players and the crowd and not only did he show tremendous guts to handle that but also raised his level of performance in the finals. That he took the wickets of Hayden and Symonds in the finals really proves the point.

The Aussies were outplayed in totality by this Indian team and their off the field antics did not really help them score any psychological points either. With the great Gilly departing they will be further weakened and their dominance over world cricket is all set to be a thing of the past.

The winning moment:


India's find of the series:


An example of 'Aussie rules' cricket:


Gilly's last act with the gloves :)