for the set.
I’m with most of the old England captains in the various commentary booths around Trent Bridge in thinking that the Indians should have stood by their actions and Ian Bell should not have been rewarded for stupidity.
It wasn’t naivety
as Bell tried to defend himself by saying. It was slack stupidity and India had every right to punish him for it. The smiles on most of the players as they went off suggested they were happy with it because they didn’t have much else to smile about. MS Dhoni though, was it the incident or the way his team had bowled that put a concerned look on his face?
And the way the Indians played has been rather overlooked in the eulogising about Bell actually doing something for a change, instead of the standard bottling act we usually see. Heavy roller first up in the morning and the pitch was pretty flat and lifeless, Indian bowlers got no zip and, bar the odd ball, bowled nothing to put fear into a club slogger. They ended one bowler down again but in reality that meant nothing as Harbhajan has proved little threat in this series at all. Though it meant the pace
men were well worked.
This wasn’t quite what we’ve seen from Bell’s form of his life
of late. It wasn’t to the level of milking easy runs that have padded his stas for the last few months – nothing Sri Lanakan attack and piling on runs with a big score already on the board and at least one century maker up there – but it wasn’t far off. After all he was the first the only century on the board and ended up as top scorer. Now how many times has that happened? You wouldn’t need two hands I’d wager.
As for the run-out, well what he said after in his measly mouthed statement didn’t quite match up with what we saw.
I put my bat down after the third run and it looked like we were just meandering off for tea
– Well he put his bat down after the third run, turned and didn’t exactly meander down the wicket, it wasn’t full pelt but he made an effort to about have way down the pitch before meandering
.
We were both a bit shocked, we didn’t really realise what had happened until we were halfway off
– Morgan, sheepish, head down, looked like he knew what was going on.
I take some of the blame
– Who else is there to take any blame? It was all his fault. Funny how they don’t seem to believe a catch has been taken by the reaction of a fielder but just because Kumar was casual returning the ball he automatically believed it was a four.
For sporting reasons and maybe the for the good of the series and especially the relationship between the two sides Dhoni made a courageous decision, that has been applauded by many, though no public thanks from Bell, maybe he thinks Dhoni is partly to blame after all.
I know it was a last minute think, to rescind the appeal and re-instate Bell but surely something should have been announced before the umpires – who did absolutely nothing wrong, indeed did their best to see if Dhoni was intent on going through with the original appeal – and then the Indian team were booed onto the field. Though in defence of the fans can you imaging the situation reversed and it happening at say Eden Gardens in Calcutta. Bit more than booing.
No doubt Dhoni and with the words spoken by Dravid after the close of play it’s the Indians that came out of the whole thing well. It will have helped overshadow some of the poor play by the tourists. Still think they should have stuck by their guns, would have really made for a feisty time and made jellybeangate look as pathetically meaningless as it was.