For what was a long and boring commonwealth series, I was hoping for some exciting brand of cricket being played in the finals and a decent match went by with India quite easily beating the Aussies.

The Indian bowlers did well to restrict the Aussies to 240 but should also be kicking themselves that they conceded so much, considering they were tottering with 3 wickets down with less than 25 runs on the board within the first 6 overs.

I had earlier on this site made calls to look beyond Harbhajan Singh as the spinner and try out the other blokes around for a long run. Harbhajan is bowling well… quite decently actually however he has certainly not been living up to the strike bowler tag for quite some time now and it is best to try out the other spinners in the ranks, see how they match up and rebuild the spin attack. Anil Kumble will not be around for too long and this void has to be filled up pretty soon.

Dhoni did a great job in making Piyush Chawla play and the lad bowled very well in the match. How he fares in every opportunity he gets is critical to have him on board the test team in the near future. I do hope to see a lot more of him.

Hayden was at his usual dominating best but I must say Hussey has impressed me with his temperament and his ability to remain cool and collected. Hayden should have been kicking himself for missing out on a century in a rash moment of senseless batting.

But the star of the match was Sachin Tendulkar with an unbeaten match wining hundred and delivering yet another gag-order to his critics. He has been playing brilliantly this season and it took just a few matches of low scores for some stupid columnist, ex-cricketers to start writing him off…. “again”!

How many times before has this guy done this. It takes 3-4 matches of poor scores for the knives to be out for him and typically he comes back with a bang silencing every one, time and again. This will not be the last time either. All I wish to say to everyone is to enjoy him while he is still around, enjoy his beautiful stroke-play, his humility and all the great camaraderie he shares with his team and opponents. If he isn’t a model sportsman, who is?

I was happy to see Uthappa at the top… that is where he belongs. He is a logical replacement for Sehwag and it was great to watch him bat sensibly and normally. He is a brilliant kid when does so and I have been critical of his twenty-20 style technique which he uses so often in the one-day and domestic tournaments, which has led to his decline in scoring runs. After starting off well, it took that same moment of rashness to throw his wicket away. I will quote Naked cricket here…”He is a brilliant kid when he shoots straight”… I hope he takes a leaf out of his start and what went wrong.

Hussey probably took the catch of the tournament… is there anybody in that team that does not field well? Simply amazing!

And coming to Dhoni… his value to Indian cricket is simply unbelievable. He took a bunch of new guys and came back with the Twenty-20 world cup. He took a call to infuse new blood into the one-day team and once again, brought a young team into a final of a tournament against two of the best one-day teams in world cricket. His confidence and belief is heartening and when he has things his way, he makes it a point to back his thoughts firmly, perform and make it count.

As a keeper, he has come a long way silently and unassumingly. He is without a doubt one of the best glovemen in India and has shut out the competition. He is fast rising to be the best in the world and his progress is a treat.

My only disappointment on Dhoni which I have often raised is on his obsession for certain field positions which are not working too well in my opinion.

I cannot quite comprehend why he does not like to have a third man at all. He keeps a deep gully at the edge of the circle to try and stop the easy singles and put pressure. However, you keep on noticing game after game that the singles are being taken and also the boundaries start flowing.

I can understand if this is done early on in the innings or during the middle overs to create and maintain pressure on the batsmen to score. What I cannot possibly comprehend is using this position even in the death overs! When the batsman is looking to score heavily, he basically gives them the opportunity to take the boundary defying logical sense. The same can be said for his other obsession of having fine leg within or slightly outside the circle.

I hope somebody, somewhere… the team statistician I suppose will be the ideal guy, to show him the number of runs that flowed/saved in these positions.

Apparently, the flavour of the match was spoiled with more racial allegations, taunts and arm-pit scratching . I’m for loss of words on that Aussie newspaper, which brought that report… this is such a low-down for Journalism. How low can you stoop? How cheap can one get to create a story? This melodrama keeps on surfacing and it is best that we ignore it and get on with the game, as things have been stooping to new lows and will be beneath anyone’s dignity to join in the slinging match.

As for the cricket on Tuesday, game on brothers… will India clinch a historic win or will the Aussie juggernaut roll on fighting… it should be exciting and everyone can then look forward to some peace and quiet after one of the most ugliest cricket tours ever in the history of the game. After the bodyline series, this should be right there at the top.