Finally an exciting match happened and what a match it was… Gripping, tense and good cricket all around. Australia fought fabulously to peg back India to what was turning out to be a huge 300 plus score and India put relentless pressure on the Aussie batting to scrape home.

It was the cricket wasn’t it? Any anybody who watched the match could have learned many things related to this trade as some good ideas in the bowling department all around by both teams were seen. If Nathan Bracken showed his way of stemming runs in the slog by bowling Yorkers wide of the stump which no batsman normally expects and is harder to score off, Praveen Kumar showed his version of the slow ball which is pitched short and therefore keeps low and straight to the stumps. For a cricketer, this match could have been one where one could learn many new things.

India and Dhoni in particular has done fabulously well to take a young team and win a tournament on their first outing. However, it would be fool hardy to say that the team has worked things out. Full credit for the effort showed and collective team spirit. However, there are still many questions that need to be answered by the young Indian batters, who in my opinion still are finding their feet.

Let’s face it… if it wasn’t for Sachin Tendulkar, the oldie, the elephant of Indian cricket, who scored heavily in both the finals, the rest of the batsmen would yet again struggle to cross 200 runs in a match. The younger lots have still not shown enough responsibility and inclination to hang around. There have been traces of it in this series but certainly not good enough. Perhaps Gambhir is the only one who showed that he takes the effort to hang on and it paid handsomely for him and the team. Yet, there were also moments of sheer rashness from him. I must say from this lot, if there is someone who could deserve to get into the test side, it is Gambhir, which would be fair to say that he be given a shot at the opening replacing Jaffer. The other candidate ought to be Akash Chopra, who deserves another shot at the top. Jaffer has to work on playing the swinging ball and improving his consistency.

Kudos to the work of Venkatesh Prasad…. He has done a fabulous job as a bowling coach. The same cannot be said about Robin Singh with regard to the fielding. Now that he has a young team, it should be easier for him to teach the right fielding techniques and the clock should start ticking from now all the way to the next 6 months of cricket to judge how well he has worked. On the bowling front, India has a very happy problem. With Zaheer and RP Singh back, it would be a scramble for the seam bowlers to find a place in the side. While I feel, that Zaheer, RP and Ishanth is an automatic must, it will be tough and good for Indian cricket that all the Indian bowlers slog it out in the future for a spot in the playing 11. As for Praveen, it took some time to get over his nerves and he got back his majestic gift of swinging the ball big time both ways. I felt earlier in the series that Dhoni was wasting Praveen by not giving him the new ball and when he did give him the new ball, he showed why he was the most consistent and probably the best domestic cricket bowler in India. My only wish is that the spin department also churns out more depth apart from a Chawla, Harby or a Murali Karthik.

The effort that Hussey and Hopes put in the chase was marvelous. I feel Hopes is more than decent bowler and is hard to score. Watching him bat also gets me excited, because of his grace, the straight bat and flow in which he dispatches balls to the boundaries. He does have his weakness towards spin but I feel that he is still jittery while on the field and will improve and come truly on his own as he plays more with this side and feels welcome in the Aussie unit.

As for all the controversies in this series, it would be best for all to take the positives out of it. The well known saying that any publicity is good publicity may be apt. While all the purists may say that the game is ruined it should be noted that it was ruined well more than a decade ago. So might as well, take the positives coming out of the controversies in terms of larger public interest, higher television ratings and fanatical polarized popularity of the home teams to inch cricket forward to the extend of the popularity of football and overtake to become the number 1 sport.
The brighter side of the series…

1. Sachin regains his throne to become the best batsmen in the world, that too towards the fag end of his career.
2. Nathan Bracken continues to impress as the world’s best ODI bowler. Though Lee might be the best bowler in very format, perhaps Nathan is severely underrated. I still say if it was not for him, the Aussies would not have easily won the world cup or perhaps even won. That is why it was a huge surprise that Lee was the Australian cricketer of the year (for last year/season’s play) considering he was injured, did not play the world cup etc.
3. Hopes should be the Shane Watson that Australia wants.
4. Hussey’ averages are not a fluke… he is bloody good.
5. Ishanth and the rest of the Indian seamers put apprehensions of the past to rest on the non-existence of genuine quality in the Indian attack.
6. The Aussie media has to be the most pathetic and amateurish bunch of so called journalists in the world. The bright side here is the Aussie do not have the best for the change and takes the best of the worst.
7. The streaker chooses to head straight for Andrew Symonds? You fill in the rest on this .