Monday 17 November 2014

Unimpressive Delhi manage to qualify for knockouts

It eventually had to boil down to the wire with Delhi and Punjab barely making it to the knockouts of the Vijay Hazare Trophy. Delhi were in a must-win situation in their last two games, against Haryana and Services and they just managed to scrape past both their opponents to make it through. For one of the richest associations, the sight of losing to Jammu and Kashmir and then to Himachal Pradesh was a disappointing one.
More importantly, both Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir didn’t look god enough. Both did click in the all-important game against Haryana, Sehwag cracking a 68-ball 80 while Gambhir making a steady 93 but they lacked consistency. Worse was Ashish Nehra, who seems to be getting less inspiring as the years go by. He has had fitness issues and here he didn’t do really well.
On tracks which supported bowlers, the failure of batsmen was fine but what about Nehra, the ace swing, who according to a leading newspaper is in reckoning for World Cup. His proximity to captain Dhoni, thanks to Nehra’s association with Chennai Super Kings, may be the driving factor in this speculation but with him not able to do much for his state side is certainly putting question marks on his utility for Delhi. There are people from the previous sports committee saying that we don’t need Nehra at all. “Feed in younger bowlers,” said a committe spokesperson.  
Match 4: Haryana 247 all out in 50 overs (S Rana 71, V Tokas 4/41) lost to Delhi 251/7 in 42.1 overs (G Gambhir 93, V Sehwag 80, Joginder Sharma 4/27)
Match 5: Services 146 all out in 40.1 overs (Vikas Tokas 4/43) lost to Delhi 148/7 in 34.4 overs (R Bhatia 34, G Gambhir 4, V Sehwag 20)

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