Mar 08 2009
Cricket: Tendulkar puts India in commanding position
India in New Zealand ODI Series - 3rd ODI
Played at AMI Stadium, Christchurch, on 08 March 2009 - Day/Night
Daniel Vettori did not play as he is away to look after his wife. Brendon McCullum took over the captaincy in Vettori’s absence. He would not have imagined the task would be so difficult.
New Zealand would have been happy to remove Sehwag early. Sehwag scored only 3 runs. But, Tendulkar took charge today. In the last match, he scored a fluent half-century. But, here he went on to score 163 runs before retiring hurt. The highest score in ODI was under threat as Sachin still had about 5 overs when he retired.
Sachin Tendulkar played aggressively in the company of Yuvraj Singh. Yuvraj Singh did not let the early losses of Sehwag and Gambhir to affect the scoring rate. Yuvraj Singh and Sachin put on 138 runs for the fourth wicket in just under 17 overs, with Yuvraj contributing 87 runs to the partnership.Once Yuvraj left and Sachin reached his century, he started to change gears. It was a pity that he had to retire. Well done Sachin! During the innings, he accomplished his 43rd century in ODIs.
Dhoni played a good supporting innings once again scoring 68 runs. Raina scored 38 runs from just 18 balls. A score of 400+ looked possible, but two good overs in the end restricted India to 392, which is a huge total by any means. Yuvraj hit 6 sixes, Sachin hit 5 sixes, Raina had 5 sixes and Dhoni hit 2 sixes.
New Zealand have to bat extremely well to get anywhere to close to this target. They missed the bowling of Daniel Vettori. Southee went for 105 runs in his 10 overs. They have to get their thoughts together and forget their first innings to put a fight.
