 Sunil Gavaskar
The India-Australia one-day series is living up to its hype of being the best ticket in the game, and the close fought contests have whetted the cricket lovers' appetite for some more of the same.
The Australians won the first game keeping their nerve when Harbhajan Singh and Praveen Kumar threatened to take the game away from them, but in the next game on a real beauty of a cricket pitch, India played superbly to beat Australia comprehensively to level the series.
The Indian skipper had received a fair bit of advice from old folks as well as young ones about batting up the order, and this was in reference to Virat Kohli going ahead of him in the first game. Kohli is a promising talent but in a situation where the asking rate from the beginning was nearly 6 runs an over, an experienced hand was needed.
Dhoni showed in that magnificent knock how by running the quick singles and converting the ones into twos, a good scoring rate can be maintained without taking any risks.
Once Yuvraj comes back in the team, Dhoni's position will be at number 5 unless of course, the openers get the team off to a blazing start and stay together till the last few overs. Then Dhoni's big-hitting skills will have him higher up the order.
His knock put India level but one mustn't forget the contribution of Gambhir who has been consistency personified, and the partnership between them steadied the innings and gave Raina the platform to play freely.
In the Bangladesh-Zimbabwe series, it's a matter of Zimbabwe trying to convince the world that they are good enough to come back to international cricket and Bangladesh who have always been hard to beat at home in limited overs cricket, attempting to maintain their home superiority.
Bangladesh have some fine young players and Shakib Hassan is one such who is not only good with the bat, but can deliver wickets too.
Abdur Razaak is also a fine bowler who bowls a good line and picks up wickets regularly. He is this week's CEAT International Cricketer of the Week for his fine performances just pipping Dhoni to the top spot.
Professional Management Group
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