I'm good at bringing out the negatives, so I will say that this could have been much worse.
I'll tell you why.
Maybe Gilly felt sympathy for Ganguly, maybe it was just Dada's day. Only that could explain how Roach repeatedly fed him short and wide stuff on the offside, stuff that he would put away if he was blindfolded and stuffed in the trunk of SRK's car. Another thing that went his way - when he was looking great and in form and timing it and all that crap, Ojha continued to bowl one end. Ojha. A left-arm spinner. The kind Ganguly makes a meal out of. In fact, he serves them at his restaurant, the Food Pavilion.
Anyway, he ended on a princely 88 off 54, and it was great to see him get out caught at the boundary, rather than those tame lobs to the infield. Or getting bowled off wides.
And how annoying that the day the skipper fires, the rest of the batsmen disappoint. Gayle, Pujara, Tiwary all failed. Young Hussey stuck around, so awed at watching Ganguly bat so well that he only ran singles for most of his innings. At least he accelerated later, and by that time the boundaries were flowing.
181 was a tough cookie on a slow pitch, but Deccan had a rollicking start provided by Gilly and the bald eagle. Gilly was probably smug having avoided getting out to the first-over spinner Parmar, when he fell to Agarkar. And that's the joke for the paragraph.
Gibbs slowed down after that, and the momentum Monish Mishra briefly gave them was lost for a while. Roy kept them in the hunt, but some impeccable stuff from Bond and Kartik got all him all 'unable to time it, raaaaar' after which he couldn't even hit Agarkar's full tosses. Mathews, since he doesn't exist, bowled some quiet overs and went unnoticed.
The best of news - B-Mac will probably play the next game, and barring Bond, any of the foreign players (Gayle, Young Hussey, Mathews) can be replaced.
After this match, I have deduced that Agarkar is the spirit of the team. He is the essence of random form.
Also, a joke that I found.
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