Exquisite Batsman, Adamant Captain

Rahul Dravid has yet again shown that he is both. On a pitch where five of his batsman added to the poultry population and only one other got to double figures, he played an innings or rare class and beauty, and proved alongwith that one can bat classically and yet be successful at T20. On the other hand the adamancy which he has shown in refusing to be flexible with his top-order batting line-up cost BRC irreparably.

Sreesanth's bowling was a deadly beautiful sight. The delivery that destroyed Cameron White was a corker ! Yet BRC should have and would have recovered from the deadly double blow if it had not been for
a) daft running between the wickets by Kohli and later Patil
b) yet another instance of Kohli throwing away a start
c) Misbah and Praveen Kumar displaying surprising and alarming incompetence against Piyush Chawla

The overseas players contributed less than 10 runs and less than 1 wicket in yesterday's game and yet Dravid does not find the need to play a quality top-order batsman like Chanderpaul.

126 was never going to be enough where 150 might have been plenty. Had Dravid managed those 20 runs in the last 2 overs we could still have had a game.

You can blame the Bangalore bowlers for not being able to exploit the conditions as well as Sreesanth but they were just under too much pressure. The responsibility of this defeat has to go to the daft batting and adamant and inflexible captaincy.

A word for young Chawla - I am extremely happy and impressed with his steady progress.