Which one's cricket?

Rahul Dravid, in another attempt to send a 'message' across to..umm..the ones not really listening...spoke thus after the match yesterday (emphasis mine)

"All the bowlers bowled well. The pitch was slow and ball was not coming on to the bat. The boys are not used to these sort of surfaces so it was a good learning experience for them. We will try to play better in the next match. It is tough at the end of the season but we are happy to come here and play for a cause."

But, as I said, its not difficult to imagine the concerned authorities just shrug it off (hey..the money was still made, no?) and move on...huddle together to organise the next tamasha in timbuktu.

Meanwhile in 'real' cricket....something unrealistic happened...Gillespie offcially became the another batsman-who-can-bowl-a-bit after this double century against Bangladesh. I wrote earlier, then he was sent as a nightwatchman, that the Aussies had 'changed' forever..as shown by the use of a nightwatchman against BD...but now, in hindsight, maybe not. Maybe they realized, in the nets, who their best batsman was :-)

Not only did he get the highest score for a nightwatchman, but perhaps the highest for any test 'bowler', since he's not a recognized allrounder. Yet. And perhaps he would also go on to become the only bowler in test history to get a Man of the Match award for batting(?)

And, what of Bangladesh? Well...after the heady heights of Test1, they had to come down; and since it was against the Aussies, come down hard. As I already wrote halfway through test 1, their purpose for the series was served. They had shown that they could hold their own against the best, even if a little tired best, for the period of an entire game. Consistency will come, with time. More importantly, this would give them tremendous confidence against the lesser teams, especially when they find themselves in winning positions, which they used to squander away earlier.