India - Deserving Champions

When the squad for the ICC champions trophy was announced, I sincerely thought that our team is gonna struggle to even win a single match in England and this is gonna be the biggest test for MSD's captaincy. I am not a big fan of M.Vijay and I was thinking that the opening pair of Shikhar Dhawan and M.Vijay is gonna fail big time.

The decision taken by Indian team to open with Rohit Sharma helped India in a great way. Being in the same pool as SA, WI and PAK, I expected our openers to struggle against their opponents' fast and swing bowlers, but infact our fast bowlers did  better than the others. Be it the warmup matches or the tournament matches, it was a complete team effort.

India got a "Rockstar"

Whether he performs hereafter or not, Jadeja has already shown that he is a Rockstar through his batting and bowling skills. If he consistently performs the way he did in ICC CT 2013 then he may get "sir" title also :):):)  He fields well, his bowling is also a bit consistent and he proved in the finals that he can bat under pressure. Is he the all-rounder that India is waiting for? I think so.

A Man with Golden bat

A year ago,Shikhar Dhawan was thinking about quitting cricket, but now he has a Golden bat to play cricket with.

I would say he is a mixture of Hayden and Sehwag. The way he charged down and played those exquisite drives reminded me of Hayden and he never worried about being close to reaching 50 or 100 and still played aggressive shots like Sehwag. He gave few chances to the opponents during 1 or 2 innings, if he controls that then I think India has found a good and aggressive opener.

Man Of Steel

Even 'Captain Cool' got tensed during the final stages of the finals and in the end it was really nice to see him jumping in joy after the last ball was missed by Tredwell. He never celebrated like this during any of the previous victories. I think he realised that this CT victory is as big as the World Cup 2011 because of the conditions in England.. During 2011 World Cup, India was one of the biggest favorites to win and they did it in style but in the CT,I think only a brave man would have made a bet for India winning the trophy. Dhoni again proved in the CT that he is our "Man Of Steel".

Bright future???

During the post-match interviews, one of the coaching staff said that IPL really helped in improving the fielding skills of the players. IPL has finally did what it is intended to do - improving the skills of Indian cricketers. Lets hope that the Indian team will continue winning tournaments outside India and be a dominant team for years to come.

Once again congratulations to our Indian Team for winning the ICC Champions Trophy 2013 and All The Best for the Tri-Series in Caribbean.