Dead rubber faces rain threat
 |
|
What came as relief initially for both the teams now poses a serious threat to the third one-dayer. After the hot and sultry Dhaka, the teams are experiencing the other extreme. It has been raining here since the middle of Sunday night, with the intensity ranging from steady drizzle to heavy downpour.
Both the teams practised at the indoor nets today. The weather forecast is nasty: a level-seven warning for winds from the Bay of Bengal has been issued, level ten being considered highly dangerous. Level seven is supposed to be a forecast for high winds and rain and the warning is expected to stay for three to four days. Even if it does stop raining, the groundsmen have a task on hand to get the ground ready for play on Tuesday. It will take at least three to four hours for the sun to single-mindedly beat down for the ground to be fit for play. The groundsmen have already started to worry about the Test due to start on May 18.
The inclement weather promises to spoil Bangladesh's last chance to live up to the expectations they had raised at the World Cup. 'Playing for pride' is a term much abused in sport. Every inconsequential match, every dead rubber is dubbed a defense of pride for the team who have already lost. For once, however, the phrase is relevant. When Bangladesh play India in the third ODI tomorrow, weather permitting, they will play for much more than recently-earned pride. They will also know this will be their last realistic chance to give Dav Whatmore a fitting farewell, unless they later do something they have never done against the more powerful teams - win a Test match. This is also Habibul Bashar's last home one-dayer.
It has taken Bangladesh a lot of time to make the world sit up and take notice. From hoping to not lose to believing they'd win to expecting to win has been one long journey. Now that the world has seen what they're capable of, they would want a better result than 0-3 in the one-dayers. For most of the first match they dominated but contrived to somehow lose. Then, they didn't quite bring their A game in the second one-dayer. Within three days, they showed both their quality and inconsistency.
If the match doesn't happen, Robin Uthappa and RP Singh, who last got a chance during the Champions Trophy in 2006, will also be disappointed. They're set for their first opportunity in the series. For the two, this could also mean a last opportunity to impress ahead of tours to Ireland and England.
Uthappa is supposed to bat at No.3 for India, which means Virender Sehwag will get another chance at the top of the innings. Rahul Dravid suggested he was worried about Sehwag getting good starts but not converting them into meaningful innings. "For someone of Sehwag's calibre, we truly do believe that he should go all the way and play bigger innings," Dravid said, "He is getting starts and he is not carrying on. That is definitely something we know that Sehwag should do. Sehwag himself knows that he must start converting those starts into meaningful contributions for the team."
Dinesh Mongia might end up being the one to make way for Uthappa. Mongia took three wickets in the first game but hasn't impressed with the bat. Zaheer Khan will be rested and Sreesanth not risked ahead of the Test series and a busy season. Bangladesh have a few fitness problems, with Mohammad Ashraful hospitalised with fever, and Farhad Reza, his expected replacement, down with fever too. All this, of course, may not matter too much with the heavens threatening to open up and have the final word.
Teams (likely)
Bangladesh 1 Tamim Iqbal, 2 Javed Omar, 3 Habibul Bashar (capt), 4 Saqibul Hasan, 5 Farhad Reza, 6 Aftab Ahmed, 7 Mushfiqur Rahim (wk), 8 Mohammad Rafique, 9 Abdur Razzak, 10 Shahadat Hossain, 11 Syed Rasel.
India 1 Virender Sehwag, 2 Gautam Gambhir, 3 Robin Uthappa, 4 MS Dhoni (wk), 5 Yuvraj Singh, 6 Rahul Dravid (capt), 7 Dinesh Karthik, 8 Piyush Chawla, 9 Ramesh Powar, 10 RP Singh, 11 Munaf Patel.
Sidharth Monga is a staff writer with Cricinfo Magazine