New Team, New Energy

With the second string Indian cricket team under the leadership of Ajinkya Rahane staging a whitewash of 3-0 against Zimbabwe in the 3 match  one day series known as the prayag cup it has silenced all the critics who were targeting the Indian side after the dismal performance of the Indian side in the recently concluded series against Bangladesh where the host won the series 2-1.With Indian team resting its 7 main players-captain Mahendra singh Dhoni,vice-captain Virat Kholi, opening batsman rohit sharma and Shikhar Dhawan,all rounder Ravindra Jadeja and R.Ashwin and pace bowler Umesh yadav.It was really a tough job on the shoulders of this young Indian side which had in totaliy 447 one day caps out of which 229 were of harbhajan singh only but the team under the captainship of Ajinkya Rahane rose to the occasion everytime and played as a unit to beat the strong Zimbabwe side which has the reputation of giving set backs to good teams.In the first match when india was in a spot of bother after the top order collapsed badly it was ambati rayudu unbeaten 124 and stuart binny 77 which helped India post a score of 255/6 but the Zimbabwe side came very close to clinch this match with captain Elton Chimgumbura playing a splendid innings of 104 runs but it was bhuvneshwar Kumar who defended 10 runs in the final over to give India a nail biting win only by 4 runs.In the second match played on 12th July at the Harare sports club the visitors were again asked to bat on a seaming pitch but this the opening pair of Murali vijay(72) and Ajinkya Rahane (63) solid stand of 112 runs steered India to a competitive total of 271/8 with the cameos of stuart Binny and Kedhar Jhadav. Zimbabwe in reply never got going from the starting with Chamu Chibhabha top scoring with 72 runs and eventually were bowled out for 209 runs in 49 overs thanks to a brilliant spell by bhuvneshwar Kumar of 10 overs 33 runs and 3 wickets giving India an unassailable lead in the series.In the third match India was asked again to bat first and this time again the top order collapsed but again like every match somebody new to the team got the team out of trouble and this time it was kedhar jadhav not out 105 runs and debutant Manish Pandey 71 runs crucial 144 runs stand which helped India to post a total of 276 runs for 5.But Zimbabwe again didn’t got off to a great start and no batsman other than chuma chibhabha 82 runs was impressive and thus the consistent good line and length by the Indian bowlers  made the Zimbabwe side to struggle to 193 runs in 42.4 overs and India won the match by 83 runs and series 3-0 to sign off the series with a clean sweep.kedhar jhadav was adjourned the man of the match for his brilliant ton in the 3rd game and Amabti Rayudu was given the man of the series.India can take a lot of positive from this series with all the members contributing in some way for the others as all the 3 wins were a complete team effort whereas Zimbabwe has to think about what they did wrong especially in their batting which failed to impress this time at all and now should focus on the 2 t-20 starting from 17th July.Whereas India would be looking to seal the tour with a complete whitewash by wining the remaining two  t-20 as well.

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