India batted first on a track that seemed to do a lot for the quick bowlers. Mortaza hit the deck consistently and picked off Sehwag and Utthappa quite softly while Razzaq followed it up with a great arm ball to get Tendulkar. Then Dravid missed a quick one from Rafique first up and was lbw while Ganguly stayed at the crease all along this drama. Yuvraj and Ganguly played cautiously and paced the innings properly and India was set to score around 220 - 240.. but, India lost 5 wickets for 2 runs.. from 157/5 to 159/9 when finally Munaf and Zaheer put up a valiant effort to make 191. India's woes continued when, Tamim went berserk coming down the pitch to Zaheer hitting him for a six after being hit in the neck with a short one. Bangladesh youngsters Tamim, Mushfiq. Rahim and Shakib Al Hasan powered Bangladesh with awesome shots and calculated risks to reach the total slowly but the innings were well-paced with a nice 4th wicket partnership between Shakib and Rahim. Finally, India had lost in a match in which they were dominated right from ball 1.
While Trinidad looked bad enough for a top sub-continent side against a lower ranked side, Jamaica was worse, where Pakistan made an early/sad exit due to the failure of the Pakistani batsmen to either fire or consolidate their innings against a spirited Irish side backed by an equally spirited crowd on St.Patrick's day which restricted them to 132 runs. Even while, everyone hoped Pakistan will win this with a very good bowling line-up and Sami made early inroads removing Bray who had made an impressive 115* in the previous tied match against Zimbabwe, Pakistan struggled to keep the runs down and put pressure on the other ends. Even as wickets fell down, some lusty blows and truly brilliant strokeplay assured that Ireland won this one by 3 wickets. (bad light had stopped play for sometime, but play resumed eventually)
Now, I'm pretty sure no one will use the word "minnows".
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