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Heros and Villains..33
A Captains Knock From Smith Takes South Africa to Semi Finals
A Game which provided the last hope for England to enter Semi Finals was turned by Graem Smith and Andrew Hall into a crushing defeat for England. The defeat was so humiliating that English will have to start thinking about their decision to bring in Vaughan as captain after Flintoff's success in Australia.
The contrast between the two skippers was evident with Vaughan making the Dravid like mistake of opting to bat first on an uncertain pitch. As an opener he was not able to give a good start and the team folded for a paltry 154 with Hall taking 5 wickets.
On the other hand, South Africa completed the match in 20 overs with Smith at his blisterign best with 89 runs of 58 balls.
The NCR points accumulated by Smith was 132 for his batting against Hall's 133 for his bowling. But with two catches to his credit which gave him an additional 20 NCR points, Smith was the NCR hero of the day.
The aggressive batting of South Africa pushed the NCR score of most bowlers to the deep negative and Sajid Mahmood with -33 points was the villain of the day
It is interesting to see the NCR scores of all the Captains to get an indication of which captain is leading by example. The following table gives the details.
| Captain's Ranking | Name | Country | NCR Points | Overall Ranking |
| 1 | Graem Smith | South Africa | 497 | 4 |
| 2 | Ricky Ponting | Australia | 367 | 9 |
| 3 | Mahela Jayavardhane | Sri Lanka | 351 | 14 |
| 4 | Stephen Fleming | New Zealand | 298 | 24 |
| 5 | Trent Jhonston | Ireland | 234 | 40 |
| 6 | Brian Lara | West Indies | 229 | 43 |
| 7 | Michael Vaughan | England | 109 | 90 |
| 8 | Habibul Bashar | Bangladesh | 82 | 104 |
While Smith and Ponting are within the top 10, Michael Vaughan is 90th in the list of all the players.
The top 20 table under NCR points is as follows. Andrew Hall has now jumped up from 40th rank to the 14th rank while Smith moved up from 10th to 4th place.
New Rank Previous Rank Points Name Country 1 1 610 Scott Styris New Zealand 2 2 577 Sanath Jayasurya Sri Lanka 3 3 520 Mathew Hayden Australia 4 10 497 Greame Smith South Africa 5 5 446 Jacques Kallis South Africa 6 4 421 Brad Hogg Australia 6 4 421 Nathan Bracken Australia 7 6 386 Glenn McGrath Australia 8 13 380 A B de Villiers South Africa 9 7 367 Ricky Ponting Australia 10 8 364 Chaminda Vaas Sri Lanka 10 8 364 Muttiah Muralitharan Sri Lanka 11 9 351 Mahela Jayawardene Sri Lanka 12 10 345 Jacob Oram New Zealand 13 11 338 Kevin Pieterson England 14 40 330 Andrew Hall South Africa 15 12 325 Herchelle Gibbs South Africa 16 14 318 Darren Powell West Indies 17 15 305 Kumara Sangakkara Sri Lanka 18 16 303 Shane Bond New Zealand 19 17 301 Adam Gilchrist Australia 20 18 300 Shaun Tait Australia
April 18, 2007
Interested persons who want to write articles may volunteer by e-mail to naavi@vsnl.com
