Indians commenced their preparations, for world cup T20, with a shocking defeat in hands of New Zealand yesterday in Lords but there were no other major upsets though, as other top contenders for the title like South Africa and Australia romped home with a comfortable victories.

In a match between minnows Ireland prevailed over Netherlands, but the match had a scorcher of contest, where it took the final super over, to measure Iota of difference, which subsisted between both the teams. Earlier  match was tied, when Netherlands managed to defend their meagre total of one hundred and thirty five runs, thanks largely to some good furious bowling by Dirk Nannes, the IPL star for Delhi Daredevils.

India , which was playing its first T20 practise match, bowled well to restrict New Zealand to a score of one seventy runs with some brilliant spells by Ishanth Sharma and Harbhajan Singh and  for New Zealand Brendon Mc Cullum fired in the top and was duly carried over by Ross Taylor in the middle.

At one stage, when one fifty sounded to be a probable target , New Zealand lower middle order fired all guns blazing to enable them to set a  respectable target of one seventy runs.

Indians who missed Virender Shewag, Zaheer Khan and Yuvraj Singh owing to injuries had a decent start to chase, where Rohit Sharma opened the innings and replicated the same form ,which earned him under twenty three layer of tournament in IPL award.

Suresh Raina and Ravindra Jadeja  knitted a  gritty partnership, to give some momentum, to chase and set their sights on target, but Daniel Vettori, bolwed brilliantly at depth to discipline hurricane Yusuf Pathan at the end over and so too other batsmen , to hand  over a  nine run defeat to Indians.

Whereas teams like Australia and South Africa managed to register a clinical win against Bangladesh and Pakistan respectively in the matches held in Trent Bridge. Australia managed, to pile a massive two nineteen runs against Bangladesh, but was given a fierce battle by Bangladesh batsmen but in the end, it proved too much in the end.

South Africa did no harm to their favourite’s tag, where they routed Pakistan by fifty nine runs, thanks largely to their bowlers, who gave no chance to Pakistan batsmen especially  likes of Johan Botha , Roelof De Merwe, Daryl Steyn were in a penisive mood against batsmen.