Hope India don't get fired up: Oram

The all-rounder was a part of the team at The Oval two years back when England’s contravention of the spirit of the game came back to hurt them badly in a one-day series.
In a tight game with New Zealand chasing victory, England appealed for and won a run out decision against Grant Elliott, who was sprawled mid-pitch after a collision with bowler Ryan Sidebottom. Paul Collingwood’s insistence that the appeal stood won him few friends, and earned him several foes within the Kiwi camp.

“That incident fired us up like I had never seen before,” Oram told Deccan Herald on Tuesday afternoon. “You have probably seen the footage of guys on the balcony. In the spirit of cricket, it was probably not the right thing. There was a lot of swearing and stuff going on but that’s how passionately we felt about it. It did spur us on, we ended up winning that game in dramatic style off the last ball and ended up thrashing England in the last game at Lord’s. We were definitely pumped up. I hope that’s not the case here,” he laughed.

“We hope it doesn’t awaken a sleeping giant in India and they wipe the floor with us the rest of the tournament. We just hope it hasn’t pissed India off to fire them up like it did to us in England.”

Oram admitted to watching Monday night’s fateful final delivery on television. “I have never met Randiv and I don’t know what he is like as a guy. I am not going to speak at length on whether it was on purpose or not, but he was a long way over. But I am hoping it wasn’t on purpose because we don’t want to see that. We all know how hard it is batting under lights here. If some guy is good enough where he gets to 99, you should be man enough to bowl at him and see what he can do with that.”

Saying that, the 32-year-old had only nice things to say when he was told that Randiv had apologised to Sehwag. “I didn’t know he had apologised. If that’s the case, it’s man of him. It’s big of him and he should be commended for that.”