Inspirational XI

Disclaimer: For those of you who take this post seriously and consider it as an insult to the stalwarts of domestic cricket who didn't quite succeed in international cricket, Apologies and an advice - Just take it easy!

Now that I have established my political correctness, let us talk:

Enough of celebrating Sachin, Lara, Wasim, Warne et al. Sometimes I wonder why we even celebrate them. I had only one dream in my childhood – to be an international cricketer. These guys didn’t help me even one bit in realizing my dream, if anything they pushed me further away from my dream. I bowl a good spell in a school match and feel good about myself, come back home and switch on the TV only to watch Allan Donald cleaning up Atherton with a an absolute Jaffa that I can’t even dream bowling it. What’s the point of admiring these dream-spoilers, they didn’t even allow me to live in an illusion. But just when I was going through those depressionary times, there were always a bunch of guys providing hope and inspiration…If Iqbal Siddiqui can play for India, surely I should be able to. If Vikram Rathore could open why not me?

I wanted to pay a tribute to all those who inspired me when I was growing up by dedicating a blog to them. Then we thought we would do it a little differently – after all these people have inspired not just me but so many in my generation. So Ramki and I had a discussion (on gtalk) on some of those inspiring cricketers (the discussion was restricted only to Indian Cricketers) of our generation and we came up with an idea to select an all time best inspirational XI as a mark of respect to them. The transcript of the discussion follows:

Mahesh: Those were great times man. We had stalwarts like Vikram Rathore, Devang Gandhi, Atul Bedade etc. I feel sorry for the teenagers of today, they only have Joginer Sharma to look upto…
Ramki: Sujith Somasundar
how can u miss him
Ajay Sharma
Bhupinder singh jr...
M: Subroto Banerjee!
R: hahahaha
M: Amay Khuraysia
R: of course
M: In a match he consitently played Shoaib's next ball in advance
R: Nikhil Chopra
Aavishkar Salvi
M: oh beauty
R: thank you
M: Almost Mcgrath - i.e, till he released the ball
R: hahaha
M: after that Paras Mhambrey would seem Mcgrath in comparison...
R: yaaa
M: What about Iqbal Siddiqui - till date even he doesn't know how he got selected.....
I think it was part of BCCI's poverty alleviation program
whereby they would pick one player to be part of the Indian team for a match
R: yep...
M: and that one match fees by Indian standards is enough for him to survive the rest of his life
R: and based on that he would make a lot of money
M: exactly
M: "I helped India chase a 4th innings total successfully against England"
R: 5 runs?
R: honor of opening the batting and bowling in the same test on debut
M: that is ultimate
R: Laxmi Ratan Shukla
Jacob Martin?
M: oh…ya
you know what
M: when Sachin picked him in the XI for one of the matches in the tri -series down under
he was asked about Jacob Martin by Ian Chappell at the toss
R: hmmm....
M: "Tell us something about this new guy in the team"
Sachin had only one thing to say - He's an excellent fielder!
R: hahaha
M: and we all know the excellence of his fielding - so u know how much Sachin rated his batting!
R: Ranadeb Bose
M: What abt Harvinder Singh
R: Of course
in the list
M: Bose is ultimate
M: my alltime fav
R: David Johnson
M: he got Sachin's wicket with a beauty (the only good ball I have seen him bowl though!)- so lets not tease him too much.......
Amit Bhandari!
R: top pick that
Connor williams
M: lol
but none to beat Vikram Rathore I say
R: couldn’t agree more
M: People talk of Lara being the quintessential walker
R: my all time favourite
M: but this man is in a different league
Have you even seen Lara walk for an LBW?
Our man did..........
apart from the grace and elegance, the sportsmanship is what separates him from the rest comfortably
R: and Sujith Somasundar also
17runs
1 single 4 fours
all french cuts
M: all classy french cuts…he simply didn’t have a clue…the ball came and hit the bat and went to the boundary!
R: Vivek Razdan
M: lol
his greatest achievement in cricket is that he was part of the winning team finally
in a quiz contest in Home Tv
"A Question of Cricket"
R: hahahaa
M: he even beat Gavaskar I say
R: oh..ok..lots of time to study about cricket....
T. Kumaran?
M: Dodda Ganesh.......
R: maan
brilliant
M: Kumaran - narrowly misses out
R: hahahahaha
M: lack of enough samples...
R: yaa..true
Dodda Ganesh is a good pick

M: Mr.Dodda Ganesh single-handedly undid all the good work by Srinath and Prasad in the opening spells in SA
oh.......
R: Gagan Khoda !
averages around 80 in international cricket
against Kenya....
M: I think he got the man of the match award for that innings
R: yes
89 if I am not wrong...
M: immediately after that match, Azhar seemed to have told the selectors that he is not fit for international cricket
R: hahahaahaha
M: Devang Gandhi! I think he was the closest to Vikram Rathore!
R: in terms of footwork...deja vu
M: In the whole of Australian tour I think he only played 2 shots in front of the wicket
one resulted in Sadagoppan's Ramesh's run out !
R: yaaa
in brisbane
M: and the other was a catch right into the hands of the only fielder standing in front of the wicket in an ODI
Only Devang Gandhi can do that.........
R: Ajay Sharma?
M: no match fixers pls
R: ok...
we dont want to spoil the team….
M: this list is too big man
lets filter it
M: lets pick an all time best XI out of this…
Openers are a no brainer......
R: openers of course
if you pick anybody else...then I don’t know you for the rest of my life…
M: Vikram Rathore - Class, Style and that quintessential sportsman spirit of walking....
Devang Gandhi - His repertoire of dismissals is simply stunning
even more stunning than Sachin's repertoire of shots
R: ok...
M: now lets come to the crucial no.3 spot
R: scenario
India lost one quick wicket
against pakistan
shoaib bowling
who would you want?
M: who else… but Amay Khuraysia....
the next ball man!
after a cracking 50 against a Srilankan team packed with spinners at home, he was up against Shoaib in Sharjah
R: hmmm
M: boy was he putting on a show there... almost beating Sujith Somasundar's master class
by the time the ball had thudded into the keeper’s gloves, he brought his front foot forward and by the time he completed his stroke, Shoaib had completed the next ball!
R: hmmm
M: but no one can beat Sujith Somasundar though!
not even Khurasiya at his best, so lets have Sujith at 3 and Khuraysia at 4….
R: ok
no 3 sujith
no 4 khurasiya
no 5 bedade
no 6 dighe
M: wow...........thats a batting line up to die for
Atul Bedade averaged almost 10 in an innings against Pakistan - for 40 odd he had 4 lives!
R: 44 with 4 sixes in them!
M: I know
R: my father used to say he is a hard hitter
well he hardly hits
M: thats not the point
Whenever he does he hits it hard
Hardly hitting hard hitter at no.5
R: thats once in 3 matches!
M: but I must confess he came back with a better technique later in his career
in the masters series that is!!!
R: hahahaha
M: now to Mr.Dighe....
I know Ajay Ratra gives him tough competition.....
but it has to be Dighe man
R: he won a series for us
THE series
M: but the real Dighe moment was in his debut match in Australia
Gavaskar had hyped him as a batsman who could keep a bit!
R: ok
and Sachin goes one step further......
sends him at no.3 after a good start to up the tempo further.......
R: yaaa
M: up the tempo he did....3 off some 25 balls I think!!!
R: 1 of 27 balls
M: even better!
Sachin was so pleased with that effort that he gave him the privilege of carrying the drinks in the same match
R: hahaha
M: in my opinion that must be the first occasion where a player in the XI after playing a physically exerting innings is being asked to do this...
R: Lol… Now to the bowlers
M: wait
R: hmmm
M: that is probably the only wise thing that Sachin did in his captaincy.......
But hang on
What abt Jacob Martin
R: ok...
12th man
M: Atul Bedade cant have it so easy
R: he is an excellent fielder isn’t he?
M: ok agreed
YES.........
M: now to the bowlers..........
Paras Mhambrey
R: Bhupinder Singh
he should be there
M: Subroto Banejee
Dodda Ganesh.......
R: Dodda Ganesh
M: YES..........
R: Harvinder Singh
Aavishkar Salvi
M: even Sourav out bowled him in a test match against Australia
Salvi is a real beauty - the almost Mcgrath......
R: yaaaa
M: we are spoilt for choices man
lets zero in on 3 fast bowlers
R: tough
Salvi definitely
M: YES!
R: and Dodda Ganesh
no arguments
M: I totally agree
now Subroto Banerjee
R: bhupinder singh
M: no more questions on that
R: you havent seen bhupinder singh?
M: I have seen
I love him too
R: then ?
M: but Subroto Banerjee is a notch above
R: no no
Banerjee bowled some good spells…but this guy is a class aprt
M: Does Banerjee know this??? Anyways let’s go with Bhupinder Singh for now.......
R: hmmm...ok
we will take a look at the records and then see
M: one spinner and one allrounder now
sure
R: all rounder...Hrishikesh Kanitkar?
M: lol
not a bad choice
but lets dig deeper
Laxmi Ratan Shukla
JP Yadav..... can neither bowl nor bat - all-rounder!
Greg Chappell's masterful selection - apparently better than Sourav it seems!
R: Reetinder Singh Sodhi
M: he's not even fit enough to be in this team
Let’s leave it at that
R: ok
then I would go with JP Yadav
M: now to that quintessential spinner's slot........
R: hmmm...Rajesh Chauhan....
M: Just yesterday Harsha was talking about him!
other contenders?
Utpal Chatterjee?
R: Ananthapadmanabhan?
M: I thought of him too!
R: Sunil Subramaniam?
M: I haven't seen much of him…
R: ok
if no spinner comes to my mind...we would take an extra fast bowler
M: lol
R: we should pick the best XI not horses for courses
M: no no Utpal or Rajesh Chauhan would be taken for sure if no other name comes up
3 fast bowlers and a spinner… good balance
R: then rajesh chauhan
M: but he's also bowled well on occasions
R: k
utpal chatterjee i am not so sure
M: Nikhil Chopra!
R: oh yaa…the best of them all
he could also be an all rounder you know?
M: I know....
R: I missed atul wassan man
M: lol..thats ok, we’ll have notable mention list at the end – would add him there…

There you go, the final inspirational XI is:
1. Vikram Rathore
2. Devang Gandhi
3. Sujith Somasundar
4. Amay Khurasia
5. Atul Bedade
6. Sameer Dighe
7. JP Yadav
8. Nikhil Chopra
9. Dodda Ganesh
10. Bhupinder Singh
11. Aavishkar Salvi

12th man is the excellent fielder Jacob Martin…

I know this is the most controversial XI that we have picked in the history of “Cricket Talk” (By the way, that’s this blog’s name!). Each of you would have your own inspirations who may have been missed in this team. We wholeheartedly apologize for such omissions which may offend you. As a bargain we tried to come up with a “notable mention” list of those players who missed out by a whisker…even that’s a futile exercise because there are so many of them…but still…here is the list:

Notable mentions:
Iqbal Siddiqui, Ranadeb Bose (the only reason he missed out is because he didn't play in the XI for India, otherwise he was a certainty)Atul Wassan, Subroto Banerjee, Vivek Razdan, Utpal Chatterjee, Rajesh Chauhan, Gagan Khoda, Connor Williams, MSK Prasad, Jatin Paranjpe, Pankaj Dharmani, Debashis Mohanty, Harvinder Singh, Aashish Kapoor, Robin Singh (jr)….oh I am tired of typing now…Please feel free to add more!

Next Eleven?

This has been on my mind for quite some time now. I was wondering does India have enough bench strength so much so that, a new eleven can be picked up in place of the existing eleven. This, of course, I have done for the Test team. Despite all the hype, fun, and ever growing popularity, T20 is anyone's game and ODIs are becoming representative of T20 psyche more often than not. So, I restrict myself to the test teams, for now. Barring Murali Vijay and Piyush Chawla, I have wanted to pick guys who have not played in tests for India before, but who could make it big next. Piyush Chawla might draw some strong reactions/emotions, but my belief of him is that he was drafted in to the team too early, and age is on his side for him to pick it up from here. Pragyan Ojha should deny him a place in the side for long, but so might be true of several others finding a mention in this side.

But, there is one thing that has made me worried. It was quite easy to select the bowlers, for there are hardly any. Despite the repeated assurances we give ourselves, truth is we have a not very consistent bowling attack of the top four teams in the world today. And that there is no encouragement about an exciting prospect in the leagues, is depressing.

So, here it goes:

1) Murali Vijay
2) Abhinav Mukund
3) Rohit Sharma *
4) Cheteshwar Pujara
5) Manish Pandey
6) Ravindra Jadeja
7) Pinal Shah +
8) Pradeep Sangwan
9) Bhuvneshwar Kumar
10) Piyush Chawla
11) Sudeep Tyagi

Audacious!!!!

Boy....I am bitten by the Sehwag bug now, after readin hesh's blog. One of my cousins is an avid Indian critic. He is the so called Nakkeran of our family that he finds faults in everything India does!!! He just said one word way back in 2003 after watching Sehwag bat against NZ in a one dayer during the horror series there- Audacious!!!

Audacious?

Googled the word and this is what i got..

extremely bold or daring; recklessly brave; fearless

Well, in due course Sehwag would be added to the meaning!!

Some of Sehwag's audacious strokes...

1. 195 Melbourne 2003

To me, no innings Sehwag has played or will play beats this innings. Purely, because it was against a very good attack on a ground in which India had a poor record on the first day of a test match. Two strokes stand out in my memory...

1. Steve Waugh bowling the last over before tea, tempts Sehwag with a slower one, of the last ball- the ball lands in the stands over the watching long off's head 3 seconds later!!!

2. Dravid is gone, Tendulkar out first ball, Ganguly in a spot of bother the other end and Sehwag is off the strike for 3 to 4 overs. Waugh brings back Macgill, and with a deep mid wicket, long on and square leg, bowls a perfect leg spinner first ball pitching around middle and off, a nice flighted leg spinner....only to see it disappear into the orbit over the deep midwicket!!!


18 at Chennai 2004

I was privileged to watch his 155 in Chennai, which was an absolute master piece, but to me the shot of the match was this...Mcgrath bowling the last over of the 4th day...220 to chase...a typically perfect Mcgrath delivery drilled straight down the ground for four....and after hitting it just turned around and started walking towards the pavilion!!! It was a pity the 5th day washed out...or else the final frontier would have still been there!!!!


Champions Trophy 2002 2nd final vs Srilanka

It has started raining again, the second time, Pulasthi Gunaratne just saw his career end in the first final with Sehwag hitting 17 of his over, this time around Srilanka go with an extra spinner, but with 223 on board and rains coming down, Vaas comes in for what would be the last delivery of the final...hardly around the 125k mark...outside the off stump with a deep point and a squarish third man...and with a persistent drizzle, even if there had been a man standing with a gun nearby to Sehwag's head he wouldnt have stopped from upper cutting that ball over third man for six! Vaas's reaction after that was comical...---rain is disadvantage to batsman, but here he runs to the umpire saying the ball is slippery!!!!

Thats it as of now...will add more if time permits...

Is life really that simple?

If God grants me the power to understand how a person’s mind works – I would choose to study Sehwag’s. Like parallel thinking he almost has an alternate logic to every aspect of cricket. When someone asked him to explain the conundrum of his stupendous success in Tests and relatively mediocre returns in ODI cricket, he said that there are more vacant areas in test cricket! Now then, we have had so many legends explaining why test cricket is the ultimate test and how other forms can’t quite match upto it. And this guy claims test cricket is simpler and swears by it……

Prem Panicker had recently written about one of his chats with John Wright on Sehwag in his blog in which John recollects a conversation he has with Sehwag:

“Viru, for fuck’s sake, this is a Test match, you don’t have to play all your shots in the first over.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not saying don’t play shots,” says Wright, somewhat taken aback by the demure acceptance of his strictures. “Just give the first hour to the bowlers.”

“Why?”

“Because after that you can hit all the shots you want, you can bat all day. Don’t you want to do that, murder the bowling all day?”

“Yes. But why give the first hour to the bowler if he bowls me a half volley first ball?”

This is Sehwag for you – simple and confident. He has challenged the existential notion of risk in Cricket. Where most men saw risk, Sehwag saw runs. A half volley is a half volley is a half volley he would say…

"No matter who is the bowler, I always like to attack, I don't like to defend and hate to leave deliveries. That is nothing but waste of time."

Ask him about his success in counter attacking against the new ball, he says he’s vulnerable against the new ball and therefore attacks to get rid of the shine as early as possible! What does he have to say about his handling of Muralitharan in that extraordinary innings of 201 against in SL in Galle in a team total of 329? "I was not able to pick his doosra, so I treated every ball as a doosra and tried to hit it. But I found them to be off-spinners. It did not matter much as I was getting boundaries"

Is this all an attempt to be perverse or a display of false modesty? Nah..he is as upright and outspoken as it gets. Ask him about handling the magic of Mendis: "I could pick the ball from Mendis' hand, I attacked him and created a little doubt in his mind. I hit the good balls for fours through covers and point. I was able to read his googly and top-spin”. "I was never worried about Mendis. In the seven or eight innings I played against Sri Lanka, I got out to him only once." Don’t forget that Sehwag is talking about a guy who at that time made the world sit up and take notice of his magic with his mesmerising show against the best spin playing team in the world.

In a recent interview to Cricinfo he was asked about his loss of form and how much pressure was there on him when he was selected for the tour of Australia in 2007-08 to which his reply was:
“No, because I was confident despite having flopped for the whole of 2007. Then I even had a bad domestic season, scoring hardly 30-40 runs in the six Ranji innings I played. But I knew if they picked me a big one would come soon. You cannot flop the whole time. I went to Australia with a lot of self-belief and confidence, and I scored 30 and 40 in Perth, then 60-odd in the first innings in Adelaide, and got a big century in the second innings.”

This is insane. Generally we see cricketers defending themselves against the selectors’ logic. Here he almost admits that it’s a gamble by the selectors. And look at his extraordinary confidence in his ability despite being so woefully short on form – “But I knew if they picked me a big one would come soon” – Wow.......

And his response to a question on “being in the zone”:
“I have asked him (Sachin Tendulkar) many times what the zone is. He tells me that's when "I see nothing except the ball". I ask how that is possible. I have never felt something like that. I have asked Rahul Dravid the same thing. He says sometimes when he is in really good form, he sees only the ball - and not the sightscreen, the non-striker, the umpire or who is bowling, he just sees only the ball. But I have never entered that zone even if I've scored triple-centuries twice. Maybe I will enter that zone they talk about in future.”

In the same interview he was asked about his attitude to spinners:
“I was a middle-order batsman who was too good against spin and hit sixes consistently in Under-19 and Ranji cricket, and I still have the same confidence. Once Gary Kirsten asked me, "What would you do if there is a long-off, long-on and deep midwicket?" I asked, "Gary sir, do fielders matter to me?"

Then he goes onto give an example which I can bet the rest of my life earnings that no one else in the world can think like him:
“Let me give an example: I was batting on 291 at Chepauk, against South Africa. I told Paul Harris, "Come round the wicket and first ball I'll hit you for a six." He accepted my challenge and the very first ball I hit him for a straight six, and there was a long-off, long-on, deep midwicket and a deep point. I was so tired and he was bowling on the pads and I was getting bored. So rather than spending 10-15 minutes to get to the triple-century I gave him good advice.”

This is hilarious. How could a serious professional cricketer talk like this. Someone like Steve Waugh would have glamorized it in the name of mental disintegration and such other non-sense. This guy talks like he thinks and thinks like he bats – damn it’s a circular reference…….the essence of the matter is his gifted ability to simplify things….

No wonder there is a Sehwagology spiritual movement going on in the world…

Let’s talk about his technique (what a narrow minded Englishman will call as non-existent), balance, arms and all that in the next blog…

Simply the best..... "Say Wah g"

The most fantastic thing about blogging is that we can search for anecdotes and quotes as and when we type on a particular topic or person. Starting to write about Sehwag I searched for quotes on simplicity, and after reading through the quotes from great personalities, I came to only one conclusion. Keeping things simple is the most difficult of all. Just take a look at this quote,

“In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.”

Supreme excellence takes years of practice, which equates that to make things look simple, it is very difficult.

But where does Sehwag come into the picture here? That is because Sehwag is simple.

“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.”


Sehwag has a weakness against the ball coming in, gets frustrated being tied up at the non striker's end, goes after deliveries outside off stump regardless of the situation, doesnt play the hook shot properly, has problems against the raising ball and fends it often( his solution to turn this of his hips isnt proper either because he plays it in the air more often than not) does not move his feet, and biggest of them all, Sehwag has a very careless attitude when he bats....

So how does Sehwag succeed? Over a period of time, everyone evolves into a different person than the one he originally was, through experience knowledge etc. People define that as maturity. Surely you are not the person that you once were? This applies to batting too...(remember Afridi in the T20 final?) On one end you have Sachin grafting for runs and on the other you have Dravid counter attacking with disdain at 32/4, while ten years back it would have been( and was) vice versa.

So how has Sehwag's batting evolved?

Experience?

Batting at Melbourne on 195 he tried to clear long on of a non regular bowler and got out....India subsequently lost the match, and people claimed that had this rash stroke hadnt happened, India would have won their first series in the Oz...

Thats a lot of experience/burden on your shoulders...

Two tests later, he goes to both 100 and 300 by hitting sixes of regular bowlers so much so that the six for 300 was the same stroke he mishit in Melbourne!!!!

Knowledge?

Teams dissect your weakness with alarming quickness. Dravid was so successful in the 2003 series against Australia with the flick through mid wicket that Aus kept two close in fielders at short mid wicket to prevent him from playing the shot. He didnt play the shot and his form and batting fell through in the subsequent series against them because of that.

Similarly Sehwag was successfully cutting through third man and deep cover in Aus that a permanent third man and deep cover was kept as early as the first over of a test match!!!.... that too for Glenn Mcgrath...

Result? Mcgrath was hit for 16 runs in his first over in the same area between the two fielders!!!!

People start to put Sehwag into the "arrogant" category. Surely, I would ask these people to hear him speak on something and then classify him. He is a simple man, who says simple things...."I see the ball, I hit the ball". Surely, it takes years for everyone else to talk zen like this!!!!! You dont call zen masters arrogant!!!

So, who was the most disappointed person when Sehwag got out at 293? May be the guy who illegally bet on him in Cayman Islands, but not Sehwag who just shrugged and said "I was happy I got 293"...

When someone says Sehwag is a master when the pitch is flat, people tend to disagree...But they are true, Sehwag is a master at getting results in flat pitches... There is nobody in the game who can take advantage of a flat pitch than Sehwag....

What are the chances Sehwag will displace Sachin, Dravid or even Sunny from their pedestal as the best batsman? Very slim....but we can say this quite confidently, while Sunny had competition from Sachin, and Sachin from Dravid, rest assured there wont be another to challenge Sehwag!!!!!

Its a joke...

Recently I read a news in Cricinfo about the appointment of Waqar Younis as bowling and fielding coach. Really, there is not a bigger joke than PCB in the world of cricket. First of all, they have a head coach in Intikab Alam - no one including himself knows what he's supposed to do with the team. Then they have Aaqib Javed as assistant coach, now Waqar has been added to the support staff team as bowling and fielding coach. Ironically when their batting has been consistently letting them down, they decide to appoint a bowling coach over and above Aaqib Javed. And like a buy one get one free offer, Waqar is also asked to take care of fielding - to appreciate this joke fully,read the following comment from Waqar.

This was featured in "Quote unquote" section of Cricinfo recently.

"Not me. I would have never done that. It's not my job."

Waqar Younis confesses on air as he sees Umar Gul dive full length at mid-off to save a boundary
Nov 27, 2009 ( And 12 days after making this comment, he finds himself as the fielding coach of the team!!!)

Pink of health

What a season of test cricket it’s been. Of all men, Chris Gayle constructing a masterpiece to come within a striking distance of humbling Aussies in their own backyard was a sight to behold. That this came in the wake of extraordinarily sweeping judgments of the WI Cricket team in the Australian media after the meek surrender in the first test makes it all the more commendable. For a guy who said that he wouldn’t worry too much if test cricket goes on a decline, Gayle more than made up for his innocuous and irresponsible statements with a sterling show of commitment and skill which has invigorated hope in Caribbean Cricket. The performances of Adrian Barath and Dwayne Bravo in the ongoing series have been heart warming and equally so is the emergence of a genuine quick bowler in Kemar Roach. WI Cricket has promised many a new dawns in the last decade only to wither away later, but for cricket’s sake let’s hope this is not another one of them.

In the neighboring Kiwi land we have had an even better series. The first match was an absolute classic with the see-saw battle between Pak and NZ continuing till the last session on the fifth day. The return of Shane Bond at his best was as comforting a thought as it was depressing to see him sit out immediately after the first test due to injury – is there a more wasted talent in the game of cricket? If the first test was a classic, the second test was equally significant though less exciting as Pakistan came back to square the series like only they can – whoever thought Pakistan cricket is dead and buried. Mohd. Asif came back and reaffirmed his status as one of the best going around in the business of fast bowling. A bowling line up of Mohd. Ameer, Asif , Gul and Kaneria is quite a handful in most conditions and the emergence of a classy top order batsman in Umar Akmal has given the Pak team the much needed balance. A strong Pakistan and WI team is very critical for the long term health of the game.

Back at home, after a yawn inducing draw in the first test we witnessed a superlative performance from India to bulldoze past Srilanka in the next 2 tests and go on to lead the test rankings for the first time since the ranking system was introduced. It may not appear to be the most exciting test series if you go by the series score line alone – 2-0 drubbing by India and both by an innings. But that would be a narrow view of exciting test cricket. If you had seen those 2 masterpieces from Sehwag, you would know what I am talking.

If the brilliant hundred at Kanpur didn’t get its due, we can only blame Sehwag for that. Even before we could fully appreciate what he did at Kanpur, he comes back and puts on a show of such attacking cricket which with all due respect to past greats doesn’t have precedence in a sport of a few centuries vintage. I consider it to be one of the greatest privileges of my life that I was present at Chepauk when Sehwag sent the South Africans on a leather hunt when he scored his second triple hundred. I had not seen such a brutal, almost insane level of aggressive bastmanship ever. But at Brabourne he even surpassed himself. To make arguably the greatest wicket-taker in the game look so hopeless and impotent is plain rude. The statistics alone paints quite a picture – 293 off 254 balls with 40 fours and 7 sixes. At 10 in the morning, Srilanka was ahead by 393 and at 4.30 in the evening they were behind by 50 runs – Only Sehwag is capable of doing this to opposition. But the fact that all this is only a small part of the entire picture aptly describes the Sehwag phenomenon.

I wonder if any other sport could provide a platform for such kind of continuous and sustained brilliance. Maradona’s magic is a matter of minutes; Jordan’s genius is sometimes about seconds, Bolt’s defying human traits is all of a few fractions of a second. It’s entirely appropriate that Sehwag plays the sport whose grandness allows for putting on a show of such a sustained spell of brilliance that no other sport can quite match (with the exception of tennis maybe). Hang on, Let’s deal with Sehwag in a separate blog.

As usual Sambit Bal gave better words to my thoughts than what I could conjure up myself in an article aptly titled “There’s nothing quite like test cricket” in Cricinfo – an extract of which is as follows: "A good game of Test cricket - it's hard to imagine Pinter referring to any other form - is like five whole days of delicious foreplay, a treat for the senses. Each day leaves you with anticipation, and the final day, the final session, leaves you sated, fulfilled, and with a glow of well-being. No other form of cricket, and indeed no other sport, can match the sensory pleasures of Test cricket - so languorous, so drawn out, and ultimately so rewarding.”

Call it the blogger’s curse

How often have we seen this happen – A commentator claims a batsman is looking good for much more and the next ball he gets out. If that is the quintessential commentator’s curse, I am bitten by a blogger’s curse now. Not too long ago I wrote about Dhoni’s yet to be proven ability as a quality test batsman (although I admitted that he would in all probability go on to set his record straight in future) and he’s already scored a couple of hundreds in this series! And a couple of blogs back I also wrote about Bhajji’s lack of penetration and why Ojha should be picked ahead of him and today as I am watching the second innings of SL live, I think I have to eat my words – he’s bowling beautifully today. But knowing Bhajji’s lack of focus, I would still dare to put my money on him not sustaining this penetration in his bowling for too long…I hope I am proven wrong again!

There’s so much to write about Sehwag. I am waiting for the sheer brilliance of that innings to sink in...

The legend of Malcolm Conn

Cricket writing is a funny profession. It's attracted people from all corners and disciplines – ex-cricketers, College drop-outs, crime journalist, historian,environmentalist, human rights activist, a PHD in Network modeling and what not. No wonder cricket literature is probably the richest amongst all sports. Leaving the literary part aside, even at a journalistic level, we have got writers from diverse backgrounds and with vastly divergent views. At one end, we have people like Sambit Bal, Rohit Brijnath et al elevating cricket watching experience to an even higher level with their words, and at the other end, there are writers like Sanjay Jha, Malcolm Conn and co who make you wonder if they see the same game of cricket that all of us see. Then there are those writers like Viswanath and Vijay Lokapally who write on Cricket as if it’s the most boring thing on earth.

Tony Cozier had written an article in Cricinfo today regarding the Aussie media reaction to WI’s performance in the first test which got me to write this blog. He picked out a few writers for special mention in that article but I enjoyed his rebuttal of Malcolm Conn more than others. There’s something about Malcolm Conn. Seriously, it puzzles me that such a jingoistic and dumb guy has survived as a prominent cricket writer in a country which takes it cricket rather seriously for a few decades now. Of all the non-sense that so many people thrash out in the name of cricket writing, Malcolm Conn occupies a very special place. His consistency in churning out non-sense series after series, year after year with no loss of enthusiasm is almost bramanesque (or should I say Tendlkarine*)!

His series of articles during the monkeygate series down under can be published as a book titled “Non stop no sense” and let me assure it would be a bestseller. But he’s had some real masterpieces even before that. Let me just share a few top of the mind recalls of his genius in this blog.

I am not able to trace it in google, but I remember this piece like I read it yesterday. After that historic test series (yes, the same Laxman miracle series) between India vs Australia at home in 2001, a 5 match ODI series was played between the two teams. Sourav Ganguly continued his bad run from the tests to the ODIs too until the final match. In the final match he somehow rediscovers a bit of his form and scores a brisk 70 odd and just when he is looking good he gets out to a short ball again to Mcgrath. It was a marginal decision as the ball appeared to be at just about the shoulder level so Sourav waited a few seconds to check with the leg umpire if it was over the shoulders or not and then started walking – absolutely nothing more than a wait for a few seconds. It was a non-event when I was watching the match live. The next day I open the sports section in Hindu and Malcolm Conn writes of that incident as something like Sourav’s body language on being given out was as bad as Michael Slater’s in the Mumbai test match and that he was extremely lucky to get away scot-free. It was as far from the truth as it can get but he wrote it with such assurance that if you hadn’t seen the match and just read his report, you would have a completely different take on the incident. Since this was my early days in knowing Conn, I took him too seriously at that time but over the years I have learnt to appreciate the unintended fun in his writing!

In the same series, in another match (if I am not wrong it was at Vishakapatnam) there was a near stampede in the stadium as the greedy administrators had issued excess tickets. In that kind of a situation the police have no other choice but to disallow people entry into the stadium even if they own a ticket. And as some people agitate there would naturally have been some lathi work from Police. Malcolm Conn writes in the next day’s report (stepping into the shoes of Arundhati Roy for a while) that animals are treated better in India! What an irony that this comes from a guy whose country men are anything but civil to our contingent down under!

During the monkeygate series, Harbhajan got into a controversy when someone claimed that he misbehaved with the crowd and spat at them and such other things which was denied by their very own AB who was sitting in that stand at that time. But nevertheless Malcolm Conn had made his judgment as if Bhajji spat at him and he had video recorded it for evidence with his unbelievable headline “Harbhajan Singh walks free after spitting controversy”. The fact that there was a controversy out of nothing at all is comfortably neglected.

Moreover through out the series he defended the behavior of the Australian team against the Indian team by quoting and requoting a statistic which is more a reflection of the apologetic state of justice in the ICC world for Asian cricketers rather than a pointer to reality. The statstic was “Despite having the worst behaved team in the world, with almost twice as many ICC code of conduct violations as Australia, Indian officials continually refuse to pull their players into line.”

He follows that up with an even better one!

“This summer alone India has had four players reported, three found guilty by match referees and one-day captain MS Dhoni warned for wearing illegal keeping gloves”
MS Dhoni was warned for wearing illegal gloves! If you are not aware of the background of that incident then you might think that Dhoni is a cheater…Infact immediately after that Gilly came in support of Dhoni and said it must have been a manufacturing defect. But Conn doesn’t care about all that. He never allows a fact to come in the middle of a good story – that’s his USP! Thank god he doesn’t hold anything against Sachin and Dravid, else he might have placed them in the league of villains of the game because of their ball tampering habits!

In the recent India vs Australia test series at home in 2008, Conn came up with a few more beauties:
In an article titled “India’s verbal barrage as Watson fights lone hand” he came out with an immaculate psycho analysis of the Indian team with this statement:
“That India felt it necessary to so strongly verbal the Australians when so far in front suggests how desperate they are to regain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.”

OMG, when Australia does it, its gamesmanship, mental disintegration and friendly banter but in India’s case it is desperation!!! Even Balakrishna is not capable of such comedy I tell you!

Amazingly in the same article with that verbal barrage on Watson headline, he himself goes onto quote Watson as thus:
"There was actually a lot of extremely friendly banter I thought. Obviously it was challenging but me and Brett were having a great time out there,'' Watson said.
"It was never going to get out of hand. It was friendly banter and there should always be that in any sport, especially Test cricket when everyone is challenging each other.”

More on the monkeygate again:
“Had the ICC treated India the same way FIFA treated the Spanish Football Federation in 2004 when Spanish fans made monkey chants at black England players during a friendly soccer match, the BCCI would have been fined about $100,000” he writes in a thought provoking piece.

Extending the same argument, for the number of racist abuses that happen in Australian cricket grounds (remember Makhaya Ntini or Muralitharan), Austalian Cricket Board wouldn’t have had money to pay its players after paying up the fines for racial abuses!

Another gem from the Sydney fiasco days:
“Ricky Ponting should be championed as a national hero for exposing racism in cricket.Ponting deserves to be feted, not condemned, for taking his bold stand to protect Australia's only black player, Andrew Symonds, from continuing racial taunts by India spinner Harbhajan Singh.He should be considered in the same light as former AFL stars Nicky Winmar and Michael Long, the Aboriginal footballers who took a stand against racism two decades ago.” - Even Ricky Ponting in his dreams wouldn’t think so highly of himself!

This time on the spirit of cricket and all that:
“Likewise, India's teenage beanpole Ishant Sharma made such an animated display of grief after a caught behind from Andrew Symonds was turned down that the game will become a circus if this is allowed to continue.” – He talks as if he’s never seen Mcgrath and Warne in action! BTW he is referring to that nick off Andrew Symonds which in the entire country of Australia only Bucknor failed to hear…If only the bowler didn't react the way he did that it should have made the headlines…

The legend of Malcolm Conn is too big a story to be narrated in one blog…But the next time you see Malcolm Conn in the byline you better know what to expect!

* Thats not an adjective that I invented. Suresh Menon had come out with this in the last month's edition of Sports Illustrated.