Cricket Talk

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2010-08-16T21:06:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I have moved to http://cornerd.posterous.com/. Posterous seems to be a lot more convenient, with much better features. That's why. Thanks. See you there.

Spot the bubble

2010-05-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

So, Sahara has once again successfully bid for the Indian team sponsorship. Nice. Sorry, it’s the official sponsors for only the Indian men’s team and not the Women’s team or U-19 or India-A. But why? Because “the group was not interested in spending an extra Rs 10-15 crore”, it seems. They are willing to spend nearly 492 crores for the men’s team, but want to save 15 crores when it comes to the other Indian teams. Fine. But how do they measure their ROI on these sponsorship and on what criteria did they decide to spend 492 crores on one and not spend 10-15 cr on another? Let’s not forget that they had recently bought a franchise in IPL for $370 mio (approximately 1740 Crores).

The group’s presentation in the website proudly advertises their association with sports, including Indian women’s cricket team, U-19 and India-A team. Now, where did that pride go? Or because they didn’t see value in it, this time? Fair enough, now come out and show us the valuation for the Pune bid? Hang on, Which group of Sahara is paying for this, anyway? Are public shareholder's money being utilised for this purpose?

The group’s presentation also proudly announces their overall CSR spending(some 655 crores or something), good. So, the management is earning Karma points by leveraging on the shareholders’ money (I am assuming their CSR spending also includes that of the group's listed entities), very good. Gideon Haigh had written a brilliant article about Corporate Governance in Cricinfo today, but he’s far ahead of the curve. Let’s sort out the corporate governance mess at the corporate level first, before we can move onto BCCI and other Cricket Boards.

Let me leave the corporate governance mess out of a Cricket blog for a bit, and quote the break up of the sponsorship amount for different formats of the game now:
“Under the terms of the previous deal, Sahara paid Rs 1.91 crores ($ 412,000) per Test, Rs 2.09 crores ($ 455,000) per ODI and Rs 1.57 crores ($ 340,000) per Twenty20. The new price is the same across all three formats, and more than doubles the price of a Twenty20 game, highlighting its appeal and popularity” – excerpt from Cricinfo.

Let’s conservatively assume it costs Sahara Rs.3 crores to sponsor the team for a T-20 game. And compare that with Rs.1.91 crores for a test match. Now, ask yourself this question? Despite considering the dwindling interest (personally I don’t think so, but let’s live with that narrative fallacy for now) in Test Cricket and the rise in popularity of T-20, what’s the premium that one should pay for a T-20 over a test match? 57% premium seems reasonable (3-1.91/1.91), but that’s not a fair comparison. Let’s make it an apple-apple comparison.

A test match generally has 5*6=30 hours of Cricket, whereas a T-20 has hardly 3 hrs of Cricket. So let’s convert the sponsorship amount into per hour unit. As a measure of conservatism, let me take the avg no.of hrs in a test as 24 hrs, leaving a day for rain, early finish et al. Per hour sponsorship amount for Tests – Rs.7.96 lacs per hour and per hour sponsorship amount for T20 – Rs.1 crore per hour. That’s a whopping 1157% premium over a test match. It’s not even funny, this bubble. Apart from the huge premium, T-20 investment is also more risky, imagine the cost of an abandoned T-20 for the company!

PS: As an aside, I find this whole sponsorship thing weird. Why would a group with businesses which are primarily high-involvement purchases from the customer’s point of view, spend so much on sponsoring a cricket team? With a company like Nike, it’s a direct connection. Even with Pepsi and a celebrity, its fine - they are low involvement purchases which can be influenced by people you look upto. Extend that to cars, they may be high involvement purchases but they are again fairly personal choices, So I may have an inclination (albeit a lesser inclination than say in the case of buying a Nike T-Shirt) to go for the car which Federer endorses, either because I like Federer and/or because I believe Federer endorses a product which performs like how he does on a tennis court. These decisions are not the most rational but we all make such decisions. But housing, insurance, jute, townships? You are kidding me. Outside of their media biz, Celebrities don’t help Sahara much in improving business performance. Even for the media biz, film personalities are a better and probably cheaper bet than a Cricket team.

Of India’s debacle and the IPL

2010-05-16T01:35:00.000-07:00

There seems to be no end to the post-mortem analysis of India’s exit from World T-20. Some of them have been objective but most of them have been outrageously over the top. To begin with, I must state that I am highly skeptical of this analysis-paralysis surrounding T-20 performances. Going by the record in both int’l cricket & IPL so far and common-sense, it appears way too random to draw any definitive conclusion. India won the inaugural world T-20 when no one expected us to win and have been struggling to win a single match at the business end of the tournament, since then. Pakistan won the second edition but was almost knocked out of the tournament in super 8’s stage this year. And now, the 8th seed Australia (this alone is reason enough for us not to take T-20 results too seriously!) and of all teams England have made it to the finals! Has any team found the code to sustainable success in this format yet?

The story is not too different in IPL either. Rajasthan Royals won the first edition when they were least expected to. Next year, Deccan Chargers won the title after finishing last in the table, the previous year. This year, Mumbai looked good to take home the trophy, despite not being able to make it to the semi-finals in the last 2 years. Of course one can always point out CSK’s and Pakistan’s consistency in this format, but let’s not forget that a lot of things went in favour of Pakistan and CSK to make it to the SF of this year’s World T-20 and IPL respectively.

Does this mean, we can’t be critical of the team’s bad performance because of the inherent randomness prevalent in this format? Of course not. My only point is we shouldn’t go by the end results alone. For a problem with multiple causes, our media is guilty of navel gazing. They want to zero in on exactly those factors which resulted in our early exit. So conveniently they found the most easily bashable thing going around at the moment - it’s a free for all bashing - the IPL.

The media has built a nice story around IPL as if that’s the reason for our losses. How many of us want to be bluffed into this story that we were world beaters before and then the IPL beast came in and made us susceptible against short balls, made Dhoni a bad captain and fast tracked Ravindra Jadeja* into the playing XI? C’mon guys, outside of the Fab 3 and Sehwag (with his own methods), our batsmen have never taken a liking to the rising ball. Suresh Raina (who was a success in the World T-20) is the biggest culprit of them all. He’s spent close to 5 years in int’l cricket and can’t play good short bowling to save his life (that slog pull is not an improvement but a desperate measure). And what did the selectors do? Dropped him for the Champions Trophy in SA and brought in Rahul Dravid, only to induct him back for the next home series, giving Dravid the axe!

Another most debated point is about how Yusuf Pathan is only an IPL specialist and not fit for int’l cricket. What has IPL to do with it, if he’s not able to make the transition (Let’s not forget that he made his debut for India even before IPL came into existence). Ranadeb Bose was picking wickets at Hadlee’s rate in Ranji Trophy for a couple of years, but we all knew he would never be a great success at the int’l level, does that give us a right to blame the Ranji Trophy for it? I agree that we ought to, at a broader level, that the competitiveness of the Ranji Trophy is not great due to lack of adequate number of quality players and all that. But Ranji Trophy as a platform is doing what it can do best. What’s the point in denigrating it?

Similar is the case with IPL. Murali Vijay’s brilliant batting in IPL raised our expectations, but that’s what we expected, right? For god’s sake let’s admit that there is a world of difference between the quality of Cricket in IPL and int’l cricket. The other day - in “Yorker” (Yahoo’s Cricket Chat show) - I had to select what according to me would constitute the ideal T-20 team for India. After 8 names, I was struggling to fill up the team, I didn’t want Nehra in my team but had no other alternative, even worse had to go with Sreesanth to complete the XI. If this pool of talent is divided into 8 teams with 4 *8 (32) foreign players thrown in, what you get is an attractive, even glamorous but more importantly sub-standard (relative to int’l cricket) cricket. So by design, there’s always a hit me bowler (sometimes a few of them) or a specialist batsman who bats at 7 or 8 in each team.

It’s true that IPL didn’t live up to its promise of identifying and developing young Indian players and help them make the transition to international cricket successfully and all that. But hang on, who made that promise? Lalit Modi. Why would anyone take anything that he says seriously is beyond me. IPL is a domestic tournament with a few foreign players participating as well, just like the English county system. Has England produced world beaters in Test Cricket? No. Blaming the IPL for being a tournament which is unable to produce quality players for India at the int’l level is convenient but utterly illogical (Though IPL has a lot to be blamed for, otherwise). Can you expect a Bangladeshi Premier League with millions of dollars of investment from private enterprises to turn Bangladesh into world beaters? As a country, this is all the talent we have in supply. IPL can’t create test tube cricketers, no?

Having said all this, we do need to ask serious questions about the way the team is shaping up - even if India had made it to the SF by beating Srilanka by 20 odd runs and then gone onto the win the title. The number of promising fast bowlers who have lost their way after making a mark early in their career, is alarming. And that’s primarily why we haven’t been able to defend even high scores comfortably, both in T-20s and ODIs. Why was Piyush Chawla picked ahead of Pragyan Ojha and Amit Mishra (this may not have made any difference to our fortunes in the world T-20, but an awful selection nevertheless, anything but meritorious)? Why do we keep packing in 7 batsmen for a 20 over game? And what are we going to do to enable the young and the not so young batsmen to handle the short balls better? Just what exactly is Ravindra Jadeja’s role in the team? How long will Harbhajan continue to be our strike bowler without being consistently penetrative?

But there are no instant ready-made answers available. It’s a complex system. Not a video game, where you click a button and we start playing the bouncing ball better or produce an assembly line of fast bowlers. We need a structural solution. Instead of focusing on IPL, getting into the bottom of what’s happening at the National Cricket Academy would be a good place to start.

*For those who think that Ravindra Jadeja made it to the Indian team primarily because of his performances in IPL (which is not a bad thing at all), let me remind you that one Mr.J.P. Yadav played for India in the pre-IPL days.

"Yorker" - Yahoo's Cricket Chat Show

2010-05-07T09:33:00.001-07:00

I'll be co-hosting "Yorker" along with Amit Varma on Monday (May 10) from 3.30 PM to 4.30pm. Do join in if you can.

http://cricket.yahoo.com/cricket/yorker

Hi, Hello...long time no post

2010-04-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

Oops…it’s been more than a month since the last post. Year end pressure, Vacation, Appraisal time at work – all this meant not much time for watching IPL, leave alone writing about it. And before we could even recover from the hyper frenetic IPL schedule, we have the World T20 coming up. Boy, are we having an overdose of T-20 Cricket. Give me a test match pls, even Bangladesh vs Zimbabwe on that road of a wicket in Karachi is fine. Frankly, I don’t want to write anything till the world T-20 ends and also I am shifting to a new house yet again (4th house in one year in Hyd!) this week. Not sure when the internet connection will be up in the new place. So, regular blogging should resume by the 2nd week of May.

PS: For the world T-20, my money is on India or West Indies, with the usual disclaimers that T-20 is anybody's game, unpredictable, all depends on the performance of the team on the given day, even Afghanistan can pull a surprise et al.

Where did the facts go?

2010-03-21T10:14:00.000-07:00

Sriram Dayanand had written a very fine piece titled "Where did the opinion go" in Cricinfo recently. In his beautiful words, he raised many a question that every Indian cricket follower would have in his mind:

"Live commentary, a well-established source for opinion and analysis, was scrubbed clean too. Erstwhile opinionated voices were now contracted by ratings- and revenue-obsessed cricket boards, and matches were accompanied by the voices of cheerleaders. Too wary of saying anything substantial, they concentrated on honing their clichés and giggling away with their co-hosts. Even the once edgy and opinionated-by-nature Sunil Gavaskar had begun to sound like a chirpy choirboy as the decade ended."

But as much as I find the article to be persuasive, I can't completely sympathize with Sriram, as he seems to be concerned about a higher order problem. I am bitten by a more fundamental bug. The fact that the commentary scene has been so poor for the Indian viewer for so long, that I have even stopped expecting anything better. But now, even my relatively low expectations are in danger of being denied its due. Stereotype - fine, Cheerleaders in disguise - ok, I don't have a choice but to live with it. But facts?

I have noticed that a few times in this IPL, where commentators were guilty of creating a misalignment between my different senses. What I see and what I hear of what I see are at loggerheads. For instance, in today's match between Chennai vs Punjab, Irfan Pathan tried to hit Balaji out of the ground with an agricultural heave, played down the wrong line and was bowled. That's when the legend of Ravi Shastri was in full flow - "Through his defence... Sound of timber" he screamed. What? Through his defence? in which game is that called defence? sound of timber? the bails were just about dislodged man, not like Michael Holding uprooted the stumps which landed near the wicket-keeper or something. Calling a spade a spade is no crime.

There was a similar piece of commentary from Ravi Shastri again, in the CSK vs Deccan match. Justin Kemp danced down the wicket and lofted Pragyan Ojha over long off for a six. Next ball Kemp comes down again, Ojha pulls back the length a bit and bowls it a little flatter and Kemp is deceived by the length and gets stumped. Ravi in his eloquent style said something to the tune of "that was brave bowling by Ojha especially after being hit for a six of the previous ball". Oh really? What's brave about bowling it flat & short if you were hammered for a six of the previous flighted delivery. Isn't that the natural reaction? If you had just heard the commentary by Ravi and not seen the video, you would have thought that Ojha bravely tossed another one up and deceived Kemp in flight. At the same time, I am sure that if Kemp had stayed back for the same ball and cut it for a four, the same Ravi would have said "Ojha over compensates for the previous delivery and Kemp makes full use of it". He's just a template of a commentator, a hard-coded template at that.

If Ravi is so good, would LS stay far behind? No. When Virat Kohli's run-out decision was referred to the third umpire in RCB's match against MI, the replays very clearly suggested that Kohli was short of the crease, when the bails were dislodged - as obvious as it can ever get. But LS said something like "it'll take a brave umpire to give that out". Despite repeated viewing of the replays, he continued to reiterate that there was an element of doubt. Doubt? If this is doubtful, I am glad you are a commentator and not an umpire - bring back Steve Bucknor I say, even if he is in his Sydney form, its fine.

These are just the top of the mind recalls. We are filled up with such masterful commentary almost through out the IPL. Scyld Berry wrote about the importance of Neville Cardus' writing and how he transformed cricket reporting completely in the "Turning Points" column in Cricinfo. In that he points out a controversial angle to Cardus' writing: " He had no television to say he was wrong. He could wander round the boundary at Old Trafford, or even not watch the game at all, and write in the evening that the ball had spun viciously all day and Makepeace had batted to perfection, without anyone contradicting him."

As debatable as that aspect of Cardus' writing was, the output was sure as hell enjoyable, even though you couldn't cross check the reality. But these commentators get away with output, which is neither enjoyable nor accurate, though we get to watch the match live and cross check. And guess what,despite such a pathetic performance, their job is as secure as the Great Wall of China - so much for a market oriented league! Is there any hope? IPL has made me a Cricket nihilist. Sriram, you are in queue. Let my lower order need get satiated first.

The IPL bandwagon is back

2010-03-14T03:36:00.000-07:00

The IPL is back with all its Jazz and Razzmatazz in tact. So, IPL inaugurated its third edition, with a noble ambition of spreading the “go green” message, with a few rounds of fireworks – wow! I am glad that I was at office working late on a Friday evening so that I didn’t watch Lalit Modi’s speech in the opening ceremony even out of curiosity or for comic relief.

There’s so much to love about IPL but it’s just as easy to detest it too. If Tendulkar vs Warne is mouth-watering, Yousuf Pathan clearing the short boundary by a whisker (which would have otherwise been a wicket) is puke-worthy. What’s the point of bringing in the boundaries when every possible thing on earth is heavily stacked in favour of the batsmen already? This is worse than reservation. I remember watching the CSK vs MI match in the first edition of IPL at Chepauk. Suresh Raina hit 3 sixes, all of which would have been dismissals, if the boundaries were not brought in by 10 yards. I didn’t watch another match in the stadium. At least on TV, you only notice it when the ball goes to the boundary, but in the stadium it keeps bothering you throughout.

Having said that, I must also admit that there was some high quality cricket on display in the last 2 editions of IPL, which the last 20 ODI series that India has played put together cannot match. So with all its contradictions still in tact (and so is my ambivalence about it), the third edition is off to a fabulous start. It was heart warming to see hardly any usage of DLF maximums or Citi moment of success so far. Shastri though shamelessly plugged in “Karbon Kamaal” catch once but the crass commercialization has come down considerably (I spoke too early on this, as mentioned in the comment). Oh yeah, that ad in between the balls (feed from the stadium screen to TV one) is still too crass, but not sure if we should blame Set max or IPL for that. Will discuss the matches in separate posts.

I wanted to do a profile and analysis of each team in detail but March is just such a terrible month for such indulgence, with year end pressure piling up. Anyway, will do twitter style assessment as an alternative:

Delhi Daredevils: They look red hot favorites on paper. Gambhir, Sehwag, Warner, Dilshan and AB is a top order to die for, leave alone the final combination for the XI. With Nannes, Vettori (though not available till end of March), Mishra, Sangwan, Parnell – there’s enough fire power and variety in the bowling too. Rajat Bhatia & Yo Mahesh fulfill their roles reasonably well and Karthik is as good a T-20 Wicket-keeping batsman as you’ll get in the country outside of Dhoni. But let’s not forget that they were the hot favourites last time around too and one Gilly whirlwind put the trophy beyond their reach. That’s the nature of this T-20 beast – very little margin for error and time to recover.

Chennai Super Kings: Not far behind in paper strength is Chennai. Hayden, Vijay, Raina, Dhoni, Morkel, Hussey, Kemp and Badri (any combination of these batsmen) is a batting line which can chase down any score. Let’s not underestimate Justin Kemp. He was on his way to being the next Zulu (well, as close as it can get) till he lost his way. If he strikes form here, he’ll be unstoppable. Hemang Badani is a welcome addition to the squad this time. In my opinion he should be played ahead of Parthiv Patel. Bowling a is bit of concern for Dhoni. Oram is not available. Murali is not the best bowler in this format and also occupies that crucial foreign player slot. Ntini is too one dimensional. Tyagi looks good, Goni blows hot and cold, Balaji can hold his own in this format with his many varieties of slower of balls, but Dhoni may have to play Ashwin or Jakati ahead of Murali to get the balance right.

Bangalore Royal Challengers: This is the most weird set of players in one team. Dravid, Kumble, Steyn, KP, Kallis, Boucher – most if not all of these will figure in the best test team of the last decade. Then you have Ross Taylor, Robin Uttappa, Roelof Van der Merwe, Cameron White – all take to T-20 cricket like fish to water. In Manish Pandey and Virat Kohli, they also boast of the 2 young batting sensations in the country. What more, they also have 2 of the most promising fast bowlers in the domestic circuit – Abhinmanyu Mithun and Bhuvneshwar Kumar (though I don’t see these two playing much part). And Eion Morgan, for an Englishman, can be mighty effective in this format. All in all, B’lore has got players for all seasons, reasons and conditions. If they don’t make it to the semi-finals at least, they have only themselves to blame.

Mumbai Indians: It’s a well balanced side. Zaheer, Malinga, Bravo and Fernando is a fabulous bowling attack in T-20. I think Malinga is easily one of the best bowlers in this format of the game. Harbhajan is at his best in T -20 too. Ryan Mclaren and Dhawal Kulkarni are adequate back-ups and Jayasuriya can bowl some tight overs with his left arm-spin too. Sachin and Jaya opening with Duminy, Pollard, Bravo, Rayudu, Abhishek Nayar and Shikhar Dhawan to choose the middle order from, is quite a good batting line up. They also have a lot of relatively lesser known players in Aditya Tare, Saurabh Tiwary Ishan Malhotra, Ali Murtaza and Chandan Madan – Lets see how they perform. But the key for MI is the availability of Bravo and Pollard – till they join the team, the batting looks a little thin. If Pollard and Bravo play majority of the matches, my money is on MI making it to the semi-finals at least.

Deccan Chargers: By bidding for Kemar Roach successfully, Deccan tried to strengthen its weak link. It had a wafer thin bowling line-up in the first edition, which performed much better in the second in SA. Gilly, Gibbs, Symonds and Rohit Sharma is a dream of a top-order. It’ll be interesting to see how Mitchell Marsh fares in IPL. Can he take to the grand stage as easily as his brother did a couple of year back? But the problem for Deccan is that outside of Pragyan Ojha and RP Singh, they don’t have good domestic bowlers. And apart from Rohit Sharma they don’t have a great domestic batsman either – Venugopal Rao is just about adequate. For them to have a strong batting line up they have to necessarily play Gilly, Symonds and Gibbs which means they’ll have to choose either Vaas or Roach and not play both. Their bowling is way too weak for them to sustain the length of such a demanding and competitive tournament. How they did last year is a puzzle beyond me!

Kings XI Punjab: A line up of Yuvraj, Sanga, Mahela and Bopara suggests that the batting is in safe hands. But 3 of those 4 are foreign players, so balance goes for a toss. And Yuvraj, for some reason is not able to produce his usual T-20 form in IPL so far. They have further batting strength in the reserves in the form of Adrian Barath and James Hopes – but again they are foreign players. Kaif has been added to the squad but not sure if he can set the world on fire in this format. Outside of Yuvraj and Kaif, the next best domestic batsman in the team is Karan Goel – you know, that is not a comforting thought. Brett Lee, Yousuf Abdulla would be the first choice of bowlers – but for both of them to be picked, Sanga will be constrained to pick only 2 foreign batsmen. Sreesanth blows hot and cold and no different is Piyush Chawla. So on their day, Kings XI might be able to beat any team but to last the length of the tournament, Yuvraj has to be in the form of his life and then some more fortune to go with it.

Kolkata Knight Riders: This time KKR has started off the campaign on a quiet note. No multiple captains, no John Buchanan and hence more peace. They look a little more balanced this time. Shane Bond is such crucial addition to the team. He is that rare match winner with the ball even in this format. Like it is with Kings XI, the problem for KKR is the quality of domestic batsmen in the team. Outside of Ganguly (who’s also not really fired in the IPL much) there is nothing much to boast of. Pujara is one of the most promising batsmen in the country but not ideally suited for T-20, but I hope he does well. Manoj Tiwary's been promising for too long without delivering much. Rohan Gavaskar and Laxmi Ratan Shukla are just about on par. Gayle, McCullum are super stars in T-20, Owais Shah will be very effective too but not all of them can play. With Angelo Matthews putting his all round ability on the table, it will be quite a headache for Dada once Shane Bond joins in too. Only if Shane Bond and Chris Gayle have the tournament of their lives, can KKR hope to have a crack at the title.

Rajasthan Royals: They have abundant bowling riches to choose from – Shaun Tait, Morne Morkel, Munaf Patel, Shane Warne and even Siddharth Trivedi. But it’s the batting which is the problem for RR. Like India of the 1990’s they are way too reliant on man – Yousuf Pathan. Outside of Graeme Smith and Pathan, there are no match-winners with the bat. Maybe Damien Martyn will be able to reproduce some of his old magic. But that’s too much to hope for. With such a thin batting line up, I don’t see them making it to the semi-finals unless Yousuf Pathan plays like Sachin did for India in 1990’s.

In short, my bet for the semi-final spots - Delhi, Chennai, B'lore and Mumbai. And my bet for the title - Delhi or Chennai. Of course the usual disclaimers of T-20 being unpredictable and that the teams are so evenly matched in IPL etc applies!

Celebrating Sunny

2010-02-25T09:38:00.000-08:00

Sunny may not be the commentator that you would die to listen to, in fact you might choose to die than listen to him at times! But as bad as he is as a commentator, that should take nothing away from him as a cricketer. He was a colossal figure not just of Indian Cricket but World Cricket during his playing days. I find it irritating when people club him with the likes of Boycott. Sunny can't be insulted more. I was reading a Peter Roebuck article in SMH about Sachin today. In that article, he goes on to explain why he rates Sachin as the best batsman in the last 60 years. Along the way he describes the significance of SMG in beautiful words:

"No batsman has been as rewarding to watch in the past decades, and none has been superior. Among past masters, Viv Richards and Sunil Gavaskar stand out. Gavaskar ruled with meticulous technique. Often he played within himself, relying on patience and precision to build his score. As much was the duty of the stoical opening batsman. Not that he was always cautious. Indeed, he played some of the most breath-taking innings the game has known. Then his range of shots was extraordinary and the execution vibrant. Before him, too, Indian batsmen were regarded as frail. After him the word was never again spoken. That is the measure of his triumph."

For all those guys who were brought up on the stories of Sunny's legendary patience and the ignominy of batting through 60 overs for an undefeated 36, please reread those words - "Indeed, he played some of the most breath-taking innings the game has known. Then his range of shots was extraordinary and the execution vibrant". My dad used to tell me that no one had the mental strength that Sunny had. He said that Sunny would never play a flashy shot outside the off stump, even if you keep feeding him there all day. But what he didn't tell me was that he scored a hundred off 94 balls against a bowling attack boasting of Michael Holding and Malcolm Marshall! How many test hundreds has Sachin or Lara scored at better than run a ball? So surely it was not a question of ability to counter attack. Its something more...

His style of batting had a lot to do with the state of India Cricket during his times. He played for a champion team in Mumbai in the Ranji Trophy for sure. But what's comfortably forgotten about Mumbai's supremacy in Indian Domestic Cricket is that for such a successful team, they predominantly played defensive cricket. Their first idea is to shut the opposition out of the game and if there is still time left, then go for a victory.

And when he started playing for India, we were so hopelessly bad as a team that we were happy to just compete with the top sides. So naturally when competing is the height of your ambitions, survival is your natural instinct. Ironically had Sunny been more attacking and aggressive, it wouldn't have helped the team's cause as much. What if he scores 110 off 158 balls and gets out, the rest of the batting would fold quickly and the opposition would amass a huge score and have time to bowl us out again. Remember Sachin's 155 at Bloemfontein? So in a lot of ways, it was appropriate that Sunny rarely allowed room for any indulgence because that could have been adverse to the team. But on the few occasions that he did, he was as good as any.

For someone who was brought up on the misleading stories on Sunny, some cricket classics video in Star Sports led me to the discovery of Sunny's attacking batsmanship. It was an ODI against NZ in Brisbane in the Benson& Hedges world series Cricket (not the Championship of Cricket). NewZealand had batted first and set India a target of 260 to win off 50 overs. By the way, 260 was a bloody good score in ODI's of those days especially in Australia where the boundaries are so long.

Out came Cheeka and Sunny in pursuit of a huge score and guess what - they decided to swap their roles. Cheeka played relatively sedate cricket but Sunny really took on Hadlee and Chatfield. It was just a cameo of 27. But what a brilliant cameo it was. Almost on par with Sachin's 40 in Nairobi. 27 off 17 balls with four 4's and a six. More than the boundaries, it was the manner in which he was scoring those boundaries that made me sit absolutely dumbstruck in front of the idiot box. I had never imagined a picture of Sunny playing across the line because my dad didn't allow me to think so. He said Sunny would never do that. Well,I saw him do that and do that in such a breathtaking fashion. That's when I realized Sunny was GOD too....in his own way.

This is just a random post triggered by Peter Roebuck's beautiful words. Shall discuss "The legend of Sunny" in detail in a later post.

"My Name Is Tendulkar and I'm not a mortal"

2010-02-24T06:02:00.000-08:00

Unbelievable but true. Out of all Sachin’s achievements, this must rank very high in the list. He made RK sound tolerable for once, for once…Yes….high fives all around…RK was explaining Sachin’s great innings immediately after the end of the Indian innings and he went “ He had the blah, he had the blah today, he was blah blah, he was blah blah and today, he was simply Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar” – Wow…

I wonder if I got as many calls on my Birthday. What wonder? Surely not. Simply nothing spreads such infectious happiness like a Sachin masterpiece. There is so much to write about this innings. Not because its one of his very best – surely not. But it’s one of the most significant. It’s so appropriate that one of the most coveted records in ODI cricket is eventually owned by the greatest player of this format of cricket. It’s impossible to write anything coherent about this innings and its significance at the moment. I am on the verge of choking as if I scored all those runs.

But I can do something better - paste the tweets that have flowed in since Sachin was nearing the record till a few minutes after the end of the innings. This is just fabulous – Cricket writer, Cricketer, Cricket administrator, Ex-intelligence agent, Business Magnate, Journalist, Humorist, Gaming Industry Analyst, Banker, everyone that you can imagine tweeting about Sachin.

1. prempanicker
Off to toast Sachin with a couple of friends. Be well all. +poof+18 minutes ago via UberTwitter

2. pragmatic_d
Govt of India must consider enhancing the sheen of its highest civilian award Bharat Ratna by awarding it to one Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.32 minutes ago via webRetweeted by Vikram_Sood and 5 others

3. prempanicker
Oh god! I feel WFH RT @Sumantics: If I had a salwar suit in our tri-colour, I would have worn it to work tomorrow.#sachinisgod #sachin30 minutes ago via UberTwitter

4. sidin
This Tendulkar fellow has potential.

5. anandmahindra
On my way to ndtv Indian of the year awards.But wonder if any other indian matters tonight after sachin's double ton...37 minutes ago via Echofon

6. sidin
Hello people who are upset at #Sachin choking your Twitter. Do you see this tiny little rat's ass in my hand? I will not even give you this.38 minutes ago via Seesmic

7. LalitKModi
Watch Sachin Rock the IPL now. We know he will.38 minutes ago via UberTwitter

8. eshers
@sidin Can that man score another 200 !!!41 minutes ago via web in reply to sidin

9. vijivenkatesh
@cricketwallah Just revel in this madness drink this heady wine and to hell with views am flying back home over traffic to catch the game: )43 minutes ago via web in reply to cricketwallahRetweeted by cricketwallah

10. _Howard_Roark_
@cricketwallah come on! give us a moment to catch our breath. This is the finest thing we have seen on a cricket field.about 1 hour ago via web in reply to cricketwallahRetweeted by cricketwallah

11. eshers
Many needs few series to score 200 Ｙｏｕ　ｒｏｃｋ　ｓａｃｈｉｎ42 minutes ago via web

12. souvikspeaks
@cricketwallah Sachin 's 200 is impressive than Mamata's Rail Budget ..!! It's a Duronto Express ..!!45 minutes ago via web in reply to cricketwallahRetweeted by cricketwallah and 5 others

13. sa_lil
@cricketwallah Views? You gotto be kidding... Let's have a drink :Dabout 1 hour ago via Seesmic in reply to cricketwallahRetweeted by cricketwallah and 2 others

14. MirzaSania
Congratulations sachin:) proud to be indian and a sports person in his era!wooww!about 1 hour ago via UberTwitter

15. cricketwallah
This is the first ever double century in one day cricket. Is this also Tendulkar's best every one-day innings? Let's have some views guysabout 1 hour ago via web

16. ranjona
Sach-intertainment! Tendulkar too good at 200. whiners? Baah! Who cares about themabout 1 hour ago via webRetweeted by cricketwallah and 6 others

17. cricketwallah
SA attack flayed like rarely ever before. But India wld do well t remember that they've once chased down 434 versus Oz. Match yet to be wonabout 1 hour ago via web

18. lavsmohan
RT @sidin Dear @shashitharoor, please provide Hashim Amla immediately with full citizenship with voting rights and 2BHK in South Mumbai.about 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

19. cricketaakash
200 :)about 1 hour ago via web

20. lavsmohan
If only dhoni wasn't on the other end, sachin wouldda scored 250. Effin moron.about 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

21. cricketwallah
Tendulkar's mental toughness makes him such a prolific scorer for so long. Doesn't take success for granted, hunger for runs keeps growingabout 1 hour ago via web

22. LalitKModi
Sachin - the greatest ever Player ever - without any doubt.about 1 hour ago via UberTwitter

23. eshers
Awestruck !!! Amazing is an understatement.. Its another sachin"s special when you run out of superlatives !about 1 hour ago via web

24. cricketwallah
Amazing innings this, swashbuckling shots interspersed with deft placements, but most impressive perhaps being the hard runnin between wcktsabout 1 hour ago via web

25. sidin
You are free to say selfish. I am free to slap.about 1 hour ago via SeesmicRetweeted by you and 4 others

26. sidin
Dad retires. @kaaliya's birthday. And now Sachin's double FREAKING century. What. Ay. Day.about 1 hour ago via Seesmic

27. cricketwallah
legend of Tendulkar gets more heft. First ODI double ton, god knows how many centuries in all..heck, do we need to qualify his gr8tness?about 1 hour ago via Tweet via HungamaLabs

28. lavsmohan
Haiyya ippo ellaarum nimmadhiya bathroom polaamabout 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

29. LalitKModi
Wow what a run barrage by india.about 1 hour ago via UberTwitter

30. lavsmohan
My Name Is Tendulkar and I'm not a mortal.#sachinisgodabout 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

31. sidin
Dear @shashitharoor, please provide Hashim Amla immediately with full citizenship with voting rights and 2BHK in South Mumbai.about 1 hour ago via SeesmicRetweeted by you and 28 others

32. prempanicker
RT @warne888: yes yes yes !!!!!! well done Sachin my friend ... congrats and well done !!!!! awesome ...about 1 hour ago via HootSuite

33. bigfatphoenix
Right. Free to breathe. #sachinisgodabout 1 hour ago via SocialScope

34. lavsmohan
Macha. I was THERE when sachin hit 200. I WAS THERE!about 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

35. LalitKModi
I salute Sachin.about 1 hour ago via UberTwitter

36. lavsmohan
THALAIVAAAAabout 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

37. LalitKModi
My heartiest congratulations to Sachin the worlds greatest sportsman. We can see him only rise. Insperation to us all.He is the best.about 1 hour ago via UberTwitter

38. lavsmohan
NOW. NOW.about 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

39. Vikram_Sood
Last over. Either way Sachin is God.about 1 hour ago via txtRetweeted by you

40. lavsmohan
dhoni should be sacked, macha. Traitor!about 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

41. lavsmohan
someone tell dhoni that 200 is so the fuck greater than a 6! UKG fail, captain, UKG fail.about 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

42. sidin
Dhoni, you little law of averages maintainer you!about 1 hour ago via Seesmic

43. lavsmohan
Of all the times they had to have Hindi commentary on AIR. Dei dei deiabout 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

44. lavsmohan
Singam is one single away. Mudila.about 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

45. rajaramansport
s10 stuns!about 1 hour ago via mobile web

46. prempanicker
RT @SpiceBoxofEarth: Darren Morrison on commentary while Tendulkar bats is like a cheap plastic frame for a masterpiece. #cricketabout 1 hour ago via HootSuite

47. lavsmohan
Easy. Easy. Singam single dhaan adikkum.about 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

48. sidin
Shut up.about 1 hour ago via Seesmic

49. prempanicker
RT @warne888: nervous for my good friend Sachin everything crossed for you mate !!!! ps glad I'm not bowling to him today hahahaabout 1 hour ago via HootSuite

50. lavsmohan
Dhoni, Po Nee!about 1 hour ago via TwitterrificRetweeted by you

51. lavsmohan
Tweeet. As in whistle. Not social networking. Sreesanth tweets. Yuck.about 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

52. prempanicker
So we now have a new record for the highest in ODIs. Appropriate that Sachin added this to his CV. Now for the big one.about 1 hour ago via HootSuite

53. sidin
Can't... breathe....can't... breathe...about 1 hour ago via SeesmicRetweeted by you and 1 other

54. lavsmohan
get dhoni away! Someone distract him with a jar of buffalo milk or somethingabout 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

55. cricketwallah
more amused than appalled that some ppl still question Sachin's greatness. But not much can be done about misanthropesabout 1 hour ago via Tweet via HungamaLabs

56. cricketaakash
10 to go for 10dulkar :) :)about 2 hours ago via web

57. prempanicker
RT @warne888: congrats re Sachin and his innings awesome to watch lots of respect to my good friend Sachin great to see him back to his bestabout 2 hours ago via HootSuite

58. lavsmohan
200. 200 once. Do I see a 210? 220? Anyone for 250?about 2 hours ago via txt

59. LalitKModi
All watch sachin hopefully break 200 barrierabout 2 hours ago via UberTwitter

60. cricketwallah
tendulkar''s gone berserk; looks good to become first batsman past 200 in an ODI. Fire of ambition burns brighter than everabout 2 hours ago via Tweet via HungamaLabs

61. LalitKModi
Broken it - fantastic. Now double century we want.about 2 hours ago via UberTwitter

62. LalitKModi
Congrats to sachin. Waiting for him to break his record.about 2 hours ago via UberTwitter

63. sidin
Don't say it. Don't say it till it happens. Don't jinx it. Let Sachin be. No. Don't.about 2 hours ago via SeesmicRetweeted by you and 11 others

64. sidin
Sachin's innings beginning to remind me of that amazing innings in Sharjah when I played with my cousins.about 2 hours ago via Seesmic

65. cricketaakash
But I won't mind it today if Sach gets to his double :) :) Go Sach.about 2 hours ago via web

66. lavsmohan
Since sachin is so awesome today, we can be sure that india is going to lose the match.about 2 hours ago via txt

67. lavsmohan
Omg, whatay awesomeness sachin is today!about 2 hours ago via txt

68. RajaSen
When the lord God chooses to bat like this, it makes everything better. Ma and I both loving cricinfo. Anywhere I can SEE this online, guys?about 3 hours ago via web

69. AjayJadeja
Did you watch the show in the morning. I had predicted a Sachin 100 :)about 3 hours ago via NDTV Social

70. cricketwallah
super innings from Sachin, paced beautifully making up for early loss of Sehwag. He's been on a roll this seasonabout 3 hours ago via Tweet via HungamaLabs

71. sidin
Every shot Sachin plays adds to his personal total. Selfish again.about 3 hours ago via Seesmic

72. cricketaakash
Watching Sachin's masterclass...about 4 hours ago via web

Strange incidents

2010-02-22T09:43:00.000-08:00

"The ball ricocheted off the stumps and went for a magnificient four" said the one and only entertainer par excellence Mr.RK in Neo Sports of that delivery to Nehra in the last over of the first ODI. I don't know which one was more entertaining - the incident or RK's magnificent description of that!

I have heard so many people (including some well known cricket writers and commentators) say that they have never seen any incident quite as weird as that on a cricket field. I do remember 2 weird instances which can match up to if not better this:

1) Mushtaq Ahmed bowled a flipper (I vaguely remember it as a flipper) to Pat Symcox in Faisalabad (this was the same series in which Azhar Mehmood and Ali Naqui made their debut) which went in between the off stump and the middle stump without disturbing the bails! I tried to google about this to confirm my memory and guess what? This incident is mentioned in Symcox's introduction in the player page in Cricinfo!

2) This memory is even more vague. Sometime around the mid 90's Star Sports used to telecast English County Championship matches. I remember a match in which the umpires decided to play without bails for sometime as there was heavy wind blowing across the ground because of which the bails kept on falling down even before the ball was delivered.

These are two top of the mind recalls. I am sure you guys can come up with more. Lets see if we can make a XI out of this...Over to you guys...

There’s something about Eden

2010-02-14T08:42:00.000-08:00

What’s it with Eden Gardens? The drama is almost inevitable for the theater not just demands but commands it. Trust me, it's not a retrospective romanticistion. Even as the South Africans were going hammer and tongs, as if they resumed from where they left in Nagpur, the buzz around the ground was unmistakable (that’s with less than half the capacity!). The same buzz which can make or break the home team. You can treat them as the 12th man when you are doing well and a whole gladiatorial crowd waiting for your execution when you are not. There’s no middle ground with the Eden Gardens crowd.

After a real thrashing in the hands of Peterson and Amla in the first 2 sessions, MSD & co came back with a lot more intent. It was Ishant’s short burst which really started it all. Amla not only looked as undismissable as he was in Nagpur but also looked more dangerous for he was scoring them at will and scoring them fast too. It took every ounce of energy from the off-colour Ishant to unsettle the assured Amla with some real good short stuff. Just when he looked to be overdoing the short pitched stuff, Dhoni handed the ball to Zaheer, who completed the job his partner had started – sent Amla packing with a short delivery which he duly edged to Dhoni. And a medley of the crowd, the buzz, the noise, a more penetrative Harbhajan, a moment of brain freeze from the monk and a little brilliance from Laxman on the field gave the most vital breakthrough. Then on…Eden just took over!

On the point that it's not a retrospective romanticisation – I had tweeted Aakash Chopra immediately after the fall of Hashim Amla: “@cricketaakash a tad romantic or is it real? y do I think a b'tng collapse looks more imminent in a stadium buzzin with ppl dan otherwise”. I was very serious when I said this. I really felt a batting collapse was imminent. The atmosphere created that sense. And in less then 10 min, I tweeted him again: “now I am convinced it is real :-)”.

As important as the pitches are, the audience at the stadium also makes it real hard for teams visiting India. But of late, dwindling attendance for tests have worked in visiting teams’ favor – an important challenge (since low turnout is taken for granted) is out of their way even before they step onto the field. Its such an irony that BCCI uses ad slots during a test series enticing people to come to the stadium to watch IPL (which already gets near full houses all the time), when the test itself is being played in a near empty stadium (I mean the Nagpur test). So much for BCCI’s priorities!

And did anyone notice any expression of regret or condolences for the bomb blast in Pune during the match? Not even the token expression of wearing a black arm-band? It’s a shame…

Refreshing is the word...

2010-02-10T10:03:00.000-08:00

In these days of "protocol" defence, Cheeka offers a refreshing change. When asked about not picking enough reserve batsmen, he admitted that it was a mistake and added like only he can - "Generally we have an opener, a middle order batsman, a spinner and a seamer in the reserves. But in this Test match alone we thought we would encourage two more fast bowlers. But to our bad luck, you had one batsman walking out." No stupid justification of settled batting line up, conviction on the selected replacements' ability, providing greater flexibility in choosing the bowling line up to the captain - none of that non-sense, just a casual bad luck. Man, he simply speaks like he bats...Come to think of it, that's all that it was - bad luck.

Sehwag seems to be just a far superior version of Cheeka both on and off the field!

A glimpse of the future.....

2010-02-09T11:56:00.000-08:00

There used to be a time in Indian cricket, when the openers would get out cheaply, Sachin would come in and play an absolute blinder and India would go on to lose the Test match. The last time this happened was in Kingston 2001, and after that if somebody had said to me the next time this would happen is in 2010, I would have laughed myself to death. But, yes this is a sign of India's growth as a Test team and forget what happened today at Nagpur, we can still claim a right to the number 1 spot(come on guys , Dhoni eventually will have to lose one someday). But on the brighter side, Indian cricket and public would have known the true value of Rahul Dravid, and had he been there he would have only got out after tea to Steyn(i wouldnt blame Indian batting, the spell if it had been painted would be hanging in Louvre now!) and that would have been crucial in the long run. I am not even angry that India lost inside 4 days. What made me angry was an article in Cricinfo referring about India's so called bleak future!

http://www.cricinfo.com/indvrsa2010/content/story/447467.html

Bleak future? The so called explanation given was that, in the absence of Dravid and Laxman, and also the see saw form of Yuvi, Indian batting future looks very bleak in the presence of a quality bowling line up.

I could agree with only one fact in the above statement, about SA's bowling, but since when did the future become so bleak for India? And, add to that based on this Test's batting line up?

Poor Saha...For no fault of his, he was dropped from the frying pan into the fire to face the fury. But to his credit, he did bat decently in the second innings for a man playing his first test. Vijay, had his first twin failures in a test match, and that too in his 4th test match to be precise, and Badrinath played a responsible innings which showed more of his temperament than class, and for a debutant showing temperament is very good indeed! Now put your hand on your heart and say that if you are thinking of India's future batting line up, the top 6, will these 3 feature in that?

Surely Vijay, may be Badrinath, but Saha? Ok, let us just say for argument sake that these three would make the future Indian batting line up, the author goes on to say the steadiness of Dravid, the classiness of Laxman would be missed and cannot be replaced. That is true, inspite of whatever we have in future. Just because, we are going to miss something good doesnt mean that whatever we have is bad? And to prove the point, the author goes on to say that when India won after following on Laxman and Dravid were its prinicipal architects!

Agreed- but that was in 2001, while Laxman made his debut in '97 and Dravid in '96. It took them 5 years to come up with a masterpiece like that. To take matters into perspective, India's fab 4 as it was called before Sehwag came into the picture cut a sorry figure when it failed to chase 120 at Barbados against the WI, with only Sachin and Azhar being the experienced guys in a young batting line up consisting of Ganguly, Laxman and Dravid! And I dont have to mention, Bangalore, Karachi, Cape Town, Mumbai etc..( the list is long if we start talking about Indian batting collapses)

We are in the process of making the same mistake the Windies did, trying to replace a legend with another player and expecting him to match the legend's feats.

There cannot be another Dravid, but surely we have enough strength in Pandey, Pujara, Vijay, Raina, Badri, Mukund, Karthik, and may be a long shot..Kaif to fill in the No.3 slot which is not difficult. The guy need not(cannot) bat like Dravid, but if he bats like a proper No.3 thats more than what we ask from him!

If anything is bleak, its our bowling-who after Zaheer, and who is that turbaned guy who looks like Bhajji? Somebody ask Ishant to start bowling like he did in Nagpur 2008? He is increasingly starting to bowl balls that I bowl and thats scaring me.

Take a bow, Dale Steyn

2010-02-09T09:23:00.000-08:00

We started the test on the back foot without Dravid and Yuvraj in our squad and were pushed further back with the non-availability of both Laxman and Rohit on the morning of the test. Dhoni looked sorry at the toss because he didn’t have an extra batsman to pick and was forced to go with Saha as a specialist batsman instead. And the sorry look on his face didn’t go away through out the match – from the toss to the presentation ceremony.

For the all the accolades that both Amla and Kallis duly received, it was the deadly spell by Dale Steyn which sealed the match for South Africa. It's not the first time we have conceded over 500 to an opposition in the first innings. In fact we have done that on wickets with a fair bit of help for bowlers before, so on this flat track, it wasn’t a deviation from the norm at all. It’s a fact that we cannot afford to take lightly – we simply don’t have the firepower in our bowling to consistently take 20 wickets in a test. For a good number of matches in the past, we have batted opposition out of the match or batted our way back into the game from near hopeless situations. Very rarely have our bowlers won matches on their own.

So even though we had conceded over 500, we still had hope. Gambhir had an uncharacteristic failure ( a twin failure at that) for once and then Steyn happened. With the raw pace of a genuine fast bowler and the mind of the most deceptive spinner, he set Murali Vijay up beautifully with a teasing out swinger and followed up with the sucker ball and Vijay duly got sucked. As if to prove that was not a blind dart, produced an absolute Jaffa to Sachin, which is almost a 5 inch wider replication of the dream ball that he bowled to Michael Vaughan in his debut series. While all this was happening at one end, Sehwag did what he has been doing rather consistently of late – just played on a different pitch against a different opponent. Badri overcame his nerves and settled down for a fighting partnership before Sehwag did one more thing which he’s been doing consistently too – gift his wicket away just when he is looking undismissable.

From then on, it was Steyn all the way. There was a ball change. Steyn steamed in for a spell of sustained high quality fast bowling – reverse swinging the ball as his wont – to clean up the rest of the batting order and that was that. The match was sealed there. That Sachin scored a fighting hundred in the second innings and that Indians disgraced themselves by handing a 5 for to “Lord" Harris were all irrelevant in the overall context of the game. It was a Steyn show all the way.

Now that brings me to the choice of Man of the Match award. Amla? I agree that he played a great innings but not Steyn? At the end of the second day, Dhoni defended his bowlers by arguing that there was nothing in the pitch and we all seemed to agree. After all we have seen this in Motera, Chinnaswamy, Green Park and where not? But at the end of the third day, one guy made Dhoni look like a stupid for saying what he did. When was the last time we have seen such a high quality, match turning – in fact match sealing, spell of fast bowling in the subcontinent? We probably have to go back to Imran Khan days. And when was the last time we have seen a great double hundred on a feather bed in the subcontinent? As recently as the last series – this answer would remain the same for every series!

The commentators crib all the time about the lack of balance between bat and ball. And one guy takes it on his own to redress the imbalance, against all odds (a flat track, bigger & better bats, shorter boundaries and what not) and the very same self-appointed custodians of the game fail to recognize it. It’s a shame…

Poor Rohit and a few others...

2010-02-06T11:18:00.000-08:00

Of all the people, I feel most sorry for Wriddhiman Saha today. Poor guy, he is already facing a barrage of criticism for being picked ahead of Karthik and Parthiv as a back up for Dhoni. And of all possible eventualities, he makes his debut as a specialist batsman today. If he doesn’t go on to have a good test career, he would be one of the curious cases featured to death in every sports/cricket related quiz shows. Something along the lines of “Name the guy, who was a wicketkeeper for his state team with a batting average of 35 odd, but made his test debut for India as a specialist batsman” and also “explain why?”.

Now coming to the main script - Could it get any worse for Rohit? From being billed (rightfully) as the inheritor of no.4 slot, to not even finding a spot in the initial squad despite injuries to 2 middle order batsmen, life had come a near full circle for Rohit. Before he could fully complete the circle, he got the call of his life as a back up for the susceptible Laxman despite an indifferent domestic season. And oh good god, what happens next? Gets injured 15 minutes before the start of play! I was so looking forward to hearing the news of Laxman’s unavailability so that Rohit would play today. Sachin and Rohit batting together - Wow, I was licking my lips in anticipation of a feast. I felt terrible when I heard Dhoni mention that Rohit is not in the XI at the toss. If I felt as bad as I did, can’t imagine what emotional turbulence he must have gone through. Would he get another chance to debut anytime soon? What if Badri seals the chance? He would further slide down in the pegging order. But for a man oozing with so much talent and class, it should just be a small stumbling block. My money is on him inheriting the no.4 slot when Sachin eventually retires.

With so much happening on the morning of the test, Rohit must not be the only guy cursing his luck. Manish Pandey, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli and who not? If any of them had been in Nagpur, they would have been assured of a test debut. And that - when there has been no vacancy in the middle order for so long and doesn’t appear any will be there in the near future either - was an opportunity too good to miss for these promising youngsters. Maybe Cheeka could have made a secret call to Mr. Mallya, asking him to arrange a private jet to flow in Manish to Nagpur. In the meanwhile Dhoni could have fielded a substitute or prayed that the top order holds up till then – what say?

Now coming to the torrent of tweets that I saw in the morning about the stupidity (and all other synonyms) of our selectors for not picking extra batsmen in the squad. I, along with a majority of our mainstream cricket journalists in the country have cried hoarse against the policy of picking 14 players (this time they picked 15 outside of Rohit Sharma) for a home test. We argued that was too much of a luxury and that the reserve players are better off playing domestic cricket than warming up the bench. Australia picks just 12 for any home test we said. Now today we flip around and say that the selectors should have picked more. That’s the kind of consistency (in logic that is) that would make Mohd. Ashraful proud.

Its fair to argue that the selectors picked a 15 member squad for this series anyway, so they could have planned better and picked the squad accordingly. But think about this - in the last few years, how many times have we had a change in the batting order? Compare that with the number of changes we have had in our bowling combinations – that answers why fewer batting back ups were picked. In a squad of 15, one slot went to the reserve WK because of MSD’s persistent back trouble. Of the remaining 14, 3 extra bowlers were selected to give Dhoni the flexibility to choose either 3 seamers & a spinner or 2 seamers & 2 spinners with an extra back up for both seam and spin option. This might appear to be a luxury but since we had a settled batting line up and the selectors were having the conviction of playing Badri and Vijay in the XI, batting reserves were done away with. Sensibly Rohit was later added to the squad as cover for Laxman. Lets not forget that Laxman was in the XV because he had a realistic chance of being fit for the match unlike Dravid and Yuvraj. So for the sixth batsman’s slot, it was either a fit Laxman or Rohit was the logic. But how on earth could we anticipate both of them being unfit to play on the morning of the test - it was just a highly improbable event ( a “black swan” if we could call it one). This bout of criticism against the selectors seems to be more of a hindsight bias – I can’t remember anyone being seriously critical of the balance of the team before the series started.

Now let’s talk about the handling of the black swan event. As unfortunate as it was, Rohit’s last minute injury was the best premise for MSD to have gambled with a five bowler formula. The selection of Saha would have been a little more justified if Dhoni had played as a specialist batsman and Saha as the keeper. But that was not the case. Dhoni will not get a better chance than this to test the 5 bowlers combination. Surely a genuine bowler would have been more valuable than playing a specialist WK as a batsman whose domestic batting record is not much to boast about. I guess MSD has programmed the idea of a team as 6 batsman, himself and 4 bowlers so hard that he couldn’t change it when the opportunity presented itself. If he didn’t do it today, I cant imagine him playing 5 bowlers ever.

And what’s gotten into Yousuf Pathan? Oh boy, did he play a blinder today (it must have been a blinder - I didn’t see a single ball of the match!). I so regret choosing to watch India-SA live on TV, when I should have witnessed history being made in Uppal stadium, which is not too far from where I stay – its been a day of hindsight biases!

Let the objective observer take a walk...

2010-01-16T00:15:00.000-08:00

At the end of the last post I admitted that Ponting deserves the title of “Player of the decade” if only we go by the records as a player and nothing else. But I also pointed out that personally I wouldn’t have gone for Ponting. Here’s why:

For a batsman of such class, he’s really struggled against certain bowlers – Harbhajan, Ishant Sharma and Kemar Roach are 3 top of the mind recalls. You can argue that Lara in bad form struggled against anyone who rolled his arm over but that’s only when he is not in form. Except for Mcgrath (that too to a limited extent) no particular bowler has really given Lara nightmares otherwise. But with Ponting you tend to witness that too often even when he is in form. Admittedly Ishant bowled a great spell in Perth but Ponting was absolutely clueless for such a sustained period and he was not going through a bad phase either. Even in the recent series against WI, Kemar Roach had his number all series. More than the dismissals against these bowlers, it’s the ungainly manner in which he played them through fairly long spells which puzzles me. Christian Ryan wrote of Ponting as the man who laughs at the bowlers’ faces (an expression initially used for Bradman!) but there have been enough bowlers who have more than reciprocated that laugh.

Another dark spot in his CV is his record in India. The irony is that he has a fairly good technique against spinners, uses his feet beautifully, handled Murali in Srilanka quite well but somehow comes a cropper in India. Out of his 15 innings in India this decade, his 3rd highest score is 24! An average of 21.85 in 8 matches is rather poor. That he finally scored a hundred in India was more due to a flat track in B’lore where even Zaheer Khan looked all at ease in saving the match than his overcoming of testing conditions. It seems like he suffers a brain freeze when playing in India – invents new ways of getting out. In the 2001 series, he looked like getting out off almost every delivery he faced. Against the most improved team of the decade which has given Australia many a close fight and in arguably the most testing place for a batsman, Ponting is yet to prove himself. True, one blot doesn’t make him undeserving of all the accolades he gets but did we acknowledge Dravid as an all time great till he overcame his demons in Australia?

Now let’s come to his captaincy – it’s a weird mix. He has been the most successful captain in the history of the game in tests and won two back to back ODI world cups too. He might have played his part in claiming the final frontier but it was under Gilchrist that Australia won both the matches at B’lore and Nagpur – so let’s leave that out of the picture. What about the 2 Ashes loss, his detractors might ask. I am not even getting there. Anyone who saw him in India in 2008 would vouch for the fact that his captaincy is rather ordinary, way too defensive and sometimes just incomprehensible – like bowling part timers to play within the spirit of the game when he had a chance to take the fight to India in Nagpur was hilarious. For a guy who spends an eternity between deliveries discussing with his bowlers, he could have found a million ways to play within the spirit of the game (i.e., assuming he actually cares about it!) than have part-timers bowling when the opposition is in a spot of bother! Just recollect any instance where an opponent looked like getting on top of Australia in the past, the next visual you can imagine is Ricky Ponting spreading the field and till as recently as last month he didn't really know that you can declare with less than a record target to chase in tests! So surely his captaincy shouldn’t have added any weight to his choice as player of the decade, if anything it should have had an adverse impact.

Now to my personal choice. Like I mentioned in my previous post, I would have gone for one of Dravid, Mcgrath or Gilchrist.

Glenn Mcgrath

Of course much of his career was in the 90’s but he was as good as ever in the noughties too. In a decade where 55 became the new 50 for batsmen, McGrath not only held his own but even improved on his record from the previous decade. He proved that a great fast bowler is capable of taking wickets in any conditions, situation and format. He was by far the most penetrative fast bowler in the sub-continent and delivered on big matches like only he can. For all the hype about Warne, its Mcgrath who helped Australia sustain their dominance for as long as they did. Against the two best batsmen of his generation, he held his own – infact some would argue he even got the better of one of them by a whisker. His stepping on that innocuous cherry in practice meant an Ashes loss for his country – that’s how critical he was to Australia’s success. His dismissal of Jacques Kallis in the 2007 WC was a masterful display of cunning bowling. But what takes the cake is his dismissal of Sachin Tendulkar in Kolkata in 2001. I have not seen anyone work out Sachin the way he did in that innings. Take a bow guys…arguably the most underrated of the all time great fast bowlers, finished off his test career with a 5-0 Ashes victory and ODI career with a man of the tournament capping WC victory.

Interestingly he seems to have been Sambit Bal’s pick too as he reveals in his blog.

Adam Gilchrist

Gilchrist changed the role of a wicketkeeper forever…I also believe he was Australia’s "go to" man in all almost all crunch situations and guess what, he invariably delivered. As a stand alone batsman he was nearly as great as any other modern great and as a wicket keeper, till the last season of his career, he was the best amongst the contemporaries too. He played some of the finest counter attacking innings in crisis by an Australian ever. He was equally deadly and effective in ODI cricket too with so many swashbuckling innings under his belt but none better than that masterpiece in the final of the 2007 WC – there is not a more definitive ODI innings ever. More than all that, Glichrist like Rhodes changed the way his community is meant to function forever. And that alone is reason enough to award him the player of the decade.

Rahul Dravid

It’s often said that Dravid in a Sachin obsessed country doesn’t get his due. Dravid went through a rather extended bad phase for a couple of seasosns towards the end of the decade after cruising through in top gear for more than 5 years in a row then. During that entire phase, not one prominent headline was there in a media known for hype over substance asking for Dravid’s head. We have even heard “Sachin should retire” or “Sachin should be rested” or “Endulkar?” slogans when he was going through a bad phase in the middle of the decade. But with Dravid we all knew, it was just a matter of time and if its not to be, then of all people he knows best when its time to call it quits. The fact that we have treated him with such maturity is proof enough that this man has got his rightful place in the hearts of cricket aficionados. This kind of matured adulation is not for no reason though. Has there been a batsman as critical to the success of a team ever as Dravid has been to India in this decade? Kolkata, Headingley, Adelaide, Rawalpindi, Perth, Jamaica – Dravid shone in so many of Indian cricket’s defining moments. Also in my opinion, he was India's best captain too. His cricketing acumen was impeccable, always game to take the gamble of a fifth bowler against an extra batsman, nurtured Dhoni into what he is today, brought greater flexibility and adaptiveness to the team. Has a series victory in WI and England under his belt in addition to the most number of consecutive successful run chases in ODI’s. Not to forget that he was the first victorious Indian Captain in Pakistan and South Africa. If a CV with so much to boast about is not fit for “Player of the decade”, then nothing is.

Of Ponting and Player of the decade…

2010-01-15T07:38:00.000-08:00

That Ponting was the best batsman of the decade is not even debatable, it’s obvious. That he went onto become the most successful captain ever was destiny. He produced one of the finest innings played in ODI cricket in the final of the 2003 WC and one of the finest back to the wall fighting innings in the 2005 Ashes too. He only enhanced his reputation as one of the greatest all round fielders in the last decade. So, clearly he seemed to be the overwhelming favorite (despite losing two ashes as a captain) considering all that he has achieved in the last 10 years. But here is the thing – Is a player of the decade merely the possessor of the best record during that time period? Isn’t it meant to be more than churning out runs and taking a heap of wickets? Isn’t he meant to redefine certain aspects of the game or to tower above the rest in projecting the game in its best lights, be a great custodian of the game? If assuming McEnroe had as good a record or even slightly a better record than Federer, would he be rated as the greatest of all time ahead of Federer - I am not so sure. Well, I think he won’t be.

If those extra factors count, then Ponting has fallen way too short of deserving this title. Anyone with the slightest of sense of diplomacy would have done a much better job of damage control during the Sydneygate episode – the street fighter in him came to the fore during that whole affair. He just didn’t get what was wrong with the whole issue. That claiming of a bumped catch against Dhoni in the same series from someone who was persuading all the teams around the world to agree to take the fielders’ word for close catches was either dumb or cheap. His behavior at the press conference that day was imperialistic. His barking at Srinath who was apologizing for hurting him with a bouncer in a test match is a shot from pre-civilized world. His pointing the bat and accusing of Duncan Fletcher after he was run out by a substitute in the Ashes was rather amusing. His barbs at calling Lara selfish after he scored 400 to snatch the record back from Hayden were ungracious. His gesture to Sharad Pawar to handover the trophy quickly and move away from the podium during the Champions Trophy was not just cultural insensitivity but plain indecency & lack of civility by any culture’s standards. His constant inquiry with the umpires is worse than schoolboy stuff – apparently they behave better these days. Oh...the list goes on, let me stop here.

For all this, I wouldn’t still have a problem if he doesn’t have a pretence to be a saint. That’s where I have real problem. He keeps reiterating that he and his team plays perfectly within the spirit of the game – whatever that means. The Australian team under Waugh and later (&more so) under Ponting have been as bad ambassadors of Cricket as any game can ever have. But then there is another branch of philosophy . Should a great player be necessarily a great ambassador of the game – yes, we all wish so but is that necessary? Aren’t we asking too much of our sportspersons and other celebrities than we ask of ourselves? Well, these debates have been done to death for centuries with no clear answers. Maradona was not a saint and so was Schumacher (just to name 2) but don’t we all celebrate them? If we come across a Federer or a Tendulkar let’s just be extra grateful to them and move on rather than setting them as benchmarks and judging others by it.

Personally I alternate between both the philosophies! So when I think a great player has also to be a great representative of the game (which is the mood I am in right now!), I don’t think Ponting deserves the title one bit and when I am in a contrarian philosophy mood, I think Ponting deserves the title of “Player of the decade” (i.e, as an objective observer, personally I would have gone for one of Gilly, Mcgrath or Dravid) but again not by a such a huge margin. More on that in the next post.

BCCI at it again...

2010-01-12T08:15:00.000-08:00

Like the bottomless coke offer, BCCI has a bottomless incompetence offer to the cricket followers of the country. First of all to schedule the country's premier domestic contest from Monday to Friday takes extraordinary vision and meticulous planning...really! Then to have two teams from where the country's 2 best batsmen hail, making it to the finals was a real blessing and the ideal trump card needed for marketing the game on a grand scale. But how can we expect BCCI to have foresight and schedule the matches in such a way that it doesn't clash with the all important net practice before a crucial test against the all conquering B'ladesh! Really when did we start expecting such professionalism from our beloved BCCI...

BTW anyone's money still on K'nataka? What if Manish Pandey rises to the occasion in the fourth innings?

Is this the same old Aavishkar Salvi (the almost Mcgrath!) playing for Mumbai again? Where was he absconding all this while?

What's about my blogs that motivates people so much - first it was Dhoni, then Bhajji, now the almost Mcgrath???

When will Agarkar retire?

Is the pitch at "Gangothri Glades" the best in the country today?

The most heart-warming aspect of this classic in progress is this comment by a cricinfo follower:
"Darshan: “Update From Mysore – My colleague just got back to office from the Gangotri glades & said the ground is jam packed with lots of Buzz, Hats off to the curator for making such a CRICKET FRIENDLY PITCH!" (I got this from Prem Panicker's blog)

If on a weekday somewhere in Mysore without any of the star players, good quality cricket can generate this kind of a following, imagine what could have been if BCCI had any bit of sense in them to fittingly host this most important match of our premier domestic tournament...But then, do we expect any better from BCCI? I order a hostile takeover of BCCI with immediate effect...

Best Spells of the decade

2010-01-10T09:51:00.000-08:00

I thought it would be an easier job to select the best spells in a batsman dominated decade and now I know I couldn't have been more wrong. Expect you guys to come out with a list of those spells that I narrowly or broadly missed out! Here we go, my compilation of the 11 best spells of the decade and the usual disclaimers apply:

Shoaib Akhtar’s 5 for 21 vs Australia at Colombo, 2002

This was the time when “Australian batting collapse” was unofficially taken off from the cricketing lexicon and when it occasionally did re-surface, it still meant a decent score on the board. During those juggernaut days, Australia played a characteristic test agt Pak in Colombo amassing a huge first innings total and then taking a lead of 188 by dismissing Pak for a moderate score. Even at this impregnable position, if anyone in the world could make Aussies nervous it was the mercurial Shoaib Akhtar. And he vindicated that fear on this day. At 74 for one, Aussies were sailing along comfortably, when Shoaib ran havoc with their famed batting line up. It was the most deadly spell of fast bowling that I have seen live. Ponting was beaten for sheer pace, Mark Waugh couldn’t do anything about another thunderbolt hitting the timber, then he nearly cleaned up Steve Waugh for a hat-trick but Waugh marginally survived. But that didn’t matter, he got him the next ball with another full, fast, swinging bullet that trapped him plumb in front. The world’s most vaunted middle order was finished in a matter of 4 balls. But that was not all. There was a little matter of a Gilly left. But the way Shoaib was going, it looked beyond even Gilly that day and so it proved a couple of overs later. Shoaib sprints in and bowls the inevitable full, swinging Yorker which goes through all that Gilly could bring into arrest the ball’s momentum and hits the base of the leg stump. It was fearsome. If Michael Holding was consistently such a threat or superior, God, I so regret the fact that I was born so late.

Anil Kumble’s 7 for 48 vs Australia at Chepauk, 2004

I remember watching this match live in Chepauk. After the B’lore horror, things were not looking much better in Chennai either, with Australia motoring to 180 odd for the loss of just 2 wickets. It was irritating to see Ganguly preferring Harbhajan over Kumble for so long. I thought I would come back home rather than go through this pain. But then, convinced myself to stay back rationalizing that it was very similar the last time around in 2001 as well and how things changed in the post tea session then. I am so glad I stayed back. If I was angered by Ganguly preferring Bhajji over Kumble, how would Kumble have been feeling? Well, we got to know over the next 2 hours. This was post surgery Kumble at his very best, with a lot more variations and a little more flight (But that Michael Clarke LBW was quintessentially good ol' Kumble though), he ran through the Australian line up in less than a session. From 180 odd for 2, Aussies were folded out for 235! At the end of the day in the press conference, Gilly summed up the spell perfectly by equating it with Ambrose’s perth spell. If an Australian rates anything in the same league as the Ambrose’s spell in Perth, you better know that they were rattled and rattled badly…

Anil Kumble’s 5 for 60 vs Pakistan at Bangalore, 2007

This might seem a weird choice if you haven’t seen the spell and if you have, you wouldn’t disagree with me one bit. This was also Kumble’s first series as Captain. India made 626 in the first innings, Pak made 537 in reply and with India at 131/2 in their second innings at the end of 4th day, it was all set to be another dull draw. And so Kumble allowed his batsmen to have an extended batting practice and declared when all the top order batsmen were done with their practice, with 40 odd overs left in the day and 374 to get for Pakistan. With a draw looming large, Kumble decided to try some seam ups for fun..oh boy did he bring out the Dennis Lilee in him. Yaseer Hameed was cleaned up by searing outswinger! Younis Khan lobbed a catch back to another seam up, Salman Butt was caught behind , Faisal Iqbal allowed his rush of blood to get the better of him. Now all of a sudden the test match had come to life, in walked Kamran Akmal to face the fiercest competitor on a cricket field. This would stay in my memory for as long as I live. Kumble bowled another searing outswinger which completely beat the forward prod from Kamran Akmal leaving him absolutely shell-shocked, comfortably dislodging the off bails. Both Yaseer Hameed’s and Akmal’s dismissals would have made Deniss Lilee proud. At 162 for 7 and with around 10 overs remaining, Pakistan must thank their stars, for bad light abandoned the day’s play, saving them from sheer embarrassment.

Shane Warne 4 for 49 vs England at Adelaide, 2006

After a humiliation in the first test at Brisbane, England under Flintoff were putting on a real fight in the second test at Adelaide. England amassed a huge first innings score of 551 and even took a small first innings lead, ending the fourth day at 59 for 1 in their second innings. The test was all set to end in a draw with England drawing more momentum out of this test. But some brain freeze in the English think tank and a Wily Warne just completely swung the balance of the match. Resuming the innings on the fifth day the English batsmen were so bafflingly defensive, they didn’t look like playing for a draw but committing suicide. That’s exactly the inch of a chance that Warne needed and he got it. Then through the first session on the final day, he flighted the ball, drifted it in, turned it out, zooted it flat for England to blink first, blink first is exactly they did! Warne first took Strauss with a looping delivery (a dodgy decision though), then castled Pieterson with a sheer beauty and that set the cat amongst the pigeons and the rest is history. That Warne helped him himself for a couple more tail ender wickets maybe added for record’s sake, but the fact of the matter is that he sealed the match by interrogating and surveying the batsmen for 32 overs of masterful deceit, that exposed England and their brain freeze. England played out 73 overs but unfortunately & strangely made only 129! And Aussies were more than happy to complete the formality of overhauling the target of 168.

Glenn McGrath’s 6 for 17 vs West Indies at Brisbane, 2000

That Mcgrath will torment WI so thoroughly for a decade started here. Infact, I would argue that his hat-trick in the next match was set up here. He doesn’t bowl express pace, doesn’t possess magical deliveries, infact doesn’t even swing the ball prodigiously. But this spell is the epitome of his greatness. Like I wrote about Warne’s spell, in this spell Mcgrath surveyed the batsmen’s temperament like a masterful Psychiatrist. He set the agenda very clear – if you want to score, you better earn every run. He was hitting the channel every ball for 20 consecutive overs and the result was 6 for 17 with 12 maidens! Just building pressure ball after ball has never looked so glamorous, so compelling to watch. As if continuing from where he left in the first innings, he also got a 4 for in the second innings to finish with the cheapest 10 for in the history of the game – 10 for 27. With Mcgrath the corridor of uncertainty is such a certainty!

Muttiah Muralitharan’s 6 for 59 vs Australia at Galle, 2004

The all-conquering Aussies after rolling past all and sundry halted at Station SriLanka, to establish their supremacy over the magic of Murali. Facing Murali for the first time after he had mastered that dark art of doosra, Aussies failed the litmus test against Murali rather woefully. Murali took it upon himself to dislodge 2 of Australia’s best players of spin in Hayden – to his most affable weapon (the sweep shot) and Lehman to his most dangerous vulnerability (shuffling too far across the stumps). From then on he destroyed the rest of the batting order to bring Australia down from 148 for 3 to 220 all out! Its entirely another story that Aussies came back from a 181 run deficit in the first innings to win the match…

Jermaine Lawson’s 7 for 78 vs Australia at Antigua, 2003

It’s fairly obvious that most of the great spells have been against Australia. So supreme was their batting line up during their heymonths (heydays is too small a period to describe their domination) that it took an extraordinary bowling performance from their opponent to make a match of it. One such performance was from a then relatively unknown guy called Jermaine Lawson. This was a deadly devastation. He ripped through the Australian top order with a sustained spell of wonderful fast bowling and then later came back spitting venom to clean up the tail. The way he destroyed the tail was a throwback to those West Indian pace battery days, Lee was out fending and no different was the treatment to Mcgill and Gillespie either. Ruthless is the word. As devastating as the spell was, it still required a world record fourth innings chase (at that time) for West Indies to put it across Australia…

Ajanta Mendis’s 6 for 117 vs India at Galle, 2008

He had already served a warning to the world in the finals of the Asia cup. But we thought that was against a young Indian batting line up in an ODI match. Cometh the test series, the senior pros would be back and would put him in his place – after all they are the best players of spin on the planet. He made a great start to his career by weaving his magic against the famed Indian middle order in the first test and picked up 4 fors in both the innings. But his best spell came in the next test. Mendis started it all by somehow bowling a leg cutter with a spinner’s action to trap Gambhir in front and broke a great opening partnership. In came Dravid, out came another carom ball from Mendis’ hands and out walked Dravid disappointed! He had Dravid’s number all series. Then, he was toying with the guy who I rate as the best player of spin in the world along with Brian Lara – VVS Laxman. Laxman nudged, edged and scratched his way to 39 before he was inevitably out to Mendis! Accounted for Karthik with another of his trademark deliveries trapping him in front and mopped up the tail with ease. But this spell didn’t quite get its due because Sehwag was taking him to the cleaners at the same time as he was embarrassing the rest of our famed batting line up!

Harbhajan Singh’s 8 for 84 vs Australia at Chepauk, 2001

This is the best test match I have watched live in a stadium. I remember watching this match from the D stand, where once Hayden holed out to mid-wicket we were pretty sure Harbhajan would run through the rest. Run through is what he exactly did! After a blinder in the Mumbai test, Gilly was having a horrendous time in the rest of the series and was sent in at no. 3 to fix his form but it didn’t make any difference. Harbhajan fired a quick one straight and Gilly was hit on the pads dead in front, bowled a beauty of a drifter to get rid of Slater, then ran into that man of all lazy elegance – Mark Waugh. He was putting on a sterling exhbition on how to play quality spin bowling. I got bogged down and started to walk out of the stand, heading home. Then I heard the whole stadium erupt in joy and we all know what that means – so happily went back and thankfully found my place back too! From then on it was a Harbhajan show all the way. Ponting came out all aggressive lofting Bhajji over long on for a six, but really, did anyone expect it to last? No, and so duly Ponting guided Harbhajan to Dravid and walked back. Then came the funniest dismissal of all – Warne did everything he could to gift a wicket to Bhajji off the last ball of the day by shuffling thrice before finally padding up right in front of the stumps. Harbhajan on resumption cleaned up Waugh, Gillespie and Miller as his wont to finish with an 8 for to go with a 7 for in the first innings. And appropriately scored the winning runs too!

Steve Harmison’s 7 for 12 vs West Indies at Jamaica, 2004

If someone has a bowling analysis of 7 for 12 in 12.3 overs with 8 maidens, then it ought to be rated amongst the very best. It was almost like a lottery, he looked like getting a wicket of almost every ball that he bowled. I must mention that the inadequacy of the WI batting contributed a lot, but nevertheless this was Harmison at his penetrative best. First he dismissed Gayle and Sarwan with good hard 'hitting the deck' fast bowling, then rapped Chanderpaul hard on the arms to have him out "played on" a little later! If he was so good to the top order, he was a little better for the rest and mopped up the tail in no time and finished with his career best figures & inflicted on WI its lowest ever test score of 47!

Simon Jones’s 6 for 53 vs Australia at Old Trafford, 2005

For all the penetrative spells of Flintoff throughout the Ashes, it was this spell from Simon Jones which broke Australia’s back. They won the second test in which Flintoff towered over the rest but it was a close run thing. Also Mcgrath was absent. At 1-1 against Australia’s best XI, it was here at Old Trafford that England actually won the Ashes by taking a decisive 2-1 lead. And the architect of that was a man who is destined to spend the rest of his career in obscurity. Anyone who has seen him before knows that with a short run up Simon Jones can generate serious pace but what he did in this innings was to combine a deadly reverse swing with that serious pace. With a semi-old ball he was able to get the ball to reverse and he did that to telling effect by ripping through the Australian lower order after dismissing Ponting earlier in the innings helping England take a 142 run first innings lead. The Aussies were so shaken by this spell of reverse swing that Australian media started claiming that letting Cooley join the English Camp was one of Cricket Australia’s biggest mistakes! This spell also exposed the lack of technical knowledge of the most successful coach of all time – one Mr.John Buchanan, he couldn’t spell reverse swing leave alone explaining it!

Best innings of the decade- The ones to miss out...

2010-01-09T08:13:00.000-08:00

Whenever, there is a list being compiled, its a tug of war between me and Hesh as to who gets to describe a particular innings or shot or spell. That didnt happen this time as Hesh beat me comfortably by releasing this list, and for once I dont have any regrets about it(except one which missed out)!

Well, here is my list of innings which I feel, narrowly missed out:

Adam Gilchrist 122 vs India Mumbai 2001

99/5, Harbhajan causing a riot, Gilly answers him also with a riot! In a matter of 2 hours he changed the complexion of the game completely....

Rahul Dravid at Jamaica 2006/07

Though it was just a couple of 50s, the fact that it was a very dodgy pitch and nobody from either side crossed 50 in both innings, and this lead to a series victory in Caribbean after 30 years odd, and add to that the quality of shot making he showed on a two paced wicket, this was one of the best efforts from an Indian batsman for a very long time...

Virender Sehwag 319 at Chennai

You come to bat at the end of the 2nd day and score 52 not out on the deadest of pitches when the opposition has scored 550 plus. By the end of the third day, you are talking about your team scoring 700 and getting them out on the 5th! No wonder people have started cults on his name!!

Sachin Tendulkar 155 Bloemfontein 2001

The result was a loss, but the quality of the innings cannot be doubted, nor the situation. 50/4 with two debutants to follow, (forget one of them was Sehwag, we didnt know about him yet!!) he counter attacks the bowling so much that, by the time India was around 100/4 those watching had already decided that SA is going to pay heavily....

Rahul Dravid 180 Eden Gardens 2001

Now whats wrong with this innings that it doesnt feature in Hesh's? It was Dravid's solidity at one end that allowed Laxman to play so freely, on the 4th day. He made 39 of 196 balls in the previous test, to come out and play an innings like this is truely extrodinary...

Andrew Flintoff Edgbaston 2005

Yes, Arun.... we too support English cricketers, but then they have to produce something as special as this. With only, the last wicket for company, Flintoff finally played a special innings, which we were only hearing about for some years from the commentators. Take into account that the margin of victory was only 2 runs, this one is very special indeed...

Kamran Akmal Karachi 2005

Irfan Pathan had made history with a first over hat trick, and at 39/6 Pakistan were staring down the barrel. From a situation like this, there is only one team in the world that can win a test match and thats Pak too, Akmal came in and played a truely magnificent innings, to put them back on course.

Graeme Smith Perth 2008

Any chase in the 4th innings is difficult and that too against Aus, when you are SA you always have demons to slay. But probably, Smith is the one Protea who has actually looked AUS in the eye, and he stood up again to play a captain's knock from which the other guys took inspiration to pull of an incredible chase.

Chandepaul vs Aus 2004

Now, he was the last guy whom you would associate with fastest centuries, but on this day, he was breathtaking. Just when the Aussies think they have seen the back of Lara, and can breathe easily, in comes this man to hammer them into oblivion!

Lara 400 vs England

Forget about the dead pitch, forget this didnt contribute in a win, forget that England had a mediocre attack, put any batsman in the same situation with the same bowlers and ask him to score atleast 150, with half the class, style, grace and timing, and they still wont come near this man....Many were unhappy that Hayden had over taken Lara's record, but then those people had underestimated the Prince....

Best innings of the decade

2010-01-09T04:01:00.000-08:00

At the end of a batsman dominated decade, the toughest thing is to pick a list of the best innings of the decade. The usual disclaimers that “this is a personal opinion (surely biased) based on the limited cricket that I followed during the last decade” applies. Here we go, the best 11 innings of the decade in no particular order:

VVS Laxman’s 281 vs Australia at Eden Gardens Kolkata, 2001

In my book, this is simply the best innings that I have seen marginally ahead of even Lara’s 153. This was on par with Lara’s 153 as far as the context, the pressure and the quality of opponent was concerned. But what makes this better is that in this innings when he started playing there was absolutely no hope for India, through the innings we thought we would go down fighting, towards the end we even entertained thoughts of victory – this change in context through the innings influences the batting style a great deal. For instance when you have no hope, you can counterattack like Laxman did in Sydney 1999, but once you start sensing hope your instincts don’t allow you to continue to counter attack with gay abandon, you want to have a greater control and try to mix caution with aggression, later when you move to a stage of sensing victory, you get into the territory of “fear of winning” which makes a batsman lot more circumspect. But this Laxman innings had no such change in gears, it was a counter attacking innings of the highest quality from start to finish with no noticeable change through the innings. Ian Chappell kept on harping about how the quality of stroke play and the frequency with which he was piercing the field was so strikingly similar to Lara’s 277 in Sydney throughtout the innings. Now, when you have the best attributes of 2 of Lara’s very best clubbed in one innings – that’s the cricketing equivalent of Nirvana!

Nathan Astle’s 222 vs England at Christchurch, 2002

Oh boy, this was one hell of an innings. I remember my friend’s brother (who stayed in the same apartment as we did) banging our door early in the morning to wake us up to ensure that we don’t miss out on this madness of an innings. I’ll be forever grateful to him for that intrusion! To put this madness in perspective, let me give a background of the match. The match was over in four days with England winning by 98 runs – as comfortable as it gets after NZ were set a mammoth 550 runs target in the fourth innings. What appears to be an easy England victory didn’t appear that easy when we were watching live. Starting the 4th day at 28 for no loss, after giving a valiant fight NZ looked dead and buried at 301 for 8. And that’s when Astle decided to let it rip. Let it rip – well, he did a little more than that. The next one hour was quite simply the most maddening passage of batting I have seen in a long long time in test cricket. He was launching all the English bowlers out of the park with almost a contempt, literally dancing down for every non-short delivery. It was like a celebration, a six hitting competition or something. Caddick who had taken a 6 for by that time, was taken to the cleaners and so was Hoggard. In between Chris Drum got out and in came Chris Cairns at no.11 (coz of an injury). With Carins for company, Astle blasted 118 runs in 55 minutes of 69 balls to go onto become fastest scorer of double century in tests. And during the course of the partnership if you had a look at Hussain’s reactions, you wouldn’t have believed that this is a captain defending 550 in the fourth innings with the opponents on the mat at 333 for 9. Hussain had serious fears of the match slipping away. Another hour and it was gone! If an innings can instill the fear of a loss in the opponent when chasing 550 and still more than 150 runs adrift with only one wicket in hand, it ought to be rated among the very best.

Brian Lara’s 226 vs Australia at Adelaide, 2005

This was the series that WI played in Australia immediately after that ill-conceived idea of a super test between Australia vs Rest of the world. Lara carried on his bad form from the super test into the test series as well. His 6 innings in Australia before the Adelaide test read: 5, 36, 30, 14, 13 ,45. Now this is not at all surprising with Lara and so was what followed. Before this test there was an interview of Mcgrath, Warne and Lara in an Australian newspaper where all 3 were asked the same question – Do you ever doubt your ability? I don’t remember what Mcgrath said, Warne said that he goes through phases of self-doubt when he’s in the middle of a bad patch and Lara in his characteristic style said “no, never”. That’s what makes the man – the extraordinary self-belief. So he comes out to the crease at 19 for 2 and a baggage of bad form (both personal and the team’s) against Mcgrath, Lee, Warne & Macgill and puts on a show of breathtaking stroke play like only Lara can. It had all the makings of a quintessential Lara innings – the pull, cover drive, the cut, the flick, the straight drive, the hoist over mid-wicket off both the spinners and the usual team collapsing around him! When he got out, the score was 381 and Lara scored 226 out of that!

Rahul Dravid’s 148 vs England at Headingley, 2002

The innings that truly began Dravid’s journey to greatness. In windy conditions, on a damp pitch against a decent English bowling attack, Ganguly took a huge gamble of winning the toss and batting first. This decision as per Ted Corbett’s opinion should have resulted in England folding India out for less than 250 – that’s what a good bowling attack would on a headingley first day pitch against an Indian batting line up. And at 15 for 1, we could sense the all too familiar collapse. That’s when Dravid constructs a masterpiece (with adequate support from Sanjay Bangar) of such brilliance that it seemed like he was “meditating in Mint Street”. England bowlers gave all that they had in their repertoire in favorable conditions only to see Dravid smiling and almost asking – “Oh that’s all that you have. Is it?”. By the time Dravid finished his innings, the sun was out, the bowlers were tired and then Sachin & Sourav had a feast to set up the perfect match for India. Despite a 193 from Sachin, the choice of Dravid for man of the match was unanimous.

Rahul Dravid’s 233 vs Australia at Adelaide, 2003

The doppelganger of Kolkata…After scoring 556 in the first innings and having the opponent on the mat at 85 for 4, any team could have afforded to relax leave alone Australia. But they didn’t! That’s what a good memory can do! If it was Laxman playing the lead role then, it was Dravid now. After a terrible series the previous time he had come down under and failing in the first innings in the first test in Brisbane, Dravid came into this test with all kinds of self-doubts about his ability to score runs in Australia. Under that kind of pressure and with the team reeling at 85 for 4, he summoned all his mental resolve and his water tight technique to play what must be regarded as one of the most critical innings in Indian cricket’s history. What more, he comes back in the second innings and stays there till the end scoring 72 to finish off the target of 233. It was such a huge moment for Indian Cricket that Indian news channels were showing the last few runs live!

Sachin Tendulkar’s 103 vs England at Chepauk, 2008

Could anyone have written a better script? If it was a movie script we would have called it the heights of suspension of disbelief and what if it happened in reality – Well, tears in your eyes and a lump in your throat as if you scored those runs! Sachin had some unfinished business with a fourth innings chase and Chepauk. Also this was the test series immediately after the Mumbai attacks, in fact the ODI series preceding the test series was abandoned half way through because of the terrorist attack. As if all this had to come together, we almost let England run away with the match only for the Mumbai’s most proud son to enter the scene and snatch the match away from England with the perfect innings for the situation. What more, he got to his hundred with the winning shot too. Poetic justice has never had a greater meaning!

Virender Sehwag’s 83 vs England at Chepauk, 2008

If Sachin’s innings was a masterpiece, it was so close to being a non-event but for Sehwag. England set India a target of 387 in 119 overs at 3.25 per over. The typical fourth innings chase which has the chasing team in the corridor of uncertainty all the time. To go for a win or play for a draw? What if in going for a win we end up losing and what if we if in going for a draw we don’t give ourselves a chance to win or worse in playing for a draw what if we still end up losing? Before Dhoni could even completely work through this puzzle, Sehwag had come back to the pavilion after playing 23 overs of the remaining 29 overs on the fourth day. By then Dhoni didn’t even have to think – going for the win was the only option. The equation changed from 387 at 3.25 with 10 wickets in hand to 270 at 2.81 with 9 wickets in hand! There was also the little matter of the Sehwag effect which the bowlers’ would take time to recover from…This was also the innings which changed English Cricket upside down. As England were withstanding the Sehwag carnage, Pieterson was so clueless that he ended up complaining that he didn’t get enough tactical assistance from Peter Moores!

Virender Sehwag’s 201 vs Srilanka at Galle, 2008

After the first test humiliation when the greatest players of spin bowling on the planet were made to look like novices by the M&M duo, this test didn’t seem to be much different but for Sehwag again. After a solid opening partnership India lost its way completely with only Laxman getting into even double digits. The awesome foursome were struggling to decipher the Murali-Mendis (especially Mendis) magic, Sehwag was sending them on a leather hunt – one out of sheer contempt and another coz he couln’t pick his doosra and chose to attack him all the time and it paid off! In a team score of 329, he ended up scoring 201 with only 2 other batsmen crossing double digits and what more he carried his bat through as well!

Virender Sehwag’s 292 vs Srilanka at Mumbai, 2009

After getting out for 131, if a batsman feels he has missed out – who could it be?

At 10 AM Srilanka was leading by 393 runs and at 4.30 PM Srilanka are 50 runs behind – what could be the reason?

If Sambit Bal says someone is more destructive than even Viv Richards – who could it be?

Virender Sehwag.

With one innings he made the world’s most successful bowler hasten his retirement plans! To make 284 runs in just 79 overs of play is outrageous even at club level, at test cricket level it is plain barbaric – its just not on. I have never felt so sorry for any opponent when India is dominating them, really. ..He could so easily have become the second batsman after Bradman to make 300 in a single day if he had 90 overs of play. Sehwag’s batting stats at the end of the game read: 293 runs from 254 balls with 40 fours and 7 sixes at a strike rate of 115.35! As outrageous as this is, it’s only a small part of the Sehwag destruction story! Recently in Cricinfo, the commentators and columnists were asked to pick their favorite bits of the decade and out of all the cricket played in the decade, Ian Chappell picked this innings! I thought Lara played Murali masterfully but this guy has gone even further – treated him with utter disdain. I have not seen a more audacious innings in my life.

Ricky Ponting’s 156 vs England at Old Trafford in 2005

We don’t always get too see Ricky Ponting bat under real pressure like Lara or Sachin. He played for a champion team almost from the beginning of his career who also boasted of great openers from Taylor-Slater to Hayden-Langer. So he walked in at no.3 counter attacked every opponent on his way to becoming one of the all time greats. And in the ashes of 2005 and under his own captaincy, he came across situations that outside of India he wouldn’t have faced and the pressure reflected on his batting returns. With nothing much to boast about in the first 2 tests, he comes into the 3rd test and fails in the first innings to the deadly swing bowling off Simon Jones with a single digit score. With a target of 423 in 108 overs in the fourth innings, it required a gritty solid batting performance from Australia to bail themselves out of jail. And under pressure with literally no support from his teammates, Ponting plays an absolute blinder handling the conventional swing off Hoggard with the new ball and the reverse swing of Jones and Flintoff with the old ball with equal felicity. And just as he was about to reach the finish line safe, he got a beauty from Harmison but Brett Lee held his nerves to give Australia a draw which Ponting’s back to the wall effort so thoroughly deserved. This is my favorite Ponting innings.

Kumar Sangakkara’s 192 vs Australia at Hobart, 2007

This is another Astle kind of innings but with less madness and more method. Chasing 507, Sanga walks in at 15 for 1, plays a typical counter attacking innings that we associate with him till when he decided to do an Astle as he started losing partners at frequent intervals. Once Jayasuriya got out, the rest started folding and in no time it was 290 for 8. As Aussies started licking their lips in anticipation of another crushing victory, Sanga took Lee, Johnson and Clark to cleaners almost threatening to pull of a highly improbable chase only for Rudi Kuertzen to make a howler which put paid to SL’s outside chances. As great as the innings was, equally great was Sanga’s gesture to Kuertzen’s apology at the end of the match!

Next up is Spells of the decade...

Defining piece about Cricket in the last decade

2010-01-06T06:39:00.000-08:00

This article by Siddhartha Vaidhyanathan in Cricinfo perfectly sums up the last decade. Whatever happened to context!

http://www.cricinfo.com/decadereview2009/content/story/439734.html

Following on......

2010-01-05T09:06:00.000-08:00

Wow.... I do not have any other words to describe Hesh's blog. It just started a whole train of thoughts in my mind which left me reminiscing the test match all over again(during office hours after a long vacation, with lots of work to do, he he) but I do not have any single point to add on the match which Hesh hasn't mentioned(May be Dravid's spill of Steve Waugh and the whole " you just dropped the Test match mate" but it actually reinforces the point he made, it was theatrical but it wasn't match fixing!!), so I would actually write about my experience of watching the greatest test match of the decade.

Day 1: Those were the days when I used to sit before TV at 8.30 when the match itself starts at 9am regardless of whether it was one day or test or whether India is batting or not, or India is leading the series or trailing it. Toss won by Steve Waugh and he decides to bat, and a small flicker of fear trickles its way into my mind...the last time India lost the toss at Eden Gardens was against South Africa and they lost that match comprehensively(though there was a gem from Azhar) and that gets reinforced when Slater and Hayden start brightly, with nothing in the pitch and a toothless pace attack(no offence to Khan and Prasad, but they were bad that day) I was having half a mind to go to college in the afternoon, with Hayden looking strong, and even though Slater got out, Langer was giving Hayden excellent company and at tea Aussies were truly on top.

I decided, I would go to my friend's place, as I couldn't watch any more and just as I was about to leave Hayden got out to an ill judged shot, and was caught at the deep. I decided to stay back, partly due to India getting a wicket, and also Mark Waugh was coming in to bat, and for the next 30 minutes it was like watching your lover dancing with somebody else(you can't stop watching her dance and admire it,but it still leaves a bitter taste in your mouth) as he was caressing the ball all over the park.

Probably the only person, who was actually saying India has a chance to get even with the Aussies now, was Ian Chappell who was constantly saying Bhajji was bowling well( I could'nt see any difference because Waugh and Langer were playing him easily) but Zaheer came back to dismiss Langer to have Steve Waugh at the crease and I was praying for a run out(another famous Steve quote- there is always a collapse after a run out), the collapse did happen and how!!!

Mark was beaten by a lowly straighter one from Bhajji with Mongia taking a good catch, and Ponting coming in(he was yet to become Harbhajan's bunny!!!) and also looking determined(later we would come to know that it was terror!!!) I wasnt looking for anything special but post tea sessions of any India-Aus tests, would become very significant, exciting, controversial in the coming years and it all started with this session.

Ponting was trapped in front by a straighter one again, and probably the controversial decision of the match-Gilchrist given out lbw the next ball,from round the wicket, though at first look, the ball did hit the back pad, believe it or not, my mom preparing coffee in the kitchen actually said,"Don't worry, Warne is going to get out and Bhajji is taking the hat-trick". Even before she finished the sentence, Ramesh had taken a blinder("probably his most significant contribution to Indian cricket") and the Aussies were on the ropes. Another moment I remember was Steve Waugh signalling for a helmet immediately after Warne got out, which gave me a small shiver,(Me being a Steve Waugh fan, would know the signs, Aussie on the back foot, only with tail enders for company you would not want him to start concentrating) and he was there till the end of the day with Gillespie.

Day 2: I have had many depressing cricketing days in my life, and this would probably be in the top 5. It was as if everything was going against India-umpires, pitch, luck, fate, and the Aussies sensing it were pounding them with pile drivers right in the centre. But this day, probably had what I believe the "Butterfly effect" moment of the match with umpire S.K.Bansal ruling Gillespie not out to a caught behind appeal that was so obvious that Gillespie was actually looking for the hammer to fall from the umpire!!! The moment the appeal was turned down, I knew that this wasn't gonna be our day, and I had a class to attend to in the morning, and we were going for a movie afterwards, so didnt know anything about the score(those were the Neandarthal days-pre cell phone, pre cricinfo) but we came back later to my friends place, where I was gleefully told the score that India's score was 110/7 and then I was asked a whole series of questions as to what the Indian players would be doing for the rest of the two days, will they tour Calcutta or will come to Chennai and hang in Marina Beach...some unparlimentary comments too which couldnt be typed in here.

One of them went as far to bet that if India took the match to the 4th day, he would do whatever I asked him to do!

Day 3- I didnt watch the match in the morning, because I left early, came to know that India was all out for 171(the first significant number of the match!!) and were following on. To be frank, at that moment, I had no idea about Headingley 81 and the heroics of Ian Botham, so was replaying all the other follow on situations in my mind and how likely India can salvage some pride...

We were in college sitting in class when one of the guys came very downcast saying Sachin was gone, and banged the bench so hard, that made us afraid if the lecturer next room could have heard it.

Then the class erupted in confusion...All because of the question -who is at the crease?

Ans: Laxman and Ganguly

Why did Ganguly promote himself to no.3? was the question doing the rounds when the guy clarified that Laxman had come to the crease at 3 and was playing quite well and that may be he will replace Dravid in the next match for the No.3 position, and how Dravid is going to have tough time to get back into the team.

At the end of the day, when I checked the scores I was a little happy, even though India may lose the match, I still have something to cheer about, I had won the bet!

Day 4: Left early again in the morning without switching on the TV, and absolutely didnt even think about it when around 12.30, while passing a group of guys, I heard that Laxman and Dravid were still at the crease. The first thought in my mind was, now this guy is kidding right? Asked them the score and was told that by lunch India were 376/4(376-the second significant number!!!). I dropped all pretense and rushed straight to my friend's home to watch the reminder of the "Rope-a-Dope"- Aussies unfamiliar with being counterattacked were wilting under the pressure, Waugh was looking grumpy, Mcgrath listless, and Warne as if he had no clue what was going on...and on the other hand, Laxman was painting a masterpiece, but wait a minute who was the other guy batting alongside him? This was probably the first match in which Dravid realised his potential when he stays positive in approach(it would pay rich dividends in the next match when he would play probably in my opinion his best innings!!!) The best example was the way he tackled Warne-while Lax was using his height to get to the pitch of the ball Dravid was dancing down the track when Warne came around the wicket. Laxman going past Gavaskar as the then highest scorer with an inside out cover drive, Dravid pointing his helmet at the press box after his century would forever be etched in my memory. All my thoughts for Day 5 were this- play till lunch and dont give the Aussies time and we should surely draw this match which is a fantastic achievement.

Day 5- One of my friends had some work to be done, and he didnt want to go at it alone,and called me, I couldnt say no, so went with him which took me most part of the morning and I came just after lunch at my friend's place to watch Hayden and Slater playing at the target of 384 runs.I was a little bit disappointed that Laxman couldnt get 300, and was horrified when Prasad dropped a regulation sitter of Slater.Slater isnt a slow poke and if Gilchrist comes at 3 and they stay there for 30 overs anything could happen, only for Slater to get out to Bhajji once again, and by this time we could see that Bhajji takes wickets in clusters and wasnt surprised when he got Langer top edging a sweep to short fine leg.

Raju got into the act with his only wicket(his last wicket in Test cricket!!) of the match, an absolute beauty to get Mark Waugh, and we watched in horror as Dravid dropped Steve Waugh at short leg of Bhajji("You just dropped the test match mate").

At tea, with Hayden and Waugh still batting, the only thought in my mind was, from here India can't lose, 18-0 wouldnt happen, and we have a great chance of levelling in Chennai, and the final frontier still stands(off course I didnt know at the moment that a draw would have given Aus the trophy!). But, the first day post tea session was a cracker, how would this one be?

Well, this one made that look like a benign lake! And the surprise factor was Sachin coming to pick 3 of the 7 wickets to fall! Waugh gone exactly the same way he was dropped, Badani taking the catch, Ponting to a stroke which would have all our friends ROTFL even now, Gilly to a perfect leg break, Warne to a beauty of a googly that even he would never bowl in his career, Hayden again to a similar shot of Gilly's LBW, but then Gillespie and Kasper delayed the impossible, and I saw the final Mcgrath wicket alone at my friend's house and for another 5 minutes was just staring in disbelief at what just happened....

In my opinion this would be the greatest test match of all in my life time and I can't imagine another to follow on its steps. But again...one cant't be sure what will happen while following on isnt it??

P.S- I asked my friend to run up and down the street he lived shouting Indian team is the best 3 times for losing the bet. Fair guy, he did it too!!!

The death and the renaissance

2010-01-03T05:04:00.000-08:00

The last decade could not have started on a worse note. The image of Hansie Cronje sitting in the press conference, in which he pleaded guilty of fixing matches in India, haunted me like hell for a long time. We thought that Cricket wouldn’t be the same again. And Cronje was not alone. Azhar was banned for life, Jadeja for 5 years, Salim Malik got a life ban after the Pakistan inquiry and Herschelle Gibbs narrowly escaped, courtesy India’s butter fingers. And accusations were flying here, there and everywhere. They said Akram, Lara, Stewart and who not? Infact SA as an entire team almost came close to tanking a match.

How could we watch another match without a suspicion? Almost every dropped catch from then on had a different connotation, a missed run out raised eye brows, a more curious case was when the batsman played a reckless shot and the fielder dropped the catch – are they both trying to tank it? Standing today it might appear like exaggeration but trust me these fears were true then. How about the past matches? Was the India vs Zim match fixed in the 1999 world cup? And the super six game against Australia in the same world cup? What about the match against Kenya at home that we lost? And that WI vs Kenya match in 1996 WC or the India vs SL semifinal in the same world cup? Hell, even the flip of a coin became a suspicious activity after Prabhakar’ revelation.

Sriram Dayanand wrote a masterful rant on Cricket’s crisis later in the decade with an apt title “Stop pissing in my coffee”. But the match fixing saga felt like someone choked my breath, forget pissing in my coffee. That emotional investment of over a decade seemed to go junk all at once. And since Cricket was such an integral part of my life, it lead to cynicism across other aspects of my life as well. Is there anything sacred in the world at all? Surely innocence is dead or so I thought then.

As we were grappling with the after effects of match fixing scandal in India, the Australian team under Steve Waugh was running roughshod over all comers, threatening to push off even that mighty West Indian team under Clive Lloyd from the pinnacle. Surely Australian public didn’t have a problem anywhere remotely close to their Indian counterpart. If anything they could only think that their players took money to over perform, such was their dominance during that time. And they were scheduled to come to India to conquer what Steve Waugh described as the last frontier.

“We promise to make it 18-0” said Waugh, standing at a 15-0 scoreline – is this cricket or tennis? A subset of that 15-0 scoreline was the 3-0 drubbing, they handed India down under a little over a year before. India after the 3-0 drubbing also lost their next home series 2-0 against the visiting South Africans (the match fixing tour) – the first series loss at home in close to 15 years. Then a scratchy victory against B’ladesh was followed by a 1-0 series victory over Zim at home. The form book of the two teams could not have been more contrasting.

With the match fixing saga still haunting, a struggling Indian team under a relatively new captain and without their greatest match winner to take on a rampaging Australian team was surely not a salivating prospect. But only if you undermine the Sachin effect that is. What if the innocence was dead the world over? Sachin was there for us – no one doubts the god. We knew he can still win us the series almost single-handedly, like he did the last time around in 1998 even without Kumble. So with that hope we switched on the TV sets and all the hope evaporated in no time, with yet another batting collapse, but there was the consolation of a little gem from Sachin though. But 176 against the world champions was way too short. Harbhajan nearly caused an Aussie collapse, well nearly, but Gilchrist took the game away from us with a whirlwind of an innings, which established a comfortable first innings lead for the Aussies.

Was there any more hope left? Hope there surely was, with Dravid and Sachin fighting every inch until for the umpteenth time Sachin got out in a dubious fashion pulling Mark Waugh which ricocheted off Langer’s shoulders at short leg for Ponting to complete a diving catch at mid-wicket. That was that. Unlike the mind games between Ganguly and Waugh before the series, there was only one winner on the field. Ruthless and clinical, the Aussies looked all set to fulfill their captain’s promise of making it 18-0.

By the time the bandwagon moved to Kolkata, we had almost given up hope but for a miracle nothing could save us. The Aussies piled on the runs in the first innings again despite a Harbhajan show with Steve Waugh scoring a hundred. In our turn the openers were back in the pavilion in no time and we looked upto Sachin again but it was not to be. For the first time, I saw Sachin being completely outfoxed by the opponent. Mcgrath had done his homework on Sachin perfectly this time. We could see him consciously shining the ball the moment Sachin came out to the crease. First ball, a sharp inswinger which Sachin just about manages to flick to square leg. Is that the cunning plan? A sharp inswinger to trap Sachin in front while playing his trademark flick? Oh it was and guess what, despite it being so obvious, Mcgrath still succeeded and trapped Sachin right in front. Switch off the TV man, forget Cricket, find something else to indulge, it’s simply not worth it – I was telling myself.

Switch off; I did only to switch it on a few minutes later! Laxman made an entertaining fifty and even the cheap pleasure of enjoying that while we were sliding down rather fast was denied by a bad umpiring decision. And with that we fell 74 runs still adrift of the follow on target. Steve Waugh was licking his lips, the final frontier appears to be a mere formality from here on, marches his bowlers to have one more crack at the Indian batsmen, enforcing the follow on without much of a hesitation. The script didn't change much in the second innings either even though Laxman and Dravid swapped places. Sachin failed in the second innings as well, a fighting partnership between Ganguly and Laxman seemed to delay the inevitable and Ganguly fell soon after as well. At 232 for 4, a guy who’s just been demoted to no.6 after a poor run, joins the guy who’s in the XI on borrowed time. They played out the rest of the day without any more damage. At least we would make them bat again, we thought at the end of the day.

Make them bat again? We did so much so that we could even dismiss them! Laxman and Dravid batted the entire day without giving a semblance of a real chance. That Dravid was overshadowed by Laxman is both sad and appropriate. Sad, because Dravid played out of his skin to prove his worth to the team, after facing a barrage of criticism post the Mumbai test. Appropriate, because for all the greatness of Dravid’s innings, Laxman was playing on a different planet. He didn’t look like getting out and nor he did have a problem in piercing the field as frequently as he wished. We have seen both Sachin and Lara at their best, but on this day, Laxman surpassed both of them. A bowling attack comprising of Mcgrath, Gillespie, Warne and Kasprowicz was made to look pedestrian so much so that Steve Waugh ended up using 9 bowlers in the innings. From the thoughts of making the Aussies bat again at the end of the third day, Laxman gave Ganguly a happy headache of deciding when to declare! Dramatic turnarounds, come from behind victories, back to the wall counter-attacking innings – we have seen them all before. But this day and this test surpassed all that we had seen in the past. The final day provided for the perfect finish to the test match with Harbhajan - with a fair bit of help from Sachin - ran through the Aussie batting line up in a little more than one session, to complete the mother of all come from behind victories.

This test match changed Indian Cricket forever. The match fixing row was a distant nightmare now, we are not a one man army any more, succumbing under pressure was not our cardinal trait and so on. Infact this was the foundation on which our test team was built, which has reached the pinnacle today. But of all its significances, the most important is that this test match buried the ghosts of match fixing completely. When Slater dropped Sachin’s catch in the next match at Chepauk, 'Pressure' was the word that came to mind and not any nexus with a bookie, when Indian batting collapsed once again in the fourth innings after Ramesh’s run-out, we rued our stupidity and lack of nerves and not lack of intent. It became a genuine world all over again or at least this test help successfully create that illusion which has been sustainable since then….

Decade in Review

2010-01-03T03:00:00.000-08:00

“00-09 ten tumultuous years” says Cricinfo in its decade review – as apt as it is, it still feels like an understatement. The game has gone through such a metamorphosis that sometimes I wonder if it’s the same game that I fell in love with sometime in the early nineties. I know change is inevitable but a change of such monumental proportions and more importantly at such breakneck speed is hard to digest. This decade was what 90’s was for world financial markets, a decade of absolute excess. The game died a thousand deaths and had just as many renaissances! F1 executive thinks Cricket is giving their sport a run for their money and the God who bats at no.4 for India went onto become the all-time highest scorer in test cricket in front of a near empty stadium at home! Match-fixing, Sydney gate, IPL, Kolkata, Ashes, T-20 the decade had it all and some more. We can dedicate a month to review this decade and in all probability we would still fall short. And we also have to pick our customary Decade XI for both tests and ODI’s (Not yet for T-20s!). Hey…what about the cricketing awards for the decade? All this and a little more to follow in the next few posts.

Inspirational XI

2009-12-19T04:56:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-12-16T11:03:00.000-08:00

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!!!!

2009-12-11T12:43:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-12-11T10:54:00.000-08:00

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"

2009-12-11T09:25:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-12-10T06:25:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-09T18:53:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-04T20:54:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-02T08:59:00.000-08:00

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.

What a Gamble!

2009-11-26T09:51:00.000-08:00

Sourav once aptly said that Dhoni has got one very important attribute of a good captain - Luck. The more I see Dhoni's captaincy the more I agree with Sourav's assessment*. This is not to take anything away from Dhoni's tactical nous as a captain which in general is good but to reinforce that not everything that works can be attributed to the merits of his captaincy.

How do you categorize Dhoni's decision to play Sreesanth ahead of Ishant in the 11? Retrospectively we might call it a master stroke but prospectively it was anywhere between a stupid decision to a bold gamble. But then the appetite for a gamble is what separates good captains from ordinary ones. Remember the Mark Taylor style of declaration - almost every declaration of his was a bit of a gamble. Its a shame that he was succeeded by Steve Waugh and now the ultra cautious Ponting! As much as I didn't approve of the decision to play Sreesanth in the 11, I was glad to see Dhoni taking these gambles in critical matches rather playing it safe. Like Keynes said, in life its generally better to fail conventionally than succeed unconventionally!

The logical extension of this gamble should lead to Ojha being played ahead of Harbhajan when only one spinner needs to be played - in my opinion its a much lesser gamble given the way Harbhajan has been bowling of late.

* Once Mahela Jayawardene famously said "Its impossible to win a toss against Dhoni"!

Test cricket in ICU?

2009-11-22T07:29:00.000-08:00

There seems to be a collective paranoia out there. Almost every test match these days is either a reassurance of the grandness and the greatness of the real game of cricket or the warning signs of a soon to be extinct breed of Cricket. Ever since the advent of T-20 and more so since India won the inaugural T-20 world cup and the launch of IPL a couple of years ago, there seems to be an exaggerated concern for the format of the game which has withstood many a crisis from imperialism to world war to the more contemporary 26/11 kind of horrors, hell even cricketers were targeted during a test series in Pakistan. Test cricket’s reaction to all these events has been only one – “Move on”. Its rather puzzling that the soul of a game of such resilience is being severely tested by that all evil thing called money – not USD, not Euro or GBP but the one which gets printed at Nasik by the Reserve Bank of India – it’s a different story that all IPL transactions are USD denominated (currency of the country which is as alien to cricket as George Bush is to common sense!).

Or at least that’s what the mainstream media wants us to feel! But that’s what media has always done – to propagate the story which is easy to propagate (*like how Securitization, greedy Wall Street bankers and the rating agencies were the culprits behind the sub-prime crisis! – What about those who bought a house without even having a stable income???). It’s very easy to equate the current situation to the Kerry Packer days but that would be incorrect. The common theme might be money but unlike Packer, IPL is not a rebel league, also cricketers of today even outside of the IPL world are very well paid professionals which was not the case during Packer days. And the Cricketers are not being cornered to take on either/or stance between country and club, between test cricket and T-20. No wonder that none of the players (outside of Chris Gayle that is!) who’s worth his salt to play test cricket has shown the remotest of inclinations to prefer T-20 over tests.

If that is the stance from players, what about the fans? All IPL matches were full-houses and test match attendance record in India is not much to boast about is a fair argument. But even in pre- T20 days, we didn’t have the greatest of attendance for test cricket outside of the traditional test venues but at the same time ODI matches witnessed full houses wherever it was hosted. This is nothing new. Frankly how many of us have woken up to this realization that T-20 is the new thing to follow and that test cricket is boring, time consuming and out of fashion! I have gotta be out of my senses to believe that the viewership for test cricket has reduced after the advent of T-20. What has happened is that T-20 has expanded the cricket viewership to people who weren’t following cricket before. Bringing new audience to a game is no crime I reckon! But how do we care, we have to blame it on something. So we conveniently blame it on those things which are in the news - T20, IPL, Lalit Modi, etc...

As I have said before Test Cricket and T20 are almost as distinct in character as two different sports for them to cannibalize each other – if anything they can only feed onto each other. We haven’t seen anything dramatic in the world of test cricket of late that we haven’t seen before that warrants such a large-scale alarm for its imminent extinction. Ian Chappell is talking about a 3-day test as a possible solution and Sourav is complaining about how dead pitches might kill test cricket – as contrasting as ay two opinions on a subject can be. If we crib about not producing a result in 5 days, surely shortening the duration is the last solution we want to implement. I fully endorse the pitches argument – I think it’s the sole reason for the depreciation in the quality of cricket over the last decade. But having said that I must also add that its not a problem that cropped up overnight, its been depreciating at a steady rate across almost all the grounds in the world for more than 10 years now. WACA is a shadow of its heydays, Gabba which arguably had the best pitch in the world in the 90’s is slowly but surely moving away from its pinnacle, the Caribbean wickets can warrant banning a match for causing danger to the psyche of the bowlers these days – even Ajay Ratra scored a hundred there! Mohall has shown the most accelerated depreciation of all from being the fastest and liveliest track in the country to an absolute dead as dodo stuff now, even Chepauk produced a featherbed for Sehwag last time. It’s a consistent theme in almost all countries except Srilanka which has always produced featherbeds, they really can’t depreciate any more! There used to be so many tests in the nineties where not one batsman from either side scores a hundred but nowadays they order a probe if such an instance happens! But mind you none of this has anything to do with T-20 or the IPL.

Let’s leave all this aside and see how Test cricket has fared in the last few years. For the all hype about T-20’s popularity, the premier event in that format – the world cup in England this year got a lukewarm response from both the fans and the media. At the same time the build up for the Ashes had already started even before THE premier event was over - So much for the death of test cricket! All the Ashes matches witnessed near full houses as well. With the recent sea-saw battle in England, we have had 3 classic Ashes series back to back after an era of thorough Australian dominance of the Ashes, Australia and South Africa produced an absolute humdinger in Australia last year and followed up with a just as exciting return series in SA. India vs Australia rivalry has risen even further in prominence from Sourav vs Waugh days to now with the same intensity and competitiveness if not more. New Zealand was struggling to put a team on the park with the ICL-exodus issue and injuries, but they still fought bravely under the astute leadership of Vettori. England seems to heading in the direction under Andre Strauss. Srilanka is not doing too badly either. Outside of B’ladesh and West Indies, its quite a competitive battlefield in test cricket these days. Over the next few months any team out of Australia, South Africa or India can be the No.1 team in the world – damn, when was the last time Test Cricket was so healthy.

So it’s not the T-20 vs Tests or the fans preference for one over the other which is the real problem here. Cricket and its followers are dynamic enough to allow the co-existence of all 3 formats at the same time. As much as the game has the appetite for all the 3 formats of the game, it doesn’t quite have the resources – especially TIME. This is where the administrators need to pull up their socks for once and ensure appropriate allocation of the precious resource of time across the 3 formats. India is scheduled to play 6 tests in a year – really, it’s a shame! (But even that is not a new phenomenon, during the peak of our masala ODI matches here, there and everywhere India played only one test in a year’s time in 1996-97!). ICC needs to go back to its drawing board and come out with an alternative to that now outdated FTP – stipulate a minimum number of test matches for all the test playing nations, need to set aside a month for IPL - its better than fighting a losing battle, put a cap on the number of ODIs organized outside of the scheduled program – no more seven ODI series please…, have a T-20 world cup twice a year and ODI world cup once in 4 years (I might sound stupid for stating the obvious only if you didn’t know that there’s another T-20 world cup coming up in 2010 in WI. Pak were the world champions for a monumental 300 odd days!!!)

Sachin Tendulkar started his career at a time when even ODI’s were not as popular leave alone T-20’s and his debut series was a dull as dead 0-0 result in a 4 match test series and now completed his 20th year on the road with another yawn inducing draw against Srilanka at Motera. A lot has changed in the game of cricket in those 20 years but outside of the quality of pitches none has impacted test cricket too adversely – surely not T-20 or IPL!

* Hangover of FRM...

Top 10 moments

2009-11-15T21:21:00.000-08:00

1. The first time I put on my India cap

2. My first Test hundred

3. The counter-attacking 114 at Perth

4. Bowling the last over against SA in the 1993 Hero Cup

5. 82 (off 49 balls) against NZ as opener in 1994

6. Winning the Titan Cup in 1996

7. 1997 Sahara Cup win over Pakistan

8. Scoring 155 against Australia in the 1998 Chennai Test

9. 1998's sandstorm hundred in Sharjah against Australia
.

10. Meeting Don Bradman in Adelaide

11. Beating England at Leeds, 2002

12. Match-winning 98 against Pakistan in the 2003 World Cup

13. First series win in Pakistan, 2003-04

14. 35th Test hundred, v Sri Lanka in Delhi, 2005

15. Beating England in Nottingham in 2007

16. Beating Australia in Perth in 200817. The CB Series triumph in Australia in 2008

18. Going past Brian Lara's Test run tally in Mohali, 2008

19. Second-innings Test hundred against England in Chennai, 2008

20. 175 against Australia in Hyderabad, 2009

Courtesy cricinfo

2009-11-12T02:36:00.000-08:00

Hey Pals,
Saw you guys blogging about the GREAT man, I jus couldn't hold myself longer entering a new post (my work jus keeps me bz bz all the time). Well well well, what can we possibly say about this great man... The only guy playing international cricket since I started watching cricket, huh twenty years fulfilling the expectations of Millions, A MAN NEVER LEAVE A BETTER LEGACY TO THE WORLD. Inspite of all this the humble manner in which he conducts himself is truly an example for a perfect celebrity Trait. When Sachin's playing well, he puts a smile on billion faces. He has enthralled his legions of fans with many a great innings and srokes... Here's some...

143 at sharjah '98

Sachin unleashed some of his breathtaking strokes and power, none better than the Squarish push of Kasprowicz which sped to the boundary like a bullet that went snapping past the diving square fielder(catching position) between the fielders at point and square cover. NOBODY... literally no fielder moved an inch, even the cameraman was not sure where the ball was, by the time he spotted the ball, it had already hit the fence. Such is the greatness of this cricketing GOD... As Tony Greig said during the commentary of this match “This little man is the nearest thing to Bradman there’s ever been.” He also won an Opel Astra for his 137 in the finals which he dedicated to his wife, on his 25th birthday.

98 of 75 balls - 2003 worldcup vs PAK

I know Hesh has already narrated his version of this stroke - forward push of wasim akram that went past the extra cover. This stroke was easily better than the six over thirdman of shoaib akhtar. I would have seen this stroke more than one hundred times(courtesy youtube) and tried repeating it whenever I have nets sessions, dint even come 1% closer to what sachin hit that day. I also heard that Wasim akram was furious at Razzak after the later dropped him at mid off and asked "Do you know who you've dropped", now if an oppenent captain does that, you know who you are... It was Mahashivratri and people were going to Temples to worship Lord Shiva but who knew that the God himself had come to earth in the form of Sachin playing a glorious innings for INDIA.

Moinkhan BOWLED between the legs

I know we are talking about the mastery strokes of the master, none better than this particular delivery to Moinkhan. Sachin became Warne with the last ball of the day during the 1st test between India and Pakistan at multan. Sachin bowled 5 tight balls. The sixth one was a googly. Moin couldn’t quite read the ball and got stranded on the crease while the ball went through his pads and on to the middle stump. This is one of the greatest dismissals by a part time bowler and one of the few dismissals to happen on the last ball of the last over of the day.

Thats it folks... C ya around...

PS: For those who have no idea who this is... am a good old friend of the so-called Ramki (we used to call him RAMA), his college m8...

Remarkable Strokes of the Little Master - my version

2009-11-08T09:08:00.000-08:00

Now that was a great topic and I am extremely grateful to Ramki for leaving out some of the more scintillating shots for me. I must also admit that despite leaving them out, his picks are absolutely out of the top draw too especially the Irani Trophy one – since I was also in the stadium that time, I know exactly where he is coming from!

Here we go:
Let me begin with the shot that Ramki had mentioned but left the job for me to elaborate:

143 vs Australia at Sharjah

To me there is not a more audacious shot (neither a shot conveying more intent ) played in the game of Cricket. With the team in trouble mid way through the innings, the only thing that mattered to all of us was scoring enough to make it to the finals on net run rate. I can bet that no one who was watching the match even entertained the thought of a win especially after the Indian innings was reduced by 4 overs due to the sandstorm break with just 9 runs less than the initial 285 as the target. And when Sachin flicked the ball to square leg to take a couple to ensure that we reached the finals, all of us were relieved and started thinking about the prospects of somehow India overpowering the Aussies in the finals but this man had other ideas – knowing the man, its not entirely surprising really. But what was astonishing was that with a solo shot he was able to convince everyone around that this match is far from over. Just after completing a hard run 2 to take India to the finals, the next ball Damien Fleming bowls a good length delivery on the middle stump and Sachin moves a little inside out just when Fleming is about to deliver the ball and smashes it overs covers for a boundary – all in a blink! The moment the ball reaches the boundary, Tony Greig would already be jumping up in joy in the commentary box shouting that this man is trying to win this game now! It took just one shot from the genius to bring the mediocrity out of us mere mortals. When all of us were celebrating for reaching the finals, he literally slapped for us for underestimating his capabilities with this shot. I have never been a great believer in Superman, Spiderman and all other fantsasy characters but this one shot changed all that – I believe in Sachin Tendulkar…

Like Ramki wrote genius knows no boundaries!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXRkHervQJc
Forward to 7:46th minute to watch this particular shot

193 vs England at Leeds

CLR.James writes of Learie Constatine as an independent spirit in that masterpiece “Beyond a boundary”. That’s one compliment which is very difficult to bestow upon Sachin however hard you try to as he has to put up with the expectations of a billion people all the time – its almost impossible to be a free spirit with the pressure of having to live upto such monumental expectations. Despite that kind of pressure the fact that he’s played such attacking cricket all his career is a reflection of his extraordinary confidence in his ability rather an expression of free spirit. But this one shot of Caddick in the Headingley test in 2002 was the one that showed us what Sachin could have been if he was a complete independent spirit. On a pitch in which the English press thought conceding anything more than 250 to India would be a bad bowling performance by the home team, Sachin had the cushion of a great start by Sanjay Bangar and Rahul Dravid (who played an absolute master piece) and built a great partnership with Sourav. When they were starting to accelerate the umpires gave them the offer for bad light. They refused and stayed back to play out the next 12 odd overs and what a spell of play that turned out to be – I haven’t seen Sachin play with such freedom in a long long time . Caddick comes into bowl and Sachin doesn’t move an inch till about a micro second before caddick delivers the ball and then at the last instant dances down the wicket and hits a good length delivery on the middle stump across the line over mid wicket for a home run! Failure was never a thought in his mind through the whole process - no second line of defence, no straight bat, no thought of a miscue, just a marvelous execution. Listen to the sound of ball hitting the bat – even if u were blind that day you would have figured out it’s a six! And listen to Boycott going bonkers after the shot - have you ever heard him so excited in commentary?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYGWcwHcWx4
Forward to 3:14 in the video for this particular shot

98 against Pak in Centurion – WC 2003

The first 3 shots that Sachin played against Shoaib Akhtar were astonishing for the sheer audacity of the attack. He lets the adrenalin take him over for that unforgettable square cut six, then plays his trademark flick and follows up with a “nothing more than a forward defence” which ended up beyond the boundary ropes too. But for all the magic of these 3 shots, my favourite is the backfoot drive that he played off Wasim Akram later in the same match – its straight out of heavens. Am I trying to be perverse – c’mon guys, watch the shot and decide for yourself.

The first 3 shots against Shoaib were magical more because of the context of the match rather than the shots themselves – mind you they were great shots anyways but it just reached a higher pedestal because of the circumstances of the match. But this backfoot drive against Wasim Akram would have been special even if it was played in a tennis ball match in my neighborhood Trust Puram ground in Chennai! As Sachin was going hammer and tongs at one end the ever so menacing Akram was bowling at the other end holding his own amidst the Sachin carnage. The first ball of the ninth over, Akram bowls the typical left armer’s ball on the corridor which will have the batsman guessing whether to go on the front foot or back foot, with a vertical bat or horizontal bat? The ball pitches on the off stump and holds its line (which is quite deceptive considering the prodigious swing that Akram usually generates), Sachin moves his left leg a little forward to cover the angle and almost parallely shifts his weight onto the backfoot to be in perfect balance and gets his blade down at 60 degrees to drive that 3 quarters length ball through covers for a boundary and watch that follow through of his after the shot – oh boy even he enjoyed it so much…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwXxGe4bL7M&feature=related
Forward to 3:06th minute in the video for this particular shot

155 vs. Australia in Chennai

Actually I can pick any shot in this innings and that would fit the bill as a remarkable shot! This battle of Sachin vs Warne was one of the most hyped individual battles in the history of the game. Hardly a couple of months back Sachin was dismissed by that little known leg spinner Rawl Lewis from WI in a ODI tournament in sharjah by bowling round the wicket into the rough. Sachin at that stage was generally perceived to be a little suspect with leg spinners bowling round the wicket into the rough and Aussies are sure to have done their homework before they landed on the subcontinent. At the same time Sachin’s preparation for this series is part of cricketing folklore now! And his sensational innings for Mumbai against Australia in the tour match gave more than an indication of what was to follow. But come the first test, the ever so competitive Warne draws first blood by dismissing Sachin for a single digit score. Out walks Sachin in the second innings with the team in a precarious situation and unleashes an array of attacking shots which will last in the memory of all those who witnessed the innings for their next seven births!

Sachin in such supreme form played so many great shots but to me this one shot stands out the most. Shane Warne after taking a pounding from a series of slog sweeps from Sachin, comes round the wicket yet again but this time alters the length by dropping it short but at the same time imparts more spin on the ball, Sachin on seeing the ball pitching short clears his left leg a bit and rocks back on the back foot to be in a perfect position to play the pull shot but with the ball turning square, he had to change his mind – the simplest alternative is to let it go. But Sachin was not in that kind of a mood that day, as if time stood still, on noticing the exaggerated turn he remained in the same posture but paused the pull shot and adjusted beautifully by covering the turn and cut the ball over covers – call it a cover cut if you want. With the pitch biting and turning sharply mere mortals struggle to survive a vicious Warne turner but this man plays two shots in one for the same ball!

I am not able to get a video of this shot on you tube. Will post the link as soon as I find one.

I can spend a lifetime on writing about my fav shots of Sachin, but with time constraints let me just mention two more shots without elaborating much.

That pull off Andy Caddick in the 2003 World Cup a day after Caddick made an audacious statement that Michael Vaughan is better than Sachin!

And that full blooded lofted drive off McGrath immediately after pulling him out of the stadium in the champions trophy in Nairobi – oh boy was that retaliation or what???

This topic is so expansive that it deserves a book more than a blog post...

Different Strokes...

2009-11-07T23:44:00.000-08:00

As I write this blog, India is struggling in Guwahati, and yet I am sitting in front of a computer multi tasking between my office and personal work. Call it responsibility or 'i dont care about them any more' attitude this has been the way i have been watching cricket for the last few years. A glimpse here or there, while the match is going on, and checking out the highlights if the match is good enough.
Even, the 175 two days back was watched now and then in office, and I only caught the magic in the highlights package and Youtube. May be I have reached the saturation point?

I dont think so, bcos i wouldnt be writing a cricket blog then!!!!!

But there used to be a time, when I used to watch every match, follow every ball, and keep tab of the records, the score, so much so that I could recall even the most trivial facts about the match.

And a Tendulkar century would be watched without commentary live(sentiment!) with the TV on mute, watched again in the highlights package, and also when the match is telecast again as a whole, so much so that we could actually, tell his scoring pattern and the wagon wheel better than the statistician. And, some stroke will always be the first to come to my mind when I talk about a particular Tendulkar century or innings...If I say 98 against Pakistan, I am sure you would be replaying the upper cut of Shoaib( not to his face, but the ball, though that would have been good too!!!!). So here are some stand out strokes which I get in my mind.....

143 Sharjah '98

The first thing coming to mind is Sachin standing in the middle of the pitch alone, with sand storm blowing all around him nonchalantly looking the other way when all others were scurrying for cover, but this is about his stroke of the night...

The straight six of a potential Steve Waugh yorker was an out of the world shot, but my shots of the night were this.....

1.Short fine leg up Deep square leg in position...Tom Moody bowling...he is just been intentionally edged to through 2nd slip for four...So what does he do he bowls a slightly fuller but not drivable length( not drivable for Tendulkar either!!!!) in cutter....but Sachin moves forward two steps in a flash, the ball is still not drivable and outside off stump, Sach puts his front leg across and waits for the ball to come to his body and flicks( it was not even a flick just a little push) into the minutest gaps for four... Check Moody's face on Youtube after that shot....

2. Steve Waugh positions a short point in Mark Waugh...he stations himself at point and there is just a pencil thin gap....Tendulkar cuts the next ball exactly in that gap right between the diving brothers...so much so that it eludes both of them....

3. I will just mention the inside out cover drive he plays after the target for the finals is achieved, and let Hesh explain it better....I wouldnt want to spoil his party!!!

155 Chennai '98

Tendulkar is tired...the lead is substantial, Aussies waiting for the declaration, Azharuddin is charging the bowlers at the other end, the field is defensive, and Taylor brings in Mark Waugh bowling off spinners....

First ball is patted back straight to the bowler, the second is cut through 3rd Man for 4.... Taylor brings in a short third man, the next ball , a perfect off spinner is just cut finer left of the short third man for 4....Taylor brings the third man finer, Waugh bowls the same delivery, there was not even any movement from Sachin the ball is late cut for 4.....Taylor gives up and brings himself at slip.....Absolute Magic!!!!!

139 vs Aus-

This was the match in which Tendulkar crossed 10,000 runs in one day cricket...Many shots stand out but the best was this....

The pitch is two paced, and by the 30 over mark there is uneven bounce with many balls keeping low...Steve Waugh brings in Damien Martyn, bowling medium pacers....He is able to swing the ball...and the odd one is keeping low....He pitches one middle and off short of good length and the ball shoots up low zooming towards the off stump...but by then Tendulkar was in the form of his life...( literally he was in 143 mood!!!!) he doesnt even blink...uses just half his bat and flicks ( yes, flicks ) the ball through third slip!.... for four... This shot will test any good writer his vocabulary... I would try to do justice...Imagine a typical Azhar flick through mid wicket and square leg...slice the shot down to half and hold the image....imagine the ball coming down at off stump and play that image again...the ball is hit with the edge of the bat and the ball goes through 3rd slip for four...Gilly had moved down to the middle stump, and Martyn did a classic double take, but Tendulkar was looking exactly at where the ball went!!!!

76- Mumbai 2001

Its a signature straight drive but whats special about this? India in a spot of bother, Fleming suddenly reversing the ball, troubling Mongia with some good balls, Gilly standing up so that the batsman couldnt go out of the crease to counter the swing, and Tendulkar kept quiet by Mcgrath for quite sometime. Mongia somehow gets a single and Sachin on strike. The next ball, reverse swinging into the stumps that Waqar would have been proud of is on driven with barely minimum movement between the non striker and the stumps, but this is not the shot I am talking about.
Fleming has a conversation with Waugh and a 3rd slip springs in, Fleming runs bowls the ball again fully, again reverse swinging but swinging out, Sachin moves the same way, bat comes down for the on drive which if completed would have been going to the third slip positioned, but at the last moment, nothing special opens the blade little bit and drives it between the umpire and mid off...and the follow through is magic....he does not look at the ball, he looks at his feet and how its positioned, plays a shadow shot of how he did that even as the ball is reaching the boundary...Genius knows no boundaries!!!!!!

136-Chennai

Mongia going beserk, hit Waqar for a six, Tendulkar in a lot of pain, every single block puts pressure on his back and brings grimace to his face and everybody who is watching him. Wasim bring himself and Mongia hammers him straight over the head for 4, plays the rest of the balls and takes a single of the 5th ball giving Sach just one ball to face. Watching this on television, I heave a sigh of relief, not that I didnt believe in Sachin handling Akram...but its always better to be safe than be sorry.... but back of my mind, the ball Akram is going to bowl was creeping its way through the mind...good length, shaping up to be a half volley swinging away, a guy with back pain couldnt reach out and will snick it to the waiting catchers behind the wicket, I was practically yelling, leave the ball leave the ball every second when Akram was running into the crease. The ball is exactly the same, I hold my breath in fear, but Tendulkar shows the difference between ordinary and genius, a little walk as the ball is released...the half volley materialises out of nowhere, and a half cover drive thats it..it was just that...the drive stopped when the pressure would have come on his back...and that was enough for the ball to race to the boundary!!!!!

13 vs Kenya 2003

Ya you read it right...13 it was...Ganguly scored a century and Yuvi 50, but the shot of the night was a magical back foot straight drive, so ramrod that it missed the off stump by a whisker.....I generally dont show any emotions when Tendulkar is starting early(another sentiment!!!) but I remember myself blabbering with astonishment at the shot while a small part in my brain was reminding me of the sentiment, admonishing me for my outburst...but that shot was worth it!!!!!

41 vs Pakistan 1998

The famous '314' match where Ganguly scored a century again, but Tendulkar started it all....Pakistan had a peculiar ploy of bowling there spinners around the wicket to Tendulkar, and had some success too, Afridi had bowled him around the legs....India had a good start, 50 runs in 6 overs with Tendulkar hitting Azhar Mehmood for 4 continous fours the previous over, and Saqlain is introduced around the wicket with a slip in place. Sitting in my living room, I was straining in my seat to see whether the ball was an off spinner or a doosra and check the turn, but Tendulkar didnt give me a chance because he had danced down the track and had picked it as it bounced of the pitch giving it no chance to turn, and hit it over the bowler's head for six!!!!

65 Calcutta 96

Heart breaking yes...but we only knew the menace in the pitch once Tendulkar departed such was the mastery of the innings.... One shot still stands out in my mind.... A squarish deep mid wicket...who could cover both square and straight a short mid wicket to counter the flick...and a mid on to counter the straight drive with Dharmasena turning the ball(would you believe it???) but he is accurate in his spot, and Manjrekar keeps picking the short mid wicket and the mid on or if he beats them both the deep fielder. Tendulkar shows him how its done....

A one and half step down the track...and a half flick half drive, eludes the diving short mid wicket fielder, mid on tries to cut but the ball isnt straight enough for him and is also picking up speed so he gives chase, the deep runs to his left to cover but couldnt do as the ball isnt square enough for him to cut...the two guys are just two feet from the ball when it crosses the boundary ropes!!!!

104 Benoni '97

Another pressure match, another match where we needed both run rate and a win against Zimbabwe, Sachin scoring a century on a difficult wicket to set the pace for Jadeja and Robin Singh to finish it off. Streak bowling a good length delivery bouncing just more than expected... Sachin starts his favorite back foot cover drive...realises the ball is bouncing more and swinging away, just changes the position of the bat...one second the bat is coming down vertically the next second its horizontal but the arm is coming down the same way, cuts it over point for boundary.... for a flat one bounce four!!!

94 vs Rest of India

I watched this match live at Chepauk, and barely 5 minutes after I entered the stadium, the second wicket fell with Sachin walking to bat against virtually the Indian team minus him. I was sitting exactly square of the wicket, not the best place to watch cricket at Chepauk but definitely the cheapest, but was able to get a good look at the lengths bowled, and one particular moment stands out...Harbhajan bowling to Tendulkar was joking with him after one quiet over... Didnt know what transpired, but the next Harbhajan over first ball was hammered for four, courtesy a flat batted sweep through the vacant square leg region. Ganguly, moves the short fine leg to square leg and moves a guy to deep fine leg..but sort of squarish. The next ball is paddled fine through the vacant fine leg for four. Ganguly, has a brain wave again, brings the fine leg back close, moves the deep square leg again...pulls back the mid wicket deep, puts a fielder close right in between those two fielders( i dont know what to call that position but it was blocking my view of Sachin perfectly so i had to move!!!!) Harbhajan bowls, Sachin waits for the ball to turn, and plays a slog sweep but over fine leg to the right of deep square leg with that noname position fielder watching with his mouth open!!! Harbhajan wasnt smiling anymore!!!!

P.S: I have left some of the more sensational shots for Hesh to describe, as he is better in this than me, but if he does miss any half volley..watch out for my second innings on this topic!!!!!

100...

2009-11-06T09:43:00.000-08:00

Location: Cafeteria of my office.

Around 35 people sitting, a sizeable number standing in front of an LCD tv hung overhead. The DTH connection is very poor, so we can see pixels and frames instead of the live streaming video, and this happens frequently, frequently as in every ball.

But nobody moves an inch.

Surely something historical is happening?

Nah!!!!

A guy named Sachin is on 99 and on strike.

Ball pitches outside off at good length, nothing special about the delivery and for (once on TV we see the whole sequence perfectly) Tendulkar tries to guide and misses.... and next was what I couldnt believe, a collective gasp of breath from the audience.

Its not that the guy is on 99 for the first time!!!!!

A group of guys turned around to look at one of their colleague just walking in and threatened him to go off now and come back later, so that he wouldnt jinx Sachin!!!!

Nobody was worried about the enormous target, the climbing run rate, only 2 regular batsmen to follow, the mighty Aussies piling up the pressure.... all they wanted was a glide down the third man which the master duly obliged amidst pixels and frames( we didnt know what happened...but one frame froze to a familiar picture, Sachin without the helmet looking up the sky!!!). There was a loud cheer, and even those who dont know the difference from a wide and a no ball, were muttering "sachin must have scored a century".

There was a collective commotion and atleast half of them left to go back to their seats and continue their work. The moment was over.

I still can not understand!!

2009-11-05T09:13:00.000-08:00

Ravindra Jadeja ahead of Rohit Sharma and Badrinath!! Nothing wrong with the bloke, but in what I have seen of this guy in the IPL or the 7 matches he has played so far, does not seem to have the temperament yet for cricket at this level. I am only hoping he proves me wrong, if he continues to be in favor of the selectors.

And what a waste of another great great innings! So close and yet not to be!

An unusual feeling...

2009-11-04T09:51:00.000-08:00

For someone who takes a lot of pride in being a Chennaite for the sheer reason that Chepauk has been Sachin's favourite hunting ground, its going to be a little hard to settle for the Rajiv Gandhi stadium in Hyd. But if I could bunk office to watch Sachin do some gym work and net practice in the MRF pace foundation when he was recovering from injury 4 years back, I would take this anyday...I am just praying that we field first so that I could catch up with the Indian innings after office. Even If Sachin replicates half of his usual Chepauk form, I am in for a treat...

Missing the point...

2009-10-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

I agree with every line that you have written but that’s not my point. If Gibbs had dropped that catch in the semi final, then it would have been an absolute what if moment. Even otherwise this could have been a what if moment but I have a problem when this is hyped up based on the semi final’s result which should ideally be an independent event – If you have to give weightage to performance in the preliminary stages of the world cup, then SA should have got a reservation for their clean slate in the league stages of the 1996 world cup.

Pakistan won the WC in 1992 but they only qualified for the semi finals by a whisker and that too with extraordinary help from weather gods. But that’s not what made them win the WC as much as that gem from Inzamam or that deadly spell by Wasim. You can comfortably ignore Wasim or Inzamam and argue that Pakistan won it purely because of luck – if the game against Eng wasn’t rained off, they would have lost because of which they wouldn’t have qualified for the semi finals and therefore that is the most critical factor – the butterfly effect!. In any event with multiple causes we can take our biases for the causes and go to any limits to justify them...

When Kapil Dev took that catch, we could have sensed that it could be “that” catch. I think the SA rain rule example is not in sync here. When Azhar won that toss and elected to field, most of us immediately felt it was not wise – why bat under pressure in a critical match, might as well set a target and defend. (Also I wouldn’t really call it a what if moment anyways!). When Steve Waugh handled the ball, I was watching the match live in the stadium from “D” Stand and trust me everyone in the stadium sensed that this was a break that could turn the match. On all these occasions our hunch that this could be a crucial moment is right only in retrospect and could have so easily gone wrong – I am completely in agreement with you on all this.

Now thanks for that Robin Jackman’s commentary* – That’s exactly my point. That Razzaq drop could have proven to be insignificant if Sachin had got out the next ball. But would he have said something like “oh boy. How crucial that dropped catch is going to be in deciding who’ll be the winner of this WC” in this case? I don’t think so. I can only imagine him saying something like “Oh boy, Has Gibbs given Australia another chance to get out of the jail and make it to the semi final”.

Unlike other examples that you have given, with the Gibbs' dropped catch, one could have only sensed that this is not curtains for Australia yet in this WC and nothing more. C’mon don’t tell me one can foresee a tie in the semi final which would make the result of this match absolutely critical and therefore this drop could prove to be catastrophic to SA’s chances of reaching the finals!

*If I remember right, the exact comment on that Razzaq dropped chance was "he might live to rue that"

How crucial???

2009-10-28T10:16:00.000-07:00

Any mistake only becomes big in retrospect and not at the moment. When Kapil caught Viv Richards at Lord's surely nobody would have thought India had the upper hand and will go on to win the world cup. The most realistic thought would have been, now the match would go beyond 40 overs possibly. But WI lost the match and then in retrospect that catch became crucial. Surely Viv neednt have played that shot....He had all day to score a century!!!

Or take the case of the semi finals in World Cup 92-the dubious rain rule which robbed SA from going to the final, one of the culprits for 22runs - 1 ball was SA themselves by bowling only 45 overs in the stipulated time.

When Azhar won the toss and decided to field in 96 semi final, and India got two wickets in the first over, nobody was complaining, but when Sachin got out, and the wicket started turning square everybody started complaining that Azhar should have batted. Azhar had history(he had won the previous two finals batting first with Kumble being deadly) and the chance to change things but he didnt. If Gibbs hadnt dropped the catch there probably wouldnt have been an Aus-SA semifinal in the first case, because Steve was the only one who was holding the innings.

If Gibbs hadnt dropped the catch we wouldnt have had a heartstopping semi final, so we should be thanking him for that!!!

Lets take another Steve Waugh What if moment in the same series you quoted. Steve Waugh handling the ball in Chennai, Aus were 347/3 with Hayden and Waugh batting beautifully...take that into the context of the series... For all that Hesh has said about the Kolkata test match, Waugh asking India to follow on is also a What if moment!!!

Dean Jones said that he had many oppurtunities to take two runs but took only one because he wanted to conserve energy during the chennai test 86... Nobody complained at that time, nobody would do after the match either, but Jones himself feels if he had converted just one oppurtunity it would have been enough.

I can quote you a comment Robin Jackman said when Razzaq dropped Tendulkar on 32 in 2003 world cup... "How crucial is this gonna be in deciding the fate of this match?"
We all know how crucial that was!!

How critical was that Steve Waugh's dropped catch?

2009-10-28T09:21:00.000-07:00

In my response to Ramki’s what if’s in cricket, Ramki made the following comment: “Both of us missed gibbs dropping steve waugh...surely that is a what if moment?"

Surely that is a what if moment? You gotta be kidding… If that is a “what if” moment then almost half of the dropped catches in the history of cricket is a “what if” moment. The biggest problem with that incident is that it got its hype not so much for its criticality in that match but rather a retrospective romanticisation of it after the semi final ended in a tie. Admittedly it was a great innings under pressure and if Gibbs had caught it, it could have been curtains for Australia in that world cup. But it could have been the same against India too. What if Sachin had played a blinder in that chase and took the game away from Aussies! The equation for Australia was simple – win every match in the super six stage to reach the semi final and that’s what they did.

Now once the semi final spots were known, Steve Waugh’s innings was sunk – it had no more value (well, almost!). In an Australia vs South Africa semi final in a world cup how many of us would put our money on a tie for a result? It could so easily have been another of the South African humiliation by Australia or yet another Zulu show which could have taken the game away from Australia (and he almost did!) Now what happened on this occasion was not only that a highly improbable event happened but that combined with some amazingly complicated rules of the tournament ensured that Australia got through to the finals. Let us not forget the fact that SA didn’t lose the semi-final!

Because Steve Waugh’s innings helped Australia win the previous match against SA in the super six stage which helped them get through to the finals as they had a superior head to head record (as per the tournament rules!) that it got hyped even further. And only in retrospect did that Gibbs’ dropped chance seem to be so expensive! “You just dropped the WC mate”* became such a legendary story but that would have looked so foolish if Australia had lost the semi final! This is almost like the butterfly effect in Chaos Theory but surprisingly a lot of people bought into that story…

*Apparently Steve Waugh had made a similar comment “you just dropped the test match mate” to Sourav Ganguly in that famous Kolkata test in 2001 when he dropped Steve Waugh at leg slip early in his innings and we all know the result of that match!

I can't believe my eyes...

2009-10-26T06:09:00.000-07:00

Let Ramki come back with his all time dream team. In the meanwhile I can't wait to discuss about the 20 greatest Indian cricketers of all time picked by 30 eminent cricket journalists and ex-cricketers in the first edition of Sports Illustrated Indian edition. Before I could jump into one choice which had me absolutely dumbstruck, let me give the list here:

1. Sachin Tendulkar
2. Kapil Dev
3. Sunil Gavaskar
4. Anil Kumble
5. Rahul Dravid
6. Vinoo Mankad
7. M.A.K.Pataudi
8. Virender Sehwag
9. Bishan Singh Bedi
10. C.K.Nayudu
11. Vijay Hazare
12. Sourav Ganguly
13. B.S.Chandrasekhar
14. Vijay Merchant
15. Gundappa Viswanath
16. Subash Gupte
17. M.S.Dhoni
18. V.V.S.Laxman
19. E.A.S.Prasanna
20. Mohd.Azharuddin

To begin with, I have a few points to disagree with on this list. As big as Pataudi's influence on Indian Cricket is, does he deserve a spot ahead of the spin trio or Sehwag? Can a genuine batsman without a test century and with a test average of 25 be considered one of the top 10 cricketers that India has ever produced? I have read a lot about the legendary stories of C.K.Nayudu but with due respect to him, we shouldn't have taken him into consideration at all for compiling such a list. One can argue the same about Vijay Merchant but whatever record he has is still good enough and add that to the "what he could have been had he not belonged to the world war II era" factor. Back that up with his first class record which is second only to the Don - I would even argue that he deserves a higher spot than No.14 that he's been given.

Eventhough I disagree with these selections,I must also confess that I understand that the eminent panel considered these players standing in the game especially in Indian Cricket during their respective eras and based their evaluation on that. Also I have the disadvantage of being much younger, so I can't claim to have seen them and argue against these selections. But one selection which as I mentioned before had me completely dumbstruck was M.S.Dhoni at 17, ahead of Laxman, Prasanna and Azhar!!! I can't believe my eyes...I reckon even Dhoni would be shocked to see this...

Dhoni is a great ODI batsman with the numbers to back up his reputation and a very good captain too. But this list should be and is primarily picked on performances in test cricket. Thats why its no surprise that Yuvraj Singh has missed out. Also none of the players' have been downgraded from their deserving standing because of poor ODI performances. Except for Sourav and Dhoni none in the list have a superior ODI record as compared to Tests, but standalone Sourav's test record is damn good and his captaincy also weighed heavily in his favour and despite that he is positioned at 12. So surely ODI cricket is not given too much weightage in this selection process.

Now let's come to the more pertinent question - How good a test cricketer is Dhoni? He's just starting to find his feet in this format even though he's been in the team for 4 years now. A couple of match saving efforts in Pak and England and two memorable attacking innings against Australia at home - these are the highlights of his career. I think even Matt Prior or Geraint Jones would have such a test match CV! This is not to dilute Dhoni's credentials as a test batsman - I would back him to end his test career with a much improved record and a lot more match winnings innings under his belt. But standing today, he is an average test cricketer despite considering his wicket keeping responsibilities.

Compare that with Azhar's 22 hundreds (some masterpieces in there) and 6215 runs at an average of 45.03 and we are not even talking about his style and grace and extraordinary fielding. And his captaincy record is not too bad either. If the argument is about him being a match fixer, then he shouldn't have been considered for selection in the first place and if he was then he should be given his due. If I disagree vehemently with Dhoni being ahead of Azhar, I would disagree with him being better than Laxman even more - its a joke! And I think Ian Chappell would be more disappointed on seeing Dhoni being rated ahead of Prasanna than Prasanna himself!

Really what's it with Dhoni? There's so much hype about him and his captaincy that I can't quite comprehend! I have always liked his batting and his captaincy has been good in general but to heap so much praise on him so early in his career is a puzzle that I can't quite solve...What's the hurry guys? Let's wait to see if he fulfils his early promise and if he does then we have enough time to felicitate him, celebrate him, include him in the all time greatest Indian team, all this and much more but if and only if he goes onto fulfil his promise!

Would it have been any different?

2009-10-24T02:04:00.000-07:00

Dude, Whats unfair in this? Do you think my team would have been any different even if we didn't speak for 5 years. Except for Bevan everyone in your team was also in consideration in my team - including Moin Khan! So the only thing unfair was I picked the team before you did! I dont think you were discussing Lara or Deano or Bond the other day. Any team that you and I pick independently, at least 5 or 6 players will be common and probably around 3 players we'll surely disagree on.... So what are you complaining about. Let's fix it. Forget my team, you come out with your all time best ODI team without any constraints - pick whoever you want to, then I'll come with mine.

PS: BTW I forgot to mention my captain for the ODI team, it is Shane Warne! And if any of you think its because of his exploits in IPL, pleaseeeeee. For the short span that he was the captain of Australia during C&B tri-series between Aus, Eng and SL in 1998-99, Taylor's legacy of positive attacking captaincy appeared to continue in Australian Cricket and the results were attractive too with 10 wins out of 11 ODI's. If he had behaved a little better, he would have been the captain of the Australian team during its most glorious phase.

This is unfair!!!!!

2009-10-23T23:10:00.001-07:00

Well, What can I say? This guy just wrote the top order I was discussing with him the other day.....MY TOP ORDER!!!!!!!!! And now he is asking me to put together a team to challenge his "all time odi XI"... ho ho ho!!!

Hmmmm....... all right..here we go...

Sanath Jayasuriya- When this guy gets going, there are exactly two batsmen in ODI to match him for stroke play(who by the way are in the other team, no marks for guessing who they are!!!!!) and only one batsman to match his audacity(no marks for guessing who that is either!!). A guy who could change a match with his all round ability.

Mark Waugh- Definition of lazy elegance. This guy makes it all look so easy...whether bowling medium pace(which he used to early in his career) spin, pouching unbelievable catches, those back foot cover drives that only Sachin or Lara can rival and those powerful hits down the ground(just ask Darren Gough or Vettori...launched them respectively at Headingley and the Perth roof!!!)

Miandad- Your loss is my gain..... De Silva would have been a shoo in for No.3 on the basis of just one innings he played in the semi final against India....and being an Indian does not stop me from watching it again and again.....but since you picked him..I would go for this guy, who has atleast 4 orthodox shots and 3 unorthodox shots for every delivery. Someone, who could be Bevan or Klusener depending on the situation and do the job as if its a stroll in the park...

Martin Crowe- Anybody who saw Crowe in full flow during WC 92 wouldnt doubt this pick. Pity, his career was cut short by injury.

Bevan- Who else but St.Michael? The best one day finisher next only to Zulu.

Kapil Dev- Chris Cairns, Imran gave a very tough fight, but two things put this man up in front...1. He is an Indian( come on man...i am a selector now..I have to be biased, its cliche!!!) 2. Is definitely a better bowler than the other two in ODIs.

Jonty Rhodes- Crowe at first slip, Waugh at second slip, Jonty at point, Jayasuriya at cover, Bevan at mid on, Wow....

Moin Khan- Another surprise pick for some, but a clutch player, who always comes good in pressure situations, not to mention a brilliant wicket keeper.

Saqlain Mushtaq- One ball to Damien Martyn was enough for this....The ball pitched middle and leg and took the top of off stump, like a leg break....This guy has one of the best strike rates in ODI cricket.

Ambrose- I would pick Ambrose, even if I am selecting a football team! From a whole array of West Indian bowlers, why this man? He could be economical like Mcgrath and he would get wickets like Waqar, plus a handy lower order batsman.

Waqar Younis- If Ambrose can get wickets like Waqar, why do u need Waqar? Simply because its Waqar!!! Only one word defines Waqar perfectly- inevitability. You know, he is gonna bowl full, you know its gonna pitch round about off and middle, you know its gonna be fast and swinging, you know you would have already kept your bat perfectly in line, but its inevitable!!! the ball is going to hit the stumps or pads!!! Bowls like a millionaire but the one bowler, opposition batsman pray that he shouldnt be on song!!!!

12th Man- Chris Cairns- He could just about fit in anywhere in the team....

P.S- Yes, my team is definitely weaker than yours....but remember 1983???

And the next time we pick teams like the way its done in backyard cricket, alternatively....

All time Dream ODI team

2009-10-23T22:51:00.000-07:00

At a time when the existence of ODI format is in serious question, lets give it due respect. So as a continuation to the all time dream test team, here is my all time dream ODI team:

Sachin Tendulkar – Need I say more?

Adam Gilchrist – It’s a pity that Greenidge, Haynes or Jayasuriya miss out but that’s what Gily has done to the game!

Viv Richards – As great as he is in Test Cricket, he is even greater in ODI cricket!

Brian Lara – I know his ODI record in the second half of his career was not as illuminating as the first half, but really how can I not pick Brian? The only person whom I would drop Brian for in any team is Sachin and he’s already there…

Aravinda De Silva – Was a toss up between Miandad and De Silva but went with De silva for no real reason actually! Most underrated of the modern greats probably rightfully too for the number of times he used to throw his wicket away in the early part of his career. But he more than made up for it in the second half of his career.

Dean Jones: The quintessential ODI middle order batsman who can either pierce or clear the field comfortably even in the middle overs. Infact he was an ODI batsman far ahead of his times during his playing days…

Lance Klusenser: To say that there has not been a greater finisher in ODI cricket is not an exaggeration at all and to say that there will never be another finisher like him is not blasphemous either!

Wasim Akram: Over the wicket or around the wicket, new ball or old ball, opening the bowling or bowling at the death – Akram will always be my first choice fast bowler…

Shane Warne: It had to be Warne – I have not seen a greater spinner in ODI cricket. Murali was not even in contention since he is unfathomably defensive for such a great bowler in ODI cricket.

Michael Holding: The wisden in its introduction to Holding says “No-one in the game has bowled faster” and let me comfortably add that no-one in the game has bowled better either…

Shane Bond: If one bowler could single handedly decimate one of the greatest teams of all time consistently, then he ought to be picked ahead of even Joel Garner……

12 the man: Joel Garner. Would rely on Klusener, Richards and Sachin to manage the 5th bowler’s quota between them on most occasions, but if I need to go in with 5 bowlers then would swap De Silva or Deano with Garner.

What if....my version

2009-10-23T09:49:00.000-07:00

Like I had the first mover advantage in the previous topic, you have it this time which makes my task relatively tougher. You have picked the cream of our cricket watching career already – but really that’s a silly excuse isn’t it?

This is mine:

1.What if Indo-Pak partition didn’t happen?
2.What if Shane Warne was born in India?
3.What if Sachin had connected that doosra from Saqlain cleanly?
4.What if BC Cooray didn’t come in the way of that Richardson’s thunderbolt of a sweep?
5.What if India had been knocked out in the first round of T20 World Cup in SA?
6.What if Healy had caught that Lara’s outside edge in Bridgetown?
7.What if that scoop of Kasprowicz was dropped by Geraint Jones?
8.What if Walsh wasn’t such a wonderful sportsman (remember he didn’t mankad Saleem Jaffar in the 1987 WC which cost them a semi-final berth)
9.What if Barry Richards had a long career (and did a Hussey)? – so that we would have known the real greatness of the man!
10.What if Steve Bucknor didn’t turn both deaf and blind at once in Sydney?

These are surely not my top 10 what if’s, but these are the 10 most spontaneous ones as of now…

Let us talk cricket

2009-10-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

One day, some of my friends and colleagues in office casually started a chain of mails on my all time dream XI, which ran into more than 30 loops by which time we realized that except for 4 or 5 of us no one else in the long mailing list responded. Then we thought we can’t afford to continue this - one, we were spamming their official mail boxes unnecessarily during work hours, and two, we gave the impression to the passive participants in the mailing list that we were jobless – however true that might be, is not a smart thing to admit on official mail ids!

So we decided to move to a blog where we’ll discuss on everything under the sun that has to do with Cricket and started this blog: http://letustalkcricket.blogspot.com So, if you are this almost great cricketer so long as someone hasn’t played with you or seen you play, if you think you know more cricket than most of the legends of the game, if you had spent more time in talking cricket than playing during your upbringing days, you are most welcome to join us in the blog!

What if..........

2009-10-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

“The greatest of all mysteries is What if”, writes Forsyth in his book The Odessa File.
As the book is about the Holocaust, that’s a big what if. This comes in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. What if Kennedy had gone in the car with the roof closed?
How would have that changed the history of the world? What if the Nazis had won the second world war? These are questions for which you would never know the answers unless, you believe in parallel universes where u have a different version of the events going on.

So what has that got to do with cricket? Well, here are my ten biggest What ifs in cricket.

1. What if Viv Richards hadn’t played “that shot” or connected cleanly?

2. What if Donald had run instantly in the last over?

3. What if rain hadn’t intervened during the SA-England semi final WC 92?

4. What if Ravi Shastri had refused to take the single of the fourth ball of the final over leaving him two balls to get two runs at Chennai?

5. What if Gatting had come down the track and connected the slow looping leg break on the full?

6. What if Azhar had opted to bat in the semi final of WC 96?

7. What if Mcgrath hadn’t stepped on the ball before Edgbaston ’05?

8. What if Steve Waugh had opted to bat in the second innings of Calcutta Test?

9. What if Kapil Dev had chosen someone else other than Chetan Sharma to bowl the last over?

10. What if Mike Gatting had not played the reverse sweep?

So what are your what ifs?????

My team's batting is weak???

2009-10-23T08:55:00.000-07:00

I wouldnt accept your statement that your bowling attack is weaker than mine, just for the sake that I have Imran. Sobers can double up both as a pace bowler and a spinner, and he can provide more than an adequate back up for the other 4. When you got Holding, Lillee, Akram and Murali, what difference is it gonna make who the fifth bowler is?

Which brings us to the other statement you made that my batting is weaker. Lets just analyse that a little bit. You have Gavaskar, Taylor, Richards, Sachin, Lara, Sobers, Gilli and Akram, considering his batting abilities are very underrated.

Why is my line up weaker than this?

You are probably saying this because of my middle order, consisting of Border, Dravid,Sangakkara, Imran who wouldnt be on par with your line up ( come on man, who can rival Viv, Sach and Brian) but i wouldnt call them weak.

I am thinking of posting an all time one day XI.....

Mouth watering contest....

2009-10-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

That’s the way to respond. Oh boy, that bowling line up is scary, Imran is the killer pick there. I gave a slot to Taylor purely for his captaincy but that seems to be a little too luxurious in retrospect. But then I expect him to compensate for that by handling Murali better than any other captain who has handled him before. Remember he brought the best out of Warne by setting attacking fields and encouraging him to bowl an attacking line and length. If there was a weakness that I could point out in a near flawless career, it was that Murali tended to get defensive too soon. I am sure that under Taylor’s captaincy that would never happen, which would make him more potent.

Compared to your bowling line up, mine looks a little weak purely for the fact that I have only 4 genuine bowlers (for all my respect for Sobers, I cant see him as a consistent match winning bowler) whereas you have 5 absolute match winners with the ball – Imran provides such a great balance along with his leadership qualities – How did I miss him???

But my batting line up has a clear edge over yours. It would make a great contest man. Now that you have picked a 12th man (indirectly helping me to resurrect the balance of my team a bit), let me also pick one. I would go for Richie Benaud – a great leg spinner who doesn’t quite get his due in the modern day media only because of their obsession with Shane Warne and a very handy batsman too. Add that to the fact that he was a brilliant tactician as well. – So when I feel I need a better balance I’ll swap a batsman with Benaud.

Let the games begin...

All time best!!!!

2009-10-22T06:40:00.000-07:00

If you had read hesh's post on his all star XI, then continue reading this...else i suggest you read it first before you start scolding me.....!!!!!!!!!

I have tried to pick a team that doesnt have the players whom hesh picked, as my aim was to pick an all star XI which would challenge hesh's XI...Here we go...

Greenidge-Poor man's Viv Richards.....He didnt have that swagger,charisma and he didnt bowl, those are the only differences.

Sehwag- Probably the best man to terrorise, Holding, Akram, Lillee and Murali.....

Bradman- I can only say one thing...thank you for not picking him...

Border-VC- Street fighter to the core....

Dravid- Once again thank you!!!!!!

Sangakkara- If it isnt gilli..its sanga!!!!

Imran-Captain --- somebody who could change the state of the game, by example, or by

tactics....both in batting and in bowling...border and imran, plotting to get somebody like Viv or Lara.. Wow!!!

Marshall---A fast bowler with a spinner's brain.....Playing alongside, holding, roberts, and then in the latter half with walsh and ambrose and still getting 376 wickets is no mean feat!!!

Roberts---Sunny said once, that he would rather face holding than roberts..and thats enough....

Warne---- Well.... lets just say...he floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee!!.

Ambrose--- Stone cold assassin.....

12th man-Kumble-somebody who is intense enough to put his concentration absolutely on the water and towels he is gonna deliver....will definitely be needed..and on a spinning track...with Warne...beautiful....( I know u didnt pick a 12th man and thats why i picked Kumble, bcos I know you would hve picked him!!!!!)

So ready for the game???

Let's get started - My all time Dream XI

2009-10-22T06:24:00.000-07:00

To start the blog on an auspicious note, I am starting with a post that I wrote a couple of years ago.... Feel free to agree or disagree with the choices, but more importantly, come out with a team - your best XI that can take this team on.

All time Dream XI
What does a cricket enthusiast do when he is utterly jobless? Well, what else? Select an all time dream cricket team, which doesn’t have any meaning or relevance. Now that I am jobless, I decided to come out with my dream team of all time.
Here it is:

Sunil Gavaskar: Epitome of a test opener. Has all the patience in the world to wear a fast bowler out and has the repertoire of shots to then cash in on it.

Mark Taylor: Should have been Sehwag purely on batting merit. But then I need my dream captain for my dream team.

Viv Richards: For the sheer intimidation factor!

Sachin Tendulkar: By God He’s God!

Brian Lara: The most gifted talent to have wielded the willow ever.

Gary Sobers: Its gotta be Sobers! The most natural cricketer.

Adam Gilchrist: The sight of Gilly walking out to bat after dismissing such a top order can be the most disheartening sight for any bowling attack.

Wasim Akram: The left hand of god!

Michael Holding: Wow! The Rolls Royce. Arguably the greatest fast bowler of ‘em all. If you doubt it ask Geoffrey Boycott!!!

Dennis Lillee: The most complete fast bowler.

Muttiah Muralitharan: The Magician who’s conquered all teams and conditions except the Prince of Trinidad. But, then how does it matter when the Prince is his teammate!

Is any team game enough to take us on?

Lets talk cricket

2009-10-22T06:11:00.000-07:00

IF YOU ARE THIS ALMOST GREAT CRICKETER SO LONG AS SOMEONE HASN'T PLAYED WITH YOU OR SEEN YOU PLAY, IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW MORE CRICKET THAN MOST OF THE LEGENDS OF THE GAME, IF YOU SPENT MORE TIME IN TALKING CRICKET THAN PLAYING DURING YOUR UPBRINGING DAYS THEN THIS IS SURELY THE PLACE FOR YOU.

The adrenalin factor!

2009-09-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

The best part of my everyday life is the two hours from 6 AM to 8 AM that I spend in paying Badminton in Lal Bahadur Stadium. LB was not too long ago the most prominent badminton center in the country outside of Prakash Padukone Academy. But since the setting up of Gopi Chand Academy it has lost a bit of its prominence as a lot of the established players moved over there but nevertheless LB continues to be a critical center in the Indian Badminton Scene.

The number of young players who wake up early in the morning to be here for training is absolutely heart warming. Hailing from Hyderabad, these guys are certainly not short on inspiration, what with Saina Nehwal, Chetan Anand, Jwala Gutta and Gopi Chand being household names here. I always reach the venue a good half an hour before my slot just so that I could watch the young kids practice with refreshing passion. It sort of takes me back in time when I used to dream of making it big as a cricketer – a dream which remained just that!

Today I was watching a singles game between two very young boys who must be no more than 12 years old. The match was played with hardly anyone watching as others were busy playing their game. Since I had a wrist injury I chose to be a spectator for today and I am so glad I was. One of the two boys (since I don’t know his name – let me call him the “the little champ”) was playing such exceptional badminton that I wish I could have taken his autograph! He was a natural athlete who covered the court like a gazelle, hit the gaps with the precision of a surgeon and carried himself around with the attitude of a guy who’s so sure of his skills. If I was so impressed after watching him for 2 games, what followed later made me a little wonder struck.

When these two boys started the 3rd game, a group of 5 coaches came and sat near the court. While discussing their next state tournament itinerary, they also kept a keen eye on this game. They were observing the mistakes that the little champ’s opponent was making – “doesn’t have the power to consistently hit the back of the court”, “doesn’t hit the gaps”, “keeps feeding him on the middle of the court” and so on.

When all this was unfolding I just noticed that the little champ upped the ante this game as compared to the previous 2 games by a few notches. As all the coaches were here, a lot more people gathered near the court. The more the number of people watching the game, the more the little champ raised his game. Oh boy was he loving the attention! In a matter of minutes he was able to make the coaches shift the topic from the opponent’s weakness to this guy’s all round game. I wonder if he would have pushed himself so much especially against an opponent who he could have beaten comfortably even otherwise, if not for so many people watching the game! It's unbelievable that such is the effect of adrenalin rush that a live audience can fill a sport with.

If the adrenalin can get to the young guy when 10 people were watching the game, imagine what must be going through Sachin’s mind when he enters the crease and the whole stadium erupts, singing that famous “Sachin, Sachin” Slogan! It must be insane...

What's the point?

2009-08-26T05:24:00.000-07:00

Read this recent article by Makarand Waingankar in “The Hindu” on Sachin Tendulkar’s match winning ability! I wonder if anyone could write a more pointless article than this. I have never really liked his writing, so I don’t take him too seriously at the best of times, but on this occasion he seems to have surpassed himself.

Here he is comparing the match winning abilities of Inzamam and Ponting with Sachin but why leave out Lara – the man who’s figured in the most number of losing causes in history despite having a deadly bowling attack at his disposal in the first half of his career. And his argument that Inzamam also played for a weaker team like Sachin but he has a greater percentage of centuries scored in winning causes is just ridiculous. For a good part of Inzamam’s career they had the two W’s spitting venom on the cricket field and for India outside of Kumble (more so at home), did we have any consistent match winning bowlers at all? You win matches by taking 20 wickets, not by scoring triple hundreds…

Cricket in the “Corridor of Uncertainty”

2009-07-31T10:27:00.000-07:00

If the world economy is going through an extraordinary crisis after years of excess post the sub-prime debacle, Cricket seems to be going through a crisis of its own post the widespread acceptance of T-20 cricket. Is T-20 format the sub-prime (not literally though) of the cricket world is anybody’s guess! But cricket’s crisis seems to be rather unique. Just when the whole world was entering a recession, cricket discovered its real big money potential through – first the stupendously successful T-20world cup and then the “fill up whatever adjective you want” IPL.

Everyone (except Lalit Modi & co) is in acceptance of the fact that Cricket is in a crisis. But there’s anything but agreement when it comes to the cause of the crisis and more so with how to fix it! ICC thinks the solution lies in having 4 day test matches – I never knew David Morgan had such a great sense of humour. Allan Donald thinks it’s got to do with the balance between bat and ball – soon there’ll be a ball-tampering coach in all teams. Chris Gayle thinks that we should leave it to individuals to decide about their priorities and not get too sentimental about the good old test cricket. Oh boy…. What is the problem?

There’s a general perception that it’s all because of the new new format of the game. Infact it’s a little surprising that most people have expressed their concerns on the death of test cricket just when its going through its most healthy period in a long long time – it’s been mouth watering stuff with 3 top teams competing for the champion’s crown with no clear winner. Surely T-20 is not a threat to test cricket, in fact they are as good as 2 different sports for them to cannibalize each other!

T-20 is a welcome addition to an already rich sport and it’s probably cricket’s best bet in globalizing itself. It’s also made cricketers richer and greedier too. Chris Gayle reaching the test series in England two days before the match was ripping the soul of cricket. At the same time, it’s had a huge positive influence on the game; it brought the family audience back to the stadium along with a lot of first timers too. Not to forget the fact that it’s been a platform where spinners have reestablished themselves after their impotency started telling in ODI cricket of late – What was the last match winning spell from spinner that one can remember in ODI cricket? Ironically it has redressed the balance between bat and ball in its own way though we feared the contrary to happen. Surely it cannot be the rise of T-20 alone.

But what about the scheduling – are we killing the golden goose? How could you have a T-20 world cup barely a week after IPL – which in its current avatar is much bigger than the world cup. Oh, by the way, there’s going to be another world cup in 10 month’s time! There’s also the champions trophy and the small matter of what used to be the pinnacle event in cricket – the ODI world cup in 2011. I never ever imagined in my wildest of dreams that I would grow tired of watching cricket one day and oh boy is it becoming true! ICC needs to badly hire Operations Research experts (i.e., by their standards, which apparently could be done by a X grade student!) to fix their scheduling problem – Obviously, it requires knowledge of rocket science to figure out the distance between June 2009 and April 2010 is less than one year!

And that monster called IPL? This has been the cause of all the problems in cricket! It’s infused obscene amount of money into the game that is tempting cricketers to choose between the nation and money. What an irony – there is crisis the world over for lack of money and in cricket the crisis seems to be because of excess money! Flintoff has preferred T-20 over test cricket, Vettori has expressed the dilemmas of his team members when choosing to sign the national contract knowing a test series is clashing with the IPL, and we all know Gayle’s take on this whole issue – for him, it’s a non-issue!

But for all the large scale bad-mouthing of IPL, no one would disagree with the fact that it is simply the most spectacular cricket tournament outside of Test Cricket. For a sport in want of greater acceptance outside its traditional avenues, there cannot be a better showcase of the game than IPL to the newer audience especially in the most instantly appealing format of the game. Having said that, the monopoly that IPL is becoming to be in the cricket economy needs to be seriously controlled and regulated but does the ICC have the backbone to do it – we all know the answer!

So what is the solution? I have no idea. The problem seems to be multi-layered with a lot interactions across layers. But if you ask me, this is what I would suggest. Forget ODI cricket, dedicate a month for IPL and a week for Champions League in a yearly calendar. Schedule full test series between the top test nations and shorter series between unmatched teams, start playing bilateral T-20 series and have T-20 world cup once in two years. Strip Zimbabwe of its full member status – the most effective way to control the monopoly ways of BCCI and Mr. Lalit Modi. And pray for peace in Pakistan…

PS: For the problem of the big money of IPL luring cricketers to retire early from test cricket, let me assure that only money is capable of fixing the problem it creates – no regulation, moral science lessons or jingoistic patriotism can do it. The “how” of it, will be part of the next post.

Who would you want to bat for your life?

2009-07-28T09:51:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: I am a complete believer in the popular phrase - “Statistics are like mini-skirts, what they reveal is interesting but what they hide is vital”

It’s always a dicey proposition to make a science out of an art. But for good or bad, we as cricket fans have internalized it so much that we cannot leave statistics out of our evaluation of any player or team. Now that we have decided to live with it, let’s use numbers from as many dimensions as possible to arrive at a statistically more fair evaluation of a player.

Typically the statistic that’s most abused in cricket is a batsman’s average. The first class in most statistics course start with this question on cricket - Does higher average translate into better consistency? That’s when the professor would introduce the concept of Standard Deviation, which is nothing but a measurement of risk. Very simply put, it measures the variability from the expected score (which is the average) – higher the variability higher the risk! For an intuitive explanation of this concept, click here

But the Standard Deviation is so overhyped a concept that once a lateral thinking guru told me that most cricket followers mistake average as a proxy for greatness when it should ideally be Standard Deviation! Does a batsman who scores 10 runs every time he bats more great than Sachin or Lara, because he is very very consistent – no variability at all! So standalone Standard Deviation may not be of great help, but when used along with the average, it gives a potent number (a crude version of what is famously called “Sharpe Ratio” in the world of finance). Let’s call this the consistency index – it gives the average of a batsman per unit of risk. “The higher the average per unit risk, the more reliable the batsman is” is not a bad doctrine to believe in.

In fact, if I remember right, S.Rajesh of Cricinfo had done a similar exercise a few years back for Cricinfo Magazine where he had calculated the consistency index for all great batsmen to arrive at statistically the most consistent of them all. In this exercise, I am trying to build on his work and add more dimensions to the analysis to possibly get a more complete picture. Since I don’t have the advantage of having access to a comprehensive database like S.Rajesh, I would restrict this analysis to a shortlist of batsman whom I have had the privilege of watching in my cricket following career of the past 2 decades. This list is completely my personal choice of batsmen who have staked a claim to be the best in the world at different points in time. And they are – Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Brian Lara, Jacques Kallis, Ricky Ponting, Kevin Peterson, Virender Sehwag, Matthew Hayden, and Adam Gilchrist. Just for novelty factor, added Sunil Gavaskar to the mix as well!

Now to begin with, let’s use the primitive method of comparing them on averages.
Average 1
Ponting 56.31
Sachin 54.73
Kallis 54.66
Lara 52.89
Dravid 52.39
Gavaskar 51.12
Sehwag 50.82
Peterson 50.82
Hayden 50.74
Gilchrist 47.61

Ponting is clearly leading the pack with a good lead over Tendulkar. Kallis is a hairline behind Tendulkar, with Lara and Dravid completing the top 5. Gilchrist might seem like a strange pick amongst the very best in the last 2 decades, but as I said before it’s a completely personal choice with no quantitative criteria to select the list.

The “Not out” factor
The problem with using average is that it is easily maneuvered by “Not Outs”. So if Lara scores a 400 and finishes not out, it can boost his average by almost 2 runs across his career. There was a phase in which Tendulkar scored nearly 700 runs without getting dismissed. Very rarely a batsman staying not out makes a critical difference to the fortunes of the team. Would it have made any difference to Team India if Tendulkar got out for 241 against Australia in Sydney? So let’s look at the averages by discounting the “Not outs”. Average will be nothing but total number of runs by the number of times the batsman has ventured out to bat. Let’s call this Average 2.

Average 2
Lara 51.52
Ponting 49.78
Sehwag 49.05
Sachin 48.98
Peterson 48.85
Gavaskar 47.30
Hayden 46.88
Kallis 46.50
Dravid 46.21
Gilchrist 40.66

Oh…what a difference this makes. It disturbs the order of the entire list with the exception of Gilchrist. Lara jumps up from fourth place to first place and that despite a 400 N.O against his name! Sehwag climbs up four positions to move from 7th to 3rd in this list. Kallis moves down five positions from 3 to 8.

Let’s quantify the “Not Out” factor for each of these batsmen and see who the biggest beneficiary of it is:

The “Not Out” factor
Kallis 8.16
Gilchrist 6.95
Ponting 6.54
Dravid 6.18
Sachin 5.75
Hayden 3.86
Gavaskar 3.82
Peterson 1.97
Sehwag 1.77
Lara 1.37

There you go, Kallis has nearly a good tail-ender’s average added to his Average 2 courtesy his unfinished innings. Gilchrist’s record as a batsman is well enhanced by the number of not outs in his career. Look at the bottom of the list there; its not at all surprising to find Sehwag there, but Lara enjoys the least benefit of not being dismissed. The amazing aspect of this list is that five of the top 6 batsmen in this list bat at either 3 or 4 (infact except Tendulkar, the rest of them bat at no.3) and have still finished as “Not out” with sizeable scores – oh boy do these guys hate getting dismissed!

Having seen both the statistic, it’s fair to say that both are fair and unfair in their own ways. So let’s use both of them to compute the consistency index and see what difference it makes in the final analysis.

Risk – Variability of expected value
Let’s look at our measurement of risk for each of these batsmen – Standard Deviation.

Standard Deviation
Gilchrist 43.66
Kallis 44.19
Peterson 48.43
Dravid 48.51
Gavaskar 50.08
Hayden 50.57
Ponting 51.01
Sachin 52.41
Lara 62.37
Sehwag 62.77

If I have to go by what the renowned lateral thinking guru said, then Gilchrist is the least risky or in other words the most consistent batsmen of this lot – now then, can you believe it? Is Tendulkar a less consistent batsman than Gilchrist – Even Gilchrist would dismiss it as a joke! But watch out the last 2 names there at the bottom, can you disagree with that? So, Standard Deviation as a stand alone measure also offers some interesting insights. But let’s refine it further; let’s see what consistency index tells us…

Consistency Index (Average/Standard Deviation)

Using Average 1

Consistency Index – 1
Kallis 1.24
Ponting 1.10
Gilchrist 1.09
Dravid 1.08
Peterson 1.05
Sachin 1.04
Gavaskar 1.02
Hayden 1.00
Lara 0.85
Sehwag 0.81

Using Average 2

Consistency index – 2
Kallis 1.05
Peterson 1.01
Ponting 0.98
Dravid 0.95
Gavaskar 0.94
Sachin 0.93
Gilchrist 0.93
Hayden 0.93
Lara 0.83
Sehwag 0.78

Who would you want to bat for your life? If you believe in numbers, you will not look beyond Jacques Kallis – Take “Not outs”, discount “Not outs”, do whatever, but Kallis stands tall in the consistency index towering over the rest. And is anyone surprised by the 2 names in the bottom at all? It seems to be an apt reflection of their style of batting – high risk, high return! Except for Gilchrist, the positions of the rest of the batsmen don’t change much whether you factor in the Not out’s or not. Gilchrist seems to be enjoying the privilege of being number 7 on the batting order with too many “Not out” innings in his kitty.

This completes the first part of the two-part analysis; let’s get a little more whacky in the second part, which I promise will be a much shorter one.

Note: All the data used for the analysis are as on March 18, 2009

Finally....... I got internet connection

2009-07-17T08:17:00.000-07:00

Oh......... Finally I got internet at home after 2 months of struggle. Hopefully should start blogging regularly from hereon.

IPL Days 23 to 29: One week is a lot of time in IPL!

2009-05-16T13:44:00.000-07:00

With a hectic time at office, it’s been hard to find time to catch up with all the matches last week. The IPL with its jam packed schedule is not only testing the endurance of players but the fans too! I wonder how exhausted all of us will be, come the T-20 world cup!

It’s been a week of fluctuating fortunes with literally every team except Delhi and KKR standing unsure of their future course in the tournament till Saturday. The Delhi juggernaut continued to roll on with the odd hiccup against Kings’ XI and KKR have improved from losing badly to coming close but still not able to close out a match. CSK has stamped their authority back in the tournament with 5 consecutive victories but put themselves in a vulnerable position going into the match against Mumbai Indians by losing to B’lore in the earlier match.

In the meanwhile Mumbai have continued their “one step forward, one and half steps back" campaign in this IPL. But at the end of Saturday’s games, 2 semi-final spots seem to have been finalized and with Mumbai losing the do or die battle against CSK, 2 teams are surely eliminated. And amazingly B’lore is still in with a chance. Its gonna be fun to see Deccan, Rajasthan, B’lore and Kings’ XI fight it out for the remaining 2 semi-final spots.

It’s been a bizarre week. Deccan lost a match which it had in its bag against Mumbai. Mumbai did the same against Rajasthan Royals! And just what should KKR do to win a game? They did everything right against B’lore till Ross Taylor came out and played an absolute blinder to get B’lore out of jail and he did a repeat act (a less thrilling one though) against Mumbai too to keep B’lore’s hopes afloat.

But nothing was quite as bizarre as the match between Deccan and KKR. With 21 runs required off the last over, all the camera focus was on the KKR dug out – finally they were about to pull of a win. And then McCullum commits a blunder which would be remembered for long – has only 3 fielders inside the circle for the first ball off the last over and Rohit doesn’t make his life any better by belting it for a boundary. Amazingly Mccullum seemed to be suggesting to the umpire that it should have been called a dead ball!

With 16 runs required off 6 balls, Deccan would have fancied their chances especially with the classy Rohit Sharma on strike. Just as luck would have it, Mortaza bowled a full toss which Rohit deposited on top of a stand some 115 meters away. This was the decisive blow which sucked any little life left out of KKR. Then Rohit played a lovely cover drive for four and an audacious pull for a six when all that was required was a single to finish off the match. I have said it many times before and wouldn’t mind saying that again – he is simply the best young batsman in the country right now. Can’t wait for him to get a test berth!

Whoever makes it to the semi-finals, I would love to see a Delhi-Chennai final!

IPL Day 22: Of grit and graceful grit

2009-05-10T03:53:00.000-07:00

In the match between the last year’s finalists, the competition started even before the first ball was bowled with Warnie hurling a bouncer at Dhoni by calling Chennai poor chasers at the toss. Not the one to duck ungainly at the bouncer, Dhoni added more spice by saying that Rajasthan Royals will be under pressure to put up a big total against CSK’s strong batting line up.

After yet another first over dismissal from Albie Morkel, CSK built on the pressure to ensure that Rajasthan Royals didn’t get away to a great start. After a patient 3o from Graeme Smith, some lusty hitting from Ravinder Jadeja in the middle and a cameo from Shane Warne ensured that RR put a decent enough total to make a match of it.

With Hayden continuing his rich vein of form, it looked like CSK will cruise through easily despite the loss of Vijay and Raina by the 6th over. Then came Warnie and bowled a mesmerizing over to Badri which would have given the CSK dug out a few uncomfortable moments. Having watched it from the other end, Hayden took it upon himself to take the attack to his ex-teammate and how well he did it. First he reverse swept Warnie for a four, but what followed was pure genius. In a pitch which was stopping a bit after pitching, turning square, against the ever so wily Warnie, Haydos walks down the pitch with the calmness of a monk and whacks it over long on for a six. And amidst all this not a thought of failure!

Having survived the Warne scare, Badri grew in confidence at the other end and scored 18 runs off an over from Shane Harwood. First he moved inside the line to lift the ball over fine leg for a six, then steered a boundary wide off point, helped himself for a boundary on the on side when the bowler erred in line and finished off with a cheeky little upper cut over the keeper’s head. The match was almost settled in that over. But Warnie came back and got Hayden stumped down the leg side to give RR some hope. But Badri ensured that CSK romped home without any more damage. It was a fine display of gritty batting from Badri after being made to look clueless against Warne and he admitted just as much in the post match conference too!

But the match wasn’t over yet. Just like how it started before the first ball was bowled, it ended after the last ball was bowled. Shane Warne comes out to the post match conference and says they were 20 runs short and Dhoni claims they gave away 20 runs too many!

In the first match of the day, Deccan were off to a flier only to lose their way mid way through but Symonds on his comeback match resurrected the slide beautifully. He handed out a special treatment to Sreesanth especially and with Venugopal Rao playing a nice little cameo, Deccan put up a competitive 168 on the board.

Kings’ XI got off to rollicking start with Sohal displaying his weird brand of cricket - moving away from the stumps almost all the time and trying to clear the off-side field. He did it astonishingly well and when the bowler chased him, dispatched the ball over fine leg for a six too. Just when Kings’ XI looked like running away with the match, Gilly brought on his man with the golden arm – Rohit Sharma. And Rohit struck in his over not once but twice, dismissing both Sohal and Katich in the same over. In came Yuvraj and Sangakkara and cruised along at a fair clip until a moment of brain freeze resulted in Sanga paddle sweeping Shoaib Maqsusi onto his stumps. Immediately after, Yuvraj too seemed to have gotten a brain freeze when he played an ungainly pull of a ball which stopped a bit after pitching to give a skier to Gilly. Going into the Strategy break, Gilly should have backed themselves to win.

But Mahela had other ideas. With 82 required from 10 overs, asked Irfan to refrain from doing anything silly and motored along at a fair clip for the next few overs. He lost Irfan along the way and was involved in a run out soon after but that didn’t seem to deter him too much though. Just when the run rate seemed to be climbing to more than comfortable levels, Mahela upped the tempo by tonking Suman over mid-wicket for a six and then came down the next ball and thwarted it over long-on for another six and continued the assault into Ojha's next over too by hitting him to square leg for another four. A couple of balls later, a slight indecision and cramps resulted in his run-out. But Brett Lee and Piyush Chawla ensured that Mahela’s dismissal wasn’t regretted.

The beauty of Mahela’s innings was that under so much pressure, he summoned all his grit but didn’t look ungainly for one moment through the innings.

IPL Day 21: Dominant Delhi

2009-05-09T03:35:00.000-07:00

After a good start to the tournament, Mumbai Indians have lost their steam in the business stages of the tournament. As a desperate measure to change their fortunes, tinkered with what is arguably their biggest strength – Sachin and Sanath opening the innings. With Sanath not playing, Sachin brought himself down the order promoting Ronchi and Duminy to open the innings. With both openers not disturbing the scorers Mumbai were on the back foot straightaway and except for Bravo no one really made an impact. The writing was on the wall once Mumbai put up such a mediocre score against a strong Delhi batting line up.

But Mumbai still made a match of it with some very tight bowling from Dhaval Kulkarni and JP Duminy too. Just as they were pushing the match to the edge and with spinners doing well, Sachin took a gamble of bowling himself for an over and went away for 19 runs. It was all over then. AB has been making fast strides to move from just being a good batsman to a great batsman since the beginning of this season in Australia and his fine display in IPL so far is further proof of that. Since the beginning Delhi has looked the best team in the competition and after 35 matches, they are still the team to beat.

IPL Day 20: Mouthwatering stuff

2009-05-07T12:43:00.000-07:00

Just what motivates a man of 37 years, retired from all forms of the game except IPL and has achieved almost everything that young cricketers would dream of. What else does he have to prove and to who? These are questions of mere mortals, to men like Haydos, they simply do what they are meant to do – compete hard, bloody hard. In this kind of a form, it doesn’t look like he’s gonna handover the orange cap to anyone almost through the length of the tournament.

The greatest pleasure of watching Hayden over the years has been his arrogant style of walking down the pitch against bowlers of all kind and depositing that red cherry over the stands. I can never forget one shot that he played against Shoaib Akhtar in Morroco in a one-day international. When most batsmen instinctively tend to go back against the pace of Shoaib Akhtar, this man walks down almost a quarter of the track and hits Shoaib’s thunderbolt out of the ground and doesn’t even bother to look up the ball and rather checks the edge of his bat! Its almost like spitting at the bowler – oh… this is what you’ve got – is it?

Today Haydos was in that kind of a mood, dancing down against the spinners and thwarting them out of the ground and that one-handed six of Sreesanth was probably the shot of the day (till I changed my opinion on seeing Mahela’s six against Murali). As if that’s not enough headache for Yuvraj Singh, Dhoni joined in the party too. That one over against VRV Singh, Dhoni flat batted a square cut for a six over point, then hit a home run and followed that up with a forehand smash to mid-wicket. Rain or no rain, CSK gave themselves the best chance of winning by posting a mammoth total.

King’s XI started off rather badly with Sohal gifting his wicket away.That didn’t deter Katich much though; he was in a mood to make a match of it and he was smashing the CSK bowlers - both spinners and fast bowlers, all around the park. Just when he was starting to look dangerous, played a horrendous shot to gift his wicket to a loosener from Balaji. Yuvraj at the other end was in his elements from the beginning smashing Murali for a huge six and when he tried to replicate that again, Goni generously continued Chennai’s catch dropping tradition in this IPL!Yuvraj rubbed salt into CSK's wounds by hitting the biggest six of IPL soon after. And with an in-form Mahela for company, the chase was certainly on.

If Hayden at his belligerent best scored at a strike rate of 153, Mahela bettered that in his own silky grace style. He started off by reverse sweeping his country man for a boundary and that inside out six over cover against Murali was straight out of heaven, but equally effective were his exploits against Balaji especially that flat pull for a six. Yuvraj and Mahela put together a 50 run partnership in next to no time and just when CSK were looking like losing control of the match, Dhoni brought in Suresh Raina out of nowhere to bowl the 15th and 17th overs and he did exactly what his captain wanted him to do – choked up the runs. And Balaji bowled an icy cool final over to close out the match.

BTW there was one match earlier in the day right? I guess Rajasthan Royals won against a not so Royal Challengers!

IPL Day 19: Rohit Sharma steals the show

2009-05-06T12:12:00.000-07:00

Deccan looked every bit like the team which had lost 3 matches on the trot. They didn’t look like winning it till Mumbai pressed the panic button. Gibbs consumed nearly an over to get out without scoring and Gilly couldn’t set the world on fire either. A sensible innings from the classy Rohit Sharma and a useful cameo from Venugopal rao helped Deccan post 145 on the board.

R.P.Singh has had no inhibitions in expressing his love for the SA wickets both on the field and off it. It’s not difficult to understand the reason though. He had a very good T-20 world cup and now has had a terrific IPL too. As if to celebrate his comeback to the Indian team for the T-20 world cup, he removed Sanath and Sachin in successive deliveries and got back the purple cap too! With Mumbai on the back foot straightaway, it required all the solidity of Duminy to pave their way back into the match. And just when they seemed to be cruising along, Bravo holed out to long off.

After the fall of Bravo, it was a Rohit Sharma show all the way. He picked up the second hat-trick of this IPL to finish with figures of 4 for 6 off 2 overs. What’s about these pie-chuckers and hat-trick in this IPL? Once Duminy was gone, Mumbai had no hope left.

IPL Day 18: Royal Rajasthan and hapless KKR

2009-05-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

Everytime RR had been categorized as favorites they have lost and every time they were written off they have comeback – the team’s character seems to be an extension of the captain’s. Oh boy did their openers come out blazing today! Where was Naman Ojha all this while? He launched into Ramesh Powar even before the bowler could warm up which set the tone for the match.

Graeme Smith, who’s had a quiet tournament by his standards couldn’t have timed his return to form better. If he played the second fiddle to perfection in the previous match, he was at his belligerent best today. Then Ravinder Jadeja came out and showed us why Shane Warne rates him so high. It was a blitzkrieg that sucked whatever little life was left out of King’s XI.

With the tournament’s highest score to chase, King’s XI badly needed a flying start and once that wasn’t to be, they were going down the hill all the time. Yuvraj provided a bit of fireworks at the end but it was too little too late. And where does Shane Warne scout for fast bowling talent? Amit Singh gave a good account of himself in a quality spell. It’s exciting to see domestic players expressing themselves on such a grand stage.

And the second match of the day had no surprises with KKR looking as clueless on the field as they have been with the bat and ball so far in this tournament. For once McCullum got going and with van Wyk providing the much needed inspiration for KKR at the top of the order, there was some hope of making a turnaround in their fortunes.

But that little hope faded away completely in a hopeless display of fielding. And Delhi were anyways too strong to be overwhelmed by a just about par total. Delhi has looked the best team on paper since beginning and they are doing their reputation no harm by being ruthless on the field so far in this IPL.

IPL Day 17: CSK bulldozes past Deccan

2009-05-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

Just by looking at the scorecard, if you can figure out how dominant CSK was against the Deccan Chargers, watching CSK’s fielding would have told you that the result could have been much worse for Deccan. In what must be rated as one of the funniest moments on a cricket field, Shadab Jakati did everything he could to avoid effecting what must one of the easiest run-out chances ever. It was such a comedy of errors that even Courtney Walsh would have been embarrassed to see! Add that to the near half a dozen dropped chances…

Albeit a poor show on the field, CSK bulldozed past Deccan with consummate ease. After yet another blazing start from Matt Hayden, Dhoni came into his own for the first time in this tournament. His belligerence is not something new to us, but that farmer’s club straight back past the bowler was some sight. Is that wrist or something else? There was the trademark down the track heave over mid wicket and the Kapil Dev resembling pull too in an innings which befittingly got Dhoni a MOM award. And like always Suresh Raina played his part to the “T”.

If there is any team which is capable of chasing down Chennai’s mammoth total, Deccan is one of them. But it was curtains for them even before it began with Gilly walking back to the pavilion after the very first ball of the innings. And Sudeep Tyagi continued to impress with a beauty to get rid of the dangerous Gibbs. There was nothing special from the Very Very Special Laxman too.

From 1 for 3 (3 wickets for one run) chasing 179, Deccan needed a miracle to get back into the match, they almost got half of it, a quarter from Dwayne Smith’s maverick batting and a quarter from CSK’s amusing fielding! Jakati cashed in on good work done by Tyagi and Morkel with his second consecutive four wicket haul. There’s something about Goan’s and IPL. It was Asnodkar last year and Jakati this year who earned himself a release from the obscurity of domestic cricket! Hopefully more such men emerge…

IPL Day 16: Royal Challengers are back….

2009-05-03T11:49:00.000-07:00

Royal Challengers turned in their most professional performance yet in their IPL history against Mumbai Indians. To restrict Mumbai to less than 150 was crucial given the fact that Mumbai arguably has the best bowling attack in the tournament. The newcomer Du Preez ensured that Mumbai didn’t get much momentum upfront by dismissing 3 top order batsmen in no time including the crucial scalp of Sachin. Jayasuriya and Bravo repaired the early damage to an extent and posted a competitive score on the board. With Mumbai’s strong bowling line up and B’lore’s perennial opening woes, Sachin would have felt comfortable going into the innings break.

Like they have done in almost every match of IPL, B’lore came out with yet another opening pair – Jaffer and Kallis. But Jaffer didn’t last long which brought in the man who was playing for the opponents in the last year’s IPL! Uthappa has had a forgettable tournament so far, but he set a few things right today. With Kallis taking on Malinga & co in a classy counter attacking innings, Uthappa was content on playing himself in. And once he was set, launched into the second string bowling of Mumbai big time. An in-form Uthappa is great news for the team which is slowly but surely on the ascendancy in this tournament. After such a thoroughly professional victory, it takes a brave man to rule B’lore out of contention for one of the semi-final spots.

In the first match of the day, it was an all too familiar story for KKR. After a rather nervous start, KKR looked to be going down even without a fight till Brad Hodge took it upon himself to put on a challenging score on the board. He really carried on his rich vein of form from the last match and played a very good innings. He’s the only batsman in KKR to have got a fifty (2 of them now) in this IPL! Even though commentators were creating artificial excitement about the last ball finish, Punjab never looked like losing it or to put it more appropriately, KKR never looked like winning it. And they don’t look like winning too many more in this tournament. First fix the team guys, captaincy comes later…….

IPL Days 9 to 15: Hectic time……..

2009-05-02T13:32:00.000-07:00

It’s been a hectic time at office…….. So couldn’t catch up with most of the matches this week leave alone having the time to write about ‘em. My thoughts on watching bits and pieces of the matches this week:

Oh boy did Sachin and Sanath turn the clock back by a decade against KKR. As if KKR didn’t have enough problems to contend with, these two veterans decided to put on a show and what an astounding show it turned out to be! It was such an audacious assault that KKR didn't quite recover from the shock when they came out to bat too and folded like a pack of cards. For all the magic of spin wizards and the breathtaking finishes by Yousuf Pathan, watching Sachin bat the way he did against KKR was probably the most satisfying aspect of this IPL so far. I know I am being biased here but I can’t be anything else with Sachin! The way Sachin smashed Ishant for a six over mid-wicket was a picture stolen straight out of Nairobi….

Not only is Sachin turning the clock as a batsman but also as a captain too. After a superlative start with Jayasuriya ended in the match against KKR, Harbhajan came in as a pinch hitter and smashed a few too. He so loves the idea of a pinch hitter that he sent Bhajji at no.3 in the next match as well. A decade back when he was captaining India, Srinath was almost a permanent No.3 against SA in a ODI series…… What’s even worse was in a home test match against NZ; he didn’t enforce the follow on reasoning that his bowlers needed rest so that they could come back fresh in the 4th innings to bowl NZ out. Then he sends Srinath at No.3 in the second innings as a pinch hitter – what a way to rest your strike bowler!

Just what is Yousuf Pathan made of? He’s turning out to be a one man army for RR. To come in at 64 for 5 in 11 overs with 81 required from the remaining 9 overs, against arguably the best team in the tournament, he put on a royal show of breathtaking stroke play and what more he finishes with a over and half to spare! One more wicket at that stage would have been curtains for RR but there’s no such negativity in Yousuf Pathan’s thought process. A good part of that credit should go to Shane Warne too who’s given him the space and liberty to play his natural game under all circumstances. I wonder if there’s a more dangerous batsman in this tournament at the moment. He’s almost a poor man’s Richards at the moment…..

Sanga’s hunch…. Chasing 120, Mumbai would have fancied their chances going into the break but after a top order collapse with the scoreboard reading 12 for 3 in 4.1 overs; it required every ounce of the skill and grit of JP Duminy to pull the match back in Mumbai’s favour. Just as he was doing it, Yuvraj left the field with an injury handing over the captaincy reins to Sanga. With 19 runs required from 2 overs and a rock solid Duminy still at the crease, Sanga gave the ball to Abdullah for the penultimate over. And as he was walking back to his mark, changed his mind and tossed the ball to Piyush Chawla who had given away 19 runs in his 2 overs. And did Piyush justify his captain’s faith on him! Apart from getting Bhajji’s wicket, he only gave away 7 runs of the over making life easier for Abdullah. But Duminy almost spoilt the show for Abdullah with a heave over midwicket which had some of the Mumbai Indians owners’ friends jumping in joy only to realize later that it had found the fielder’s hands….

Could this be the turning point for B’lore? For a team which has an extraordinary ability to dig itself into trouble, the way they kept coming back against Kings’ XI despite Yuvraj’s heroics with both the bat and the ball was refreshing. Ian Chappell often says that Kumble is one of fiercest competitors on a cricket field that he’s seen. And if anyone thought he wouldn’t be the same competitor post retirement, just watch the video clips of him celebrating Yuvraj’s and Sangakkara’s dismissal. After a nervous victory over KKR, this victory from the jaws of defeat would have given a lot of confidence to Mallya’s boys. Hopefully they make it count.

CSK is inching their way back after a rather disappointing start to the tournament. Finally Dhoni realized that Badri is a top-order batsman and one of the best going around in domestic cricket at that! Is Balaji making a comeback here…..For a guy who couldn’t bowl for nearly 2 years, his performances in the Ranji Trophy last season and this IPL so far have been very impressive indeed. He’s still not the same bowler as he was against Pakistan 3 years ago but the fact that he’s reached this stage from a near hopeless situation is commendable. And does Raina love his time in IPL! What a blinder of an innings he played against RR. He almost single-handedly won the match for CSK. And with Sudeep Tyagi and Jakati settling in well in the team, hopefully Dhoni shouldn’t complain too much about his bowling any more. And if Dhoni could find some form, CSK has both the skill and the character to go all the way.

Is Lasith Malinga the most valuable player in this IPL so far? Or is it Yousuf Pathan?

IPL Day 8: What a comeback!

2009-04-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

Deccan Chargers have been charging ahead in this IPL. Being counted as favorites and finishing at the bottom of the table in the last year’s IPL, Deccan Chargers had more than a few questions to answer at the beginning of this season and how well they have answered them. With 3 on 3, they have given themselves a great chance to qualify for the semi-finals. After another power start from Gilly and Gibbs, Deccan lost its way in the last 7 overs making only 40 odd runs and losing 7 wickets. It’s a weakness that might prove costly towards the business stages of the tournament. Its got a too top heavy batting line up and still a relatively moderate bowling attack. But for now they are bulldozing past everyone.

With Sachin pacing the innings like a computer and tutoring Duminy along the way, it was all set for another tight finish but as has often been the case in this year’s IPL, the whole equation changed after the tactical break. And then Mumbai lost the momentum and never looked like winning it once Sachin departed.

I am delighted to know that Sachin has expressed his displeasure over the tactical time out along with others. It’s a real shame that such a gimmick has been entertained for commercial considerations. It might bring additional dynamics into play and might even make the game more entertaining but the bottom line is that it’s a fake one. If Sachin’s views are not taken seriously to review this tactical timeout, then be assured that nothing else can make Lalit Modi change his mind.

IPL Day 7: Oh poor B’lore….

2009-04-25T13:10:00.000-07:00

Just what should B’lore do to win? I almost feel sorry for them but somehow they don’t look like a team – I take a slight sadistic pleasure in thinking that Mallya deserves such a team for his juvenile reactions in the last season! With Uthappa and KP failing once again, the responsibility of resurrecting the innings fell on the broad shoulders of Kallis and he did it in his own style. With 3 of the 4 overseas stars doing well, finally Royal Challengers put a competitive total on the board. But that proved to be inadequate.

With the Punjabi munda from England in top form and solid support from Sanga and Yuvi, Kings’ XI cruised to overcome their target. A well-deserved victory for Kings’ XI after two successive rain-curtailed matches.

IPL Day 6: Royal Feast

2009-04-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

What a day of cricket it was. If the first match between CSK and Delhi was a humdinger, the second match between RR and KKR was an absolute edge of the seat thriller. This is by far the best day in IPL 2009 so far. A.B played the near perfect T20 innings with some help from butter fingers of CSK and Dilshan played a typically spunky innings to set a huge target for CSK. But what went a little unnoticed in the whole carnage is that L.Balaji returned with figures of 3 for 19 in 4 overs when the innings run-rate for Delhi was 9.45!

After a characteristically aggressive start by Hayden and Raina, CSK were looking all set to overhaul the target but Delhi bowlers pulled the momentum back beautifully by picking up crucial wickets at the death. But I still expected Albie to pull it off but it wasn’t to be. I wonder why Badri is wasted at 7 in every match – Only Dhoni knows why!

The second match had it all. There could not have been a better advertisement for T20 and IPL in particular. After the fall of 2 quick wickets, Yousuf Pathan did what he does best – attack without a second thought. He did that fairly successfully till Mendis was brought onto the attack. With Mendis picking both Graeme Smith and Yousuf Pathan quickly it looked like RR wouldn’t have enough on the board to defend. But the blitzkrieg in the final over by Raut changed it all.

When KKR batted, Warned opted for the most unusual pair to share the new ball – Yousuf Pathan and Mascrenhas! It was a gamble which paid off reasonably well with the wicket of McCullum and a sedate run rate. But Gayle at the other end was threatening to take the match away from RR by striking a few towering sixes. But as ever, Warne struck the crucial blow by sucking Gayle into a false shot. And with Hodge and Shukla falling soon, in came Dada with a determination that was last seen in his comeback in SA after the Greg Chappell forced exile. And just as he did in SA then, played a blinder to get KKR’s innings back on track along with Yashpal Singh.

The crucial point came with Warne’s obsessive idea of bowling short to Ganguly. And when Munaf obliged his captain and also overstepped, Dada played a pre-determined pull for a six and then hit a typically Dada inside out shot over covers for another six in the free hit. With 13 runs off one ball, the required run rate was brought down to more manageable levels. Sourav’s constant chatting with Yashpal asking him not to do anything silly with the match virtually in the bag showed how badly he wanted to win it for KKR. But when Warne tossed one high and wide, Yashpal did exactly what Sourav asked him to refrain from doing!

With one over left and seven runs needed, my money was still on KKR. In an inspired piece of captaincy, Warne threw the ball to the 18 year old Kamran Khan to bowl the last over in such a high pressure situation. And what a super over it turned out to be, followed by another super over – this time literally!

I am so glad that the obscene “bowl-out” has been done away with and replaced by the super over.

IPL Day 5: Blast from the past and into the future too

2009-04-23T09:04:00.000-07:00

The way Gilchrist was blasting the bowlers all over the park shouldn’t have surprised us too much. But if the word going around is to be believed that he played only one T-20 match in between last year’s IPL and this year’s, it should have been surprising but it still wasn’t. That’s the aura of the man. No matter what the constraints are, you still expect Gilly to be the same.

You can sense Gilly is in top form when he starts pulling good length deliveries and we had a few of them yesterday. He plays audacious square cuts, cover drives beautifully and smacks a few across the line, but its his ability to pick up the length of the delivery early and quickly rock back to pull fuller length deliveries is what sets him apart from others. As a bowler there’s just no safe area to bowl to Gilly. How Michael Clarke would be wishing Gilly was in Abu Dhabi and not in SA!

If Gilly’s innings was blast from the past what followed was a blast into the future. I am a huge fan of Rohit Sharma. To me he is the best young India batsman going around and surely deserves a test spot ahead of Yuvraj Singh. He oozes with class, can play spin and pace with equal ease and most importantly he seems to have that extra time in playing his shots. He’s also of that rare breed that spends time in settling down even in a T-20 match and has the ability to up the tempo at will. And he did it against no less a bowler than Anil Kumble when he hit him for 3 sixes in an over just when you were wondering if he was consuming too many deliveries. Except for that last six against Kumble, none of his shots would have been out of place in test cricket as well. At the end of the game his scoring rate is no different from an out and out dasher.

I can’t wait for him to be inducted into the test team, so that he’s ready to inherit the no.4 from Sachin whenever he decides to hang up his boots. Even in ODIs he’s been given the odd chance but dumped immediately. With such a talent, you are better off making the mistake of giving one chance too many than one chance too few. Mr.Srikanth – Are you listening?

And just what’s wrong with B’lore? They have got some fabulous individual talent and a reasonably good bowling attack but somehow they are not able to click as a team. It’s got something to do with the franchise’s mindset. First they made Charu Sharma a scapegoat, then the owner almost openly disowned the team, and then the club paid a fortune to acquire KP for this season as if that was the panacea for all their problems. Along the way Ray Jennings was hired and he had his share of taking a dig at the seniors in the team! There’s been a consistent search for that individual weak point but no talks about cohesiveness of the team. In a team sport, if the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts, then no part is worth a fortune.

IPL Day 4: Frustrating...

2009-04-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

Why are they so desperate to get a result? A match with no result is no crime or shame. Agreed that KKR might have still won the game with Gayle playing as well as he did. But as we have seen so many times before in Cricket and more so in this IPL that the momentum can shift anytime. But sadly King’s XI didn’t even get a chance to come back. This is their second successive loss in rain-shortened matches. The first game against Delhi was an absolute lottery and this one is not much better. I feel sorry for King’s XI ...

IPL Day 3 - Magically, Murali

2009-04-22T10:04:00.000-07:00

If you are a CSK supporter, you couldn’t have asked for a better show. It was a delight to watch Matt Hayden back in his elements even after retirement. It was a typically muscular innings from Hayden, which ensured CSK were off to a blistering start. If not for the mix-up with Raina he would have ensured CSK batted B’lore out of the match. What if he didn’t? Murali ensured that wasn’t regretted.

After a move, which was destined to fail (opening with Praveen Kumar), B’lore threatened for a while with Kallis hitting a few classy boundaries. The pitch was so true that our mortal cricketing instincts would have told us that B’lore would mount a serious chase especially with Pieterson and Dravid still to come. But Murali had other ideas! It was a magical spell from him.

Coming around the wicket and with the ability to turn the ball square both ways, he’s as canny as it gets. As if guessing between a big spinning off break or a doosra wasn’t tough enough, Pieterson encounters a ball pitching on the middle and still uncertain about the movement, offers a prod and the ball holds its line, evades the bat and catches him plumb in front. He was so confused that he ended up asking the umpire if there was some bat in it! But what followed was the real scene-stealer.

Having seen Pieterson’s dismissal from the non-striker’s end, Robin Uthappa appeared well equipped not to fall prey to the same trick. And what does Murali do? Without much change in the trajectory he bowls a similar ball again but its similar only till it pitches and after pitching it does a Shane Warne to leave Uthappa out of his crease searching for the ball and Dhoni does the rest. This is craftsmanship of the highest order. This dismissal of Uthappa and Shane Warne’s magic against Akhil has been the standout moments of IPL so far. Hopefully more magic lies ahead…

IPL Day 2: Ambivalence is the word

2009-04-21T07:58:00.000-07:00

There’s so much to love about IPL. But it’s just as easy to detest it too. If first day was refreshing with good quality cricket on display, the second day was proof of the extreme shameless commercialization of the game. Cricket has been a game where even after 5 days of hard intense cricket, we may not get a result but in the T-20 the administrators have been very desperate to get a result somehow or the other.

There’s no shame in having a game with no result and more so in a lengthy tournament like IPL. The desperation with which a result was achieved in the Delhi Vs King’s XI match was ripping the soul of the game. If twenty overs for each side are not possible, then the match ought to be either cancelled or rescheduled no matter the commercial ramifications of doing so.

If this was appalling, the fact that they stuck to the “tactical time-out” for ads despite rain shortening the match was obscene. And then I saw the sight, which I feared the most – the boundary ropes were brought in by almost 10 yards!!! It’s worse than reservations.

I don’t know who gives the idea to administrators that more boundaries mean more entertainment for the audience. And can anyone tell the commentators that cricket lexicon hasn’t been officially changed yet. A six still remains a six and not a DLF maximum and WTF is a citi moment of success (BTW Citi bank was struggling to survive not too long ago). I wish I never buy a DLF house or bank with Citibank ever in my life – the very mention of those names get me worked up.

I had recently asked Prof. Aswath Damodaran (Professor – Corporate Finance and Valuation in Stern School of Business, New York University) about his views on IPL. His response sums the problem with IPL:

“I must confess that I stopped following cricket about 25 years ago... I used to be an avid cricket fan and I have followed the IPL only in passing. I think the key with professional sports is to maintain the illusion that it is only a game (and not a business). The fans know that they are being taken along for a ride, but they are willing to go along. I think the problem with the IPL is that it does not even bother to preserve the illusion...”

IPL: Day 1

2009-04-18T15:11:00.000-07:00

What a contrasting start we had for IPL 2009 as compared to last year. If McCullum set the field ablaze to kickstart the last IPL, this time it was the calm, measured and composed innings from Sachin which gave a good account of how this year’s IPL might shape up. If day 1 is anything to go by, we are in for a real feast with a fair contest between bat and ball.

Today was an anti-thesis of most theories floated around about IPL and T-20 cricket. It was supposed to be a youngster’s game but the stars for today were Sachin, Dravid, Warne and Kumble! And the money the franchise spends determines the kind of talent at their disposal. FYI Abhishek Nayar was bought for $40k last year and revised to $100k this year! What a difference he made. In my opinion his was the innings which took the game away from CSK. It’s a delightful feeling that such a cameo was not the status quo but a special effort which tilted the balance of the match. I just hope that it continues to remain an even contest between the bat and ball throughout the tournament.

But the moment of the day belonged to that showman again – Shane Warne. The way he made Virat Kohli look like a novice was comfortably outdone by the way he mesmerised Akhil in an over of masterful leg spin. He sets him up beautifully for the flipper only for the umpire to disagree, then he bowls an absolute beauty to clean up Akhil with the ball drifting in in the air and turning away sharply after pitching to disturb the timber leaving the batsman dumbstruck.

The final word for the day has to be on Rahul Dravid. It was typically Dravid, reconstructing the innings after a top order collapse. But what was more special is that he did it at the pace that T-20 cricket demands but with all the style and grace that we generally associate with Test Cricket. It was a little funny to see Dravid getting so animated on the field. But afer all the non-sense that he went through last year, its easier to understand that he wanted to prove a point as much to himself as to the critics. And Jumbo helped himself to a 5 for. I wonder what Mr.Mallya has to say now?

The spectacle is about to begin

2009-04-18T03:31:00.000-07:00

Oh finally…. IPL is all set to begin.

For want of time, will settle for twitter style updates for now:

I hope the crowd turn out is good throughout and really really hope that boundaries are not shortened this time and some sanity prevails in the commentary box. Lets call a six a six and not a DLF and Lalit Modi is no moses please…………….

Otherwise I hope the second edition continues from where the first edition ended as far as the quality of cricket is concerned.

Its always a dicey proposition to pick a favourite out of such evenly matched teams especially in this format of the game. Its still fun doing it though. My favourites for winning the second IPL are Chennai Super Kings and Delhi Daredevils.

I just hope B’lore makes it to the semi-final stage atleast this year. Last year they were badly let down by their owner after a couple of losses. Surely Rahul Dravid and co deserved greater respect and support. Lets not forget they had one of the best bowling line-ups with Zaheer, Steyn, Bracken, Praveen Kumar and Anil Kumble.

Just for the sheer excitement of watching Shahrukh celebrate, I wish KKR does well too…

But being a quintessential Chennaite, I have only one team to support except when Sachin is batting!!!

How I wish IPL was covered by ESPNSTAR!

2009-04-17T22:36:00.000-07:00

How I wish IPL was covered by ESPNSTAR now that another of my favourite commentators -- Sanjay Manjrekar, has also joined the team. I always thought Sanjay was underutilized by Tensports by making him the host and not the expert commentator. And in ESPNSTAR with Harsha playing the perfect host, it would be refreshing to hear Sanjay's impeccable views and analysis on the game which after a few centuries of existence is still evolving and evolving at a faster pace than ever before! I had written something about the Voice of Indian Cricket in praise of Harsha Bhogle and Sanjay Manjrekar a couple of years back. I thought its a good time to reproduce that here now that both will be working as part of the same team:

The Voice of Indian Cricket
I remember Harsha Bhogle once saying that when Sunny padded up for his innings as a commentator, he wanted to become the “Voice of Indian Cricket” like Tony Cozier is to West Indian Cricket. For all my respect for Sunny, I can at the most see him as the face of Indian Cricket and not quite the voice of Indian cricket. I used to wonder if the man who narrated Sunny’s wish himself was a better fit for that tag. For someone who started radio commentary when he was just a school student, he could seamlessly alternate between radio and TV commentary. His writings on cricket make you wonder if Peter Roebuck is over rated and has a few fan clubs in the cricket mad countries – India & Australia, Harsha Bhogle seems to be fitting the bill perfectly as the “Voice of Indian Cricket”

But then, how can a guy who hasn’t played competitive cricket beyond the university level be called the “Voice of Indian Cricket”? .So what if Tony Cozier was never a competent cricketer and still be called the “Voice of West Indies Cricket’. Probably West Indies didn’t have any good cricketer turned commentators during that time. But India certainly has no dearth of cricketers turned commentators (by the way is there any well known cricketer who hasn’t turned a commentator yet?) and that too very competent ones. Ravi, Sunny, LS, Sidhu, Sanjay and the list goes on. Why can’t one of them in this long list be called the “Voice….’.For someone who loves his dose of channel 9 commentary, I am not particularly a great fan of most of these commentators except for Sanjay (He’s a class act). It is too stereotypical for my liking. I can almost predict what they would say depending on the match situation.

Sanjay Manjrekar’s foray into TV commentary brought a whiff of fresh air for the Indian viewer who cherished his dose of honest and intellectual commentary. In my opinion, he’s the best Indian ‘cricketer turned commentator’ by some distance. He’s made tremendous strides as a commentator. I remember watching him on TV in his first year as a commentator; he seemed to be literally hero-worshiping Sachin and somehow could never find a flaw in Sachin, even when almost everyone else seemed to be thinking otherwise. Sometimes he appeared to be too much in awe of some of the personalities like the Chappell brothers for him to even disagree with them. But then as he grew in stature he shed his inhibitions of his personal preferences and grew more neutral in his perspective.

The Sanjay Manjrekar of now is a dream of a commentator with neither a put on accent nor a complicated vocabulary. His knowledge of the game is immaculate, his views and insights on the game are absolutely unbiased and grounded on sound cricketing logic and his writings on the game are the one of an honest man who knows and cares about his sport. I remember an interview of Sanjay by Harsha Bhogle in ESPN, in which Harsha said that Sanjay’s the most honest cricketer that he’s seen, to which Sanjay replied that it’s the only way he knows to live. He does not mind questioning Sachin’s attitude (and also the repercussions of doing that), doesn’t believe that regional selection committees have been as big a problem for India’s lack of success as the lack of skill and doesn’t mince words when it comes to the question of an even contest between the bat and the ball.

I’ve put my case forward. Harsha Bhogle or Sanjay Manjrekar – Who’s the “Voice of Indian Cricket”? Take your pick. Whom would I go for? If competency as a cricketer is not brought into the equation, I would go for Harsha Bhogle and if competency as a cricketer is important then, I can’t think of anyone beyond Sanjay Manjrekar.

Harsha and Sanjay – Thanks a ton for making cricket watching a better experience!

Settling down in Hyderabad

2009-04-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

Will be off blogging till I settle down in Hyderabad. There’s been so much to talk about in cricket of late - India’s historic series win in NZ, Yuvraj’s inability to make the test spot his own, Rahul Dravid’s record number of catches, Dhoni’s puzzling declaration call and the rise and rise of Zaheer Khan.But no time for the next 2 weeks.
In the meanwhile, read this piece on Dhoni’s captaincy by Samir Chopra in Cricinfo which is not far from my opinion as well:
http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/04/dark_cloud_over_dhoni.php

Hope to be back to blogging when IPL kickstarts. Have to rent a house and get a TV by that time…

“You cannot be serious”

2009-03-27T22:59:00.000-07:00

I am yet to come to terms with what appears to be a rather weird idea from Mr. John Buchanan about using multiple captains for Kolkata Knight Riders for the second edition of IPL. What was he thinking? It’s hard to figure out the logic behind it- assuming there’s any! Is it the same game of Cricket that I have been following all my life? I am glad that he wasn’t talking this rubbish in the same pub in which Ian Chappell was having a drink with Shane Warne – there would have been no guarantee for his life!

However, if you had read or even skimmed through his book “If better is possible” you wouldn’t be too surprised with his novel idea. I must admit that I haven’t read the book completely but skimmed through it in a bookshop and even that was not a pleasant experience. It is full of buzzwords and corporate style management jargons and would have fitted perfectly in the company of Stephen Covey books! If he ever cares to read “Strategy Safari” or “Fooled by Randomness” in his life, he would be ashamed of having written such a book.

Also not so long ago he had another novel idea – to train all Australian cricketers to be ambidextrous! Imagine that for a while…. “Hey Ricky, you know why you struggle against Harbhajan – its because you are a right hander. You should start batting left-handed to tackle his threat better. If you are not convinced, go through this research of mine which proves that left handers have a 75% greater probability of success against Harbhajan than right handers”. I know I am exaggerating, but knowing Buchanan its hard to believe that such an act is beyond him.

The problem with Buchanan is that he has built this reputation as a masterful strategist because of his glorified success as the coach of the invincible Australian team. But how much of Australia's success can be attributed to the coaching skills of Buchanan is not even debatable, it’s surely negligible. I could have done as good a job if not better if I had the quality of players that Australia had in his tenure. Maybe he could be given the credit of not being a disruptive influence in a champion team (at least he is better then Greg Chappell!).

What amazes me more than his idea is his conviction of the idea as the next big thing in cricket. He articulates that cricket has changed a lot since the advent of T-20 and having multiple captains is to keep pace with that. And when someone reminded him that India had won the T-20 world cup under one captain, his response was:
"At the time there wasn't much research done about the Twenty20 format. I don't want to undermine India's achievement. But it's true that most of the renowned international players were missing then. The state-level players showed more efficiency and sharpness during the tournament. Gone are those days. The world of franchises has completely changed the face of Twenty20 cricket, The game is progressing”

Much research? So what have you done now? We are living in a time where in we are paying the price for adopting some nobel prize winning research in financial economics and here he is talking about research in cricket. Surely there’s something wrong with him. He is taking himself too seriously here. Maybe SRK should send him to some anti-narcissistic therapy clinic.

If anything, the advent of T-20 has reinforced the importance of good captaincy and leadership. Its hard to convince oneself that India would have done just as well in the world cup had the captain been someone else and not Dhoni. Just compare the videotapes of Collingwood’s restless discussions with Stuart Broad ball after ball when Yuvraj hit him for six consecutive 6’s and Dhoni’s calm and composed demeanor when Misbah-ul- haq hit Harbhajan for three 6’s in an over to completely tilt the balance in a world cup final. A good captain makes that critical difference between a secure and an insecure team. However, Buchanan wants the opposite, he wants even the captain to feel insecure!

And what about Rajasthan Royals? Take Shane Warne out and see if you can even entertain thoughts of Rajasthan Royals being the champions of IPL. The influence of Shane Warne on the team was so huge that almost everyone in the team surpassed themselves. They did not have the superstars, the million dollar players, but they had a captain who commanded respect, who was tactically brilliant and who liberated his little known players to express themselves on a grand stage. I agree that luck and skills are inseparable in evaluating a captain but cricketing instincts in us generally does a good job of differentiating a good captain from a bad one even though the scale may vary.

What an irony that Buchanan wants to try this idea out in the same tournament, which emphatically vindicated the long held (and sometimes over hyped) significance of a captain. As an add on, it also put the role of a coach in perspective (if you remember Royals did not have a coach at all! But had Jeremey Snape as a mentor). Not so long ago Indian cricket team played some of its best cricket especially overseas when it did not have a coach. I don’t mean to take anything away from a good coach. Gary Kirsten is doing a fine job for the Indian team now and so did John Wright during his tenure. Despite his dogmatic belief on coaches, Ian Chappell was not too far off the mark when he said that a good coach could make about a 5% difference to the team. And that’s all the respect that Mr. Buchanan deserves.

But Mr.Buchanan is not happy with that. He wants to be an avant-garde in cricket, to be known as the man who revolutionized cricket completely! In the process, he’s wiping away whatever little legacy he had built as a tactically sound coach. Had Buchanan lived in anonymity after his reign as coach of the Australian team we would have never known how bad he was. Thanks to his second innings with KKR, we now know the cricketing acumen of the most successful cricket coach of all time! As Warren Buffet famously said, ‘It is only when the tide goes out that you know who was swimming naked,’ Now we all know!