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Spot the bubble

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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"

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

"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

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...

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.....

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

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...

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...

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…

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...

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

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...

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

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...