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December 28, 2005
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 12/28/2005 in India
India are not the top team in the official ICC rankings for Tests and ODIs. Nor are Sri Lanka for that matter. Yet a huge wave of near-spontaneous publicity flooded the media when these two teams clashed in a recent one-day series. An appreciable level of popular interest surrounded the outcome of the remaining matches even after India had wrapped up the series in the first four.
The recently completed Test series between the same sides was decidedly more competitive to begin with. After the Lankan dominance in that drawn 1st Test at Chennai the least I was expecting was an appetising publicity across the media for the remaining Tests. I didn’t see much of that, ocular soundness notwithstanding. Test cricket once again got a go-slow from the BCCI.
Continue reading "Marketing first class cricket: BCCI should adopt two-pronged approach"
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December 26, 2005
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 12/26/2005 in The Players
Just finished watching an episode of a new cricket show where they revisited the watershed innings of a fringe player from the outskirts of Delhi named Virender Sehwag. He chose this particular tri-series match against New Zealand in Sri Lanka 2001 to announce his arrival. The Sachin-less Indian skipper Sourav came out to chase the Kiwis’ respectable 260+ with this new all-rounder (haunting term that) in tow who till then had just this one ODI fifty and a batting average of 15 to show for his prowess.
Watching a replay is that much more fun when your favourite players are known to have done well in it. It is a dream come true for you as their success now has the inevitability of a Marvan Atapattu run-out. Sehwag rattled off a 68-ball hundred (as far as I recall) and left the irksome show host gasping for a ‘break’, 82% of Viru's runs coming in boundaries.
Continue reading "A day out with a dazzler, and the season of batting gifts"
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December 25, 2005
Posted by Krishna Kumar on 12/25/2005 in Miscellaneous
Reading through Zainub's musings on cricketing hair-styles, the following thought came back to me:
Continue reading "What makes Dhoni tick"
Comments (1)
December 23, 2005
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 12/23/2005 in The Players
Shane Warne, that genius of a leg-spinner, is proving to be a far better exponent of the googly in real life. The googly is half-truth of a delivery, where the leg spinner leads batsmen to believe that the ball would be bowled normally. But at the last moment he subtly alters the release to impart a reverse spin on it. It resembles the hoax of a magician, or an unverifiable statement from a crooked political man. Precisely the imagery invoked by his latest controversial statement expressing disgust for the lack of opportunities for him to pick up cheap wickets unlike ‘some blokes’.
The comment was disguised so as to communicate a loathing for such wickets, but the bitterness of expression betrays an underlying insinuation that he has started wanting them badly in order to stay ahead of all (or maybe one) competition. Forever.
Continue reading "A googly for Murali"
Comments (7)
Posted by Lahar Appaiah on 12/23/2005 in Miscellaneous
There was an interesting article in The Guardian, by their crossword editor, Hugh Stephenson, on cryptic crosswords. The full article is here, but what set me thinking was this quote:-
"cryptic crosswords are like cricket. Playing the game is more important than the result. Hours, days even, can end in a draw, with everyone still happy. Perhaps it is no accident that the flowering of the cryptic crossword in the past 50 years has been in the English-speaking, cricket-playing world. It has never taken hold in the US..."
Continue reading "Twinge For Alien Game (7)"
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December 22, 2005
Posted by Zainub Razvi on 12/22/2005 in Players' Hairstyles
The New Year’s on the horizon now. I can see 2005 beckoning ta-ta and 2006 saying hello. I’ll do a series of year-end reviews, mostly trivial ones, between now and new year’s eve. Today, I present you the official TAFHCA (The Anti Foolish Hair Cut Association) select Bad Hair XI for the year 2005, a collection of the worse haired cricketers to have played cricket in the past 12 months.
Continue reading "The Official TAFHCA Select 2005 Bad Hair XI: Out now"
Comments (12)
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 12/22/2005 in Miscellaneous
Some rare days when you have no work, play or resources at hand you need to invent pastimes. I can suggest one for you. Ever tried to erase a tattoo?
Throw that knife away, for heaven's sake!
Sit down, calm your thoughts and just try to follow instructions. I was referring to the tattoos etched on your mind. Think of a lofted straight drive off a fast bowler without visualising Sachin Tendulkar hitting them off Mike Kasprowicz at Sharjah 1998. Found it tough? Then play on with the stubborn cric-tattoos inside your head.
Continue reading "Your cric-tattoos can be fun"
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December 20, 2005
Posted by Chris on 12/20/2005 in Miscellaneous
There’s a shirt for sale at Sportsonline.com signed by the Australian team and the members of the World XI (remember them?) The price……a tad over $4,000 of your finest Australian dollars.
Perhaps I missed the 21 carat gold edging on the shirt, or perhaps it’s made of the latest in tank resistant Kevlar, but failing that, this shirt strikes me as perhaps a tad overpriced.
Continue reading "Memorabilia gone mad"
Comments (1)
Posted by Scott Wickstein on 12/20/2005 in The Players
From what we have seen so far of South Africa in Australia, there has been a definite change in South Africa's bowling attack, and that is that Makhaya Ntini is now clearly the most penetrative option in Graeme Smith's hand. Shaun Pollock remains as a fine bowler who can keep things tight, but Ntini does appear to be the bowler more likely to take a wicket.
Ntini has come a long way since I first saw him in Australia as a youngster in South Africa's 1997/98 tour. He was just one of a group of young 'players of colour' that had been fast-tracked by the South African cricket authorities. However, he has taken advantage of that 'fast-tracking' to be a very fine bowler; maybe not of the very first rank, but certainly there is nothing 'token' about him now; he would be one of the first men picked in the South African side. He certainly showed his worth in the First Test against Australia, taking 5 for 64- moreover, those five wickets were all in Australia's top seven.
Continue reading "Ntini should not tamper with his winning formula"
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Posted by Chris on 12/20/2005 in Miscellaneous
I’ve loved the game of cricket ever since my father invented ‘roof-catch’. He would stand in the back garden of our house and send me to the front garden to wait expectantly for a tennis ball to appear in the skyline. The challenge was simple. Catch the ball.
I would hear his cricket bat thwack with a sound that I still love today and look up in wonder at how high that tennis ball could climb. I would spend an eternity shuffling my feet while the ball was in flight to have the best chance of getting my small hands to clasp around the ball as it thundered towards me after sailing over the roof of our house. A caught ball was a magnificent feeling.
Continue reading "It had me at “Hello”"
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December 17, 2005
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 12/17/2005 in Sri Lanka
April 7, 1996. It is a gloomy Sri Lankan dressing room, after the newly crowned world champs suffer a shocking defeat to Pakistan in a tri-series final at the Padang Stadium. The newly crowned World champions restricted Pakistan to 215 and came out blazing with their double-barrel opening combo, Kaluvitharana and Jayasuriya. But the middle and lower order caved in and Sri Lanka fell short by a considerable 43 runs.
None of the middle order stalwarts want to face the Lankan skipper Ranatunga. He has consumed just 3 of the 5 staple post-match pizzas from his plate and has since been grim and motionless like a soon-to-erupt volcano at the corner seat.
Continue reading "Once upon a time in Singapore..."
Comments (3)
Posted by Chris on 12/17/2005 in Miscellaneous
Earl Woods bred a Tiger. Richard Williams spawned a couple of tennis Supergirls and Damir Dokic did his utmost with Jelena until she estranged herself from his obsessive clutches.
So I am going to follow in the footsteps of these and other noble sporting parents and breed me a megastar. I have serious reservations surrounding the ability of my seven Marks & Spencers shares to feed me in my retirement so will take the opportunity to live vicariously (and rather splendidly) through the sporting feats of my offspring.
Continue reading "Retirement planning, Earl Woods style"
Comments (3)
Posted by Krishna Kumar on 12/17/2005 in Miscellaneous
Cricketing topics you must admit make for the best conversations. For seemingly no real reason you can keep talking about the game. Frequently, when you run out of topics of current interest, periods of nostalgia drift in. And then, your thoughts take totally different turns and the dialogue takes on a completely different tone. Topics merge into one another and everything appears to make complete, continuous sense. A sort of soothing, equal music.
A few days back, a friend and I were talking about how we learnt to play our cricket. The conversation gradually turned to players' mannerisms we'd picked up somewhere along the line during our so-called cricketing lives. He said, as a kid, he'd try imitating Gavaskar. On a hunch, I laughed and asked him whether it was the settling into his stance part that he would attempt copying. He said Yes. Curious parallels like these somehow increase the pace of the Cricketing Conversation. The mood is lightened, frequently, you are chuckling, the world appears a sunnier place, Bangalore suddenly feels like Kerala etc. And, this got me thinking.
It is remarkable how uncomfortable I used to feel when batting (as a kid or even sometimes I must admit as a teenager) if I did not get the time to do the Gavaskar-settling-into-his-stance bit. It partly explained why I could never bat in the Nets. There was simply no time for you to settle into your stance. But, actual matches were different. As the bowler shuffled back to his run, the left leg would already be in place, the right leg would soon swing compactly into place right behind it. The process seemed to give you some sort of presiding authority over bowlers. The bowler about to start off on his run, you sliding your right leg into place. You felt a proper batsman. Settled in your stance, the reference point to your strokes all nice and balanced. You viewed the slips with disdain. Your mind occupied a high plane where edges didn't exist.
Continue reading "Ganguly's stiff hip and other stories"
Comments (6)
December 16, 2005
Posted by Chris on 12/16/2005 in ICC
If I find one thing more objectionable than the incredulous inaction shown by the ICC over the dire mismanagement of Zimbabwean cricket, it is the self justification of their inaction through their latest media release.
The ICC is losing credibility with every utterance of self importance that spews from its cosy confines, detaching itself from the Zimbabwean situation and even further from the hearts and minds of the millions of stakeholders to whom the game of cricket means so much and dare I say belongs.
Continue reading "A chronic dose of institutional paralysis"
Comments (2)
Posted by Zainub Razvi on 12/16/2005 in Pakistan
Imagine standing 100 yards opposite a taking off airplane, train and triple-decker bus, all three filled to capacity; imagine the noise, the hues, and the ambiance in such a scenario. Then multiply it all by two. The result would be something vaguely like the atmosphere I experienced yesterday sitting around with 40,000 or so cricket starved Karachites, about half a dozen rows back in the Waqar Hasan Enclosure.
The official capacity for the NSK is only 33,000, but I suppose that only caters for spectators that have occupied seats, and not the ones that are sitting on the stairs leading up to the seats, in between the seats, in the foyers besides the lavatories, and in the little space here, there and everywhere. No potential vantage point was left vacant. When you read somewhere in the papers today that yesterday’s match was a full house, the papers were lying. It wasn’t a full house, it was an over-full house.
Continue reading "From 100 yards away"
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December 15, 2005
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 12/15/2005 in India
“Run aggregates and averages are not everything,” I keyed in indignantly, “They have to be seen in perspective. Think of the opposition that conceded them and the lack of assurance with which they were earned.” It was the day’s typical quota of e-argument amongst us college friends on Sourav Ganguly’s exclusion from Indian cricket team for the Sri Lanka ODI series a month or so back.
The above-mentioned selection may have had its share of dark secrets, primarily regarding the non-selection of Sourav Ganguly. We'll never know of them. The allegations at that time were largely unsubstantiated. Also the ‘daredevil’ selectors apparently deserved some benefit of doubt in view of the lighter moments generated during that phase and the support Sourav still enjoyed from the ruling BCCI supremo. That was an interesting first reel of what would essentially end as a sordid saga this week.
Continue reading "Thus spake Chief Selector: A Chronicle"
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Posted by Gaurav Sabnis on 12/15/2005 in India
As you can guess from the title, I am drawing inevitable historic-literary parallels. It would be hard to not think of Ganguly as Caesar and Dravid as Brutus. And it is in this parallel that lies a big lesson for Rahul Dravid.
Brutus, addressing the people of Rome for the first time after caesar's murder said,
If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar's, to him I say, that Brutus' love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: --Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him: but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honour for his valour; and death for his ambition.
Dravid too may well give this defence....it is not that he loved Ganguly less, for the two started their careers together, fought many battles together, as did Brutus and caesar, and were good friends for a long period of time. Yet, there came a stage where Ganguly's leadership degraded enough to cause serious problems for the team. For the sake of the well-being of Team India, Ganguly had to go. Dravid can thus plead, that he loved the team more. He could ask, had you rather Ganguly was playing and India be a weak team, than that Ganguly were dropped, and India do well?
Continue reading " "Dravid is an honourable man" or "Beware of the Ides of December""
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December 14, 2005
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 12/14/2005 in India
13th Dec, 2005
First I would like you to take a look at a few figures:
79*, 0*, 103, 4*, 53, 49 - aggregate 288, average 96.
Of course this is a sequence of scores handpicked by me to showcase a purple patch. The selection could hardly be any more partisan. But a search for the last six scores of Yuvraj Singh in ODI's will give you the source.
Continue reading "Dear Yuvraj Singh haters (my old friends)"
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Posted by Chris on 12/14/2005 in Miscellaneous
Streakers have a tendency to display their bits and pieces at the most inappropriate times of a cricket match.
Streakers are invariably home side ‘supporters’ who disrobe and disrupt with equal measure, doing their team no favours in the process. Despite reports of recent poor crowd behaviour, the cricketing world is perhaps not yet ready for barbed wire borders on our boundaries. So what to do, to combat these naked invaders?
Continue reading "The streaker dilemma"
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December 12, 2005
Posted by Chris on 12/12/2005 in Miscellaneous
Malcolm Speed wants to clean up the game citing a “spate of Code of Conduct offences” as the impetus for his request for players to take a copy of the rule book to bed and wash their mouths out with soapy water.
There are many aspects of the game that fall under the generic banner of ‘conduct’ and I for one would certainly like to see continued penalties imposed for actions on the field that overstep the line. Shahid Afridi was dealt a three game ban for his pitch scuffing antics, and whenever a player is physically attempting to alter the conditions of play, then a penalty of appropriate severity needs to be imposed.
Continue reading "Sledging on the slippery slopes?"
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Posted by Gaurav Sabnis on 12/12/2005 in Miscellaneous
Often a smile says more than many paragraphs. Today morning I saw two such smiles flashed at each other. Muralitharan came out to bat with Sri Lanka in trouble, but was batting the only way he bats - with gay abandon. After milking a few lucky ones off two Pathan overs, the great spinner faced his opposing number for the first time in ages.
Murali had a toothy grin, as he always does. Kumble started his run, came to the crease, leapt up, Murali charged! The ball fell short of a length, missed the bat and disturbed the already-oft-tormented stumps. Kumble ambled down the track with a smile very different from those that we normally see - one of triumph with a tinge of deference. Murali flashed back a different smile too - one with the helplessness of the vanquished with a tinge of bravado.
Two masters of an esoteric art sharing a private wordless joke.
Comments (2)
December 11, 2005
Posted by Zainub Razvi on 12/11/2005 in Live commentary
It’s the mid innings break in the first One-Day International, – I think these should be renamed Damage Limitation Internationals or DLIs given the state of most one-day pitches now-a-days. Anyway, it’s Pakistan and England against each other, and I’m lurking around in my Inbox. We had conceded something of a mountain to chase, but I knew from before hand that we’ll lose, some times you just know.
Not a matter of not having enough faith in the team, but sometimes you just know, probably something in the stars (when half of the team is having a bad hair week (month?), something has got to give at some point!). So I thought I might as well use this time to indulge in some good old fashioned commentary nit-picking.
Continue reading "The nightmare called Television Commentary"
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Posted by Jai Arjun Singh on 12/11/2005 in Live commentary
It could have been one of the greatest days of my life and I went AWOL. At the precise moment (16:44:19, as has been meticulously noted by some newspapers) that Sachin was deftly playing Chaminda Vaas to the onside for his hundredth run, I was driving around central Delhi, just 6 km from the Kotla Stadium, listening to radio commentary - instead of being at the ground - and muttering “YOU IDIOT, YOU IDIOT, YOU IDIOT!” to myself.
But on this admittedly minor scale, it was quite an experience being in Delhi traffic at this momentous hour and noting that other people in other cars were listening to their radios as intently as I was: fiddling with knobs, pulling at antennae, the passengers at the back leaning forward.
Continue reading "'I wasn’t there'"
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Posted by Scott Wickstein on 12/11/2005 in Miscellaneous
New Zealand have defeated Australia in the third ODI by chasing down Australia's score of 331, setting a new world record in the process. This comes hot on the heels of the second ODI where New Zealand only just failed to reel in Australia's score of 322.
And the New Zealanders are not the only side doing some impressive chases. Since 2000, there have been ten instances of sides successfully chasing scores of 300 or over, which had only happened six times before 2000. A couple of years ago, Pakistan were set 350 to win and nearly did it. What is going on?
Continue reading "Self belief, sledging, and the art of the possible"
Comments (1)
December 10, 2005
Posted by Chris on 12/10/2005 in Miscellaneous
Australia have a knack of losing ‘dead rubbers’ after securing a series win. How much do these end of series losses really affect the Australian morale and conversely how much do the victors value their consolation prize?
Before this summer, England went the best part of two decades on the debit side of an Ashes ledger whilst picking up dead rubber cheques with alarming regularity. Cheques that always seemed to bounce come the following Ashes campaign.
Continue reading "Dead rubber bridesmaids"
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December 9, 2005
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 12/09/2005 in West Indies
Twelve summers ago I had a fairly animated discussion on a fast bowler’s ideal delivery with Gogol, the kid brother of a friend and a perennial favourite of mine. ‘The magic ball’ had to be defined.
We went on to answer the call of cricket fanaticism and did the job ourselves. Me-cricket-expert caps firmly in place, we chose a few of the best prototypes, deliberated on them and finally passed a judgement that the world must have been waiting for.
Continue reading "Magic balls: Buy one, get one free"
Comments (7)
Posted by Chandrahas Choudhury on 12/09/2005 in India
Some questions in cricket are subjective, allowing for perfectly good arguments both sides, such as whether Bradman’s Invincibles were a greater team than Steve Waugh's side, or whether Sunil Gavaskar possessed a better defensive technique than Geoffrey Boycott. In such cases the pleasure lies in the give-and-take of conversation, in the marshalling of evidence and the subtlety of the details one summons – it’s a way of keeping one’s cricket brain in good nick.
And even when some perfectly absurd point of view turns up, such as the recent case made by least three wise men of Indian cricket that Sourav Ganguly was not just a batsman but a batting allrounder and would add balance to the Test side with his seamers, the good cricket fan mops up the coffee he has spilt in surprise at the breakfast table, and, swallowing his initial derision, begins to think how one might best argue this case. (eg. Not only did our good Dada take a number of wickets in this year’s Duleep Trophy, but he also topped the bowling averages for India in his debut series in 1996; bowled a corker of an opening spell when given the new ball against Australia at Kolkata in 1998, not so long ago; and only last year beat and bowled the tiresomely immovable Jacques Kallis in a Test match, again in Kolkata.)
Continue reading "The man who rolled Tendulkar over"
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December 8, 2005
Posted by Scott Wickstein on 12/08/2005 in Miscellaneous
After the first one-day international between New Zealand and Australia, Ricky Ponting once again complained about the poor crowd behaviour that saw several of his team-mates have fruit and bottles thrown at them. This is not the first time that Australian teams in New Zealand have had to deal with this; poor crowd behaviour was a feature of Australia's one-day games when they toured New Zealand earlier this year.
There's no doubt in my mind that the demon drink is almost entirely responsible for the missile throwing and pitch invasions that occur in New Zealand and were formerly a frequent event in Australian one-day games as well. I was 'lucky' enough to experience one of these disturbances up close and personal in this fixture in Australia's tour of 2000, and I saw first hand the way in which the ground authorities were eager to maximise sales of the full strength local beverage- they were selling it by the six-pack.
Continue reading "On the (alcohol fuelled) Madness of Crowds."
Comments (4)
Posted by Chris on 12/08/2005 in Miscellaneous
Last Saturday I witnessed a rampant Australian side tear the barely beating hearts from a New Zealand team that were at Eden Park in seemingly body only. I could smell the Australian swagger from the stands. The stench invaded the nostrils of the 20,000 or so others in the ground too, as one heckle after another chided the failing efforts of the hapless Kiwis.
Fast forward a mere four days. A puny leap of 100 hours and the Men-In-Black stood with phasers at the ready and came within a shaving of chasing down the 323 required runs. In the process, they accumulated more than three times their Auckland run tally.
Continue reading "The Great Brain Robbery"
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December 7, 2005
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 12/07/2005 in Pakistan
Fast bowlers....they are like the reflective eyes of a predating carnivore crossing your nocturnal highway in the distance. They declare themselves unabashed, as if the rest of the team is selected to support them. They ask for attention like a newborn placed in a damp cradle. They charge in, they rant, they sulk, they go over the top, they exult as if there is no tomorrow – and they expect to be loved for it! These hot-headed guys, blessed with pace generating mechanism running on fuel supplied from a colossal ego, can be as terrible to the thin-skinned folk in the dressing room as they are abominable to the opposition players quivering at the crease.
Simply put, they like to play king and, insufferably for some victims, are often allowed that. Rightly so, to be fair (or unfair – who cares!). For they often have what others only fantasise of having – an ability to strike like the king cobra; when the victim knows it is generally too late. None does any of these better than Shoaib Akhtar though.
Continue reading "It’s SHO-time, folks!"
Comments (16)
Posted by Scott Wickstein on 12/07/2005 in The Players
Even at the age of 35, no one doubts that Glenn McGrath is one of the world's leading fast bowlers, even if it is an age since he pushed the speedometer past 140 kmph. He may not be the fastest bowler but he is still one of the best, spearheading the Australian attack for a decade now.
Sometimes though, I feel that for all of his wonderful achievements, Glenn McGrath might be somewhat under appreciated, at least in Australia. To understand how much he's done, the joy of StatsGuru comes to our aid. If you look at the career summary for Glenn McGrath, it is pretty obvious- he has done everything that a bowler could do, and he's done it year in, year out, against all comers, in every part of the world. And he's still doing it. So far this summer, close to his 36th birthday, he's taken 16 wickets at 20.43
Continue reading "Does Glenn McGrath get his due?"
Comments (180)
December 4, 2005
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 12/04/2005 in Miscellaneous
Let’s explore a new game. The oldest one, perhaps. Envisage an amphitheatre with a frighteningly large and admirably levelled playing field. We call it the arena. Standing loftily amidst the eerily quiet arena are a handful of very high pedestals of various shapes and sizes, strewn over the place like islands on the oceanscape. Each such pedestal, or podium, has just enough space for one person at the top. Painfully narrow and disconcertingly steep ladders offer access to each pedestal from all possible sides.
That was a virtual panoramic footage of the arena. For it is not quite so quiet in reality. This amphitheatre of glory is forever overflowing with numerous enthusiastic players desirous of participating in this game. This is no team game – each one for himself. Each player picks a pedestal of his choice and plays with the aim of making a successful climb up the crowded ladders to the top of the pedestal and trying to stay on at the lone spot on offer. If thrown off by a pretender, the player has to try and rework his way to the top from wherever he lands. The choice of pedestal is at the player’s discretion.
Continue reading "Staying at the top"
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December 3, 2005
Posted by Zainub Razvi on 12/03/2005 in Pakistan
Nothing succeeds like success, and one of the greatest pleasures of life is succeeding when people said you couldn’t. England experienced that better then most when they defeated Australia 2-1 in the Ashes after Glenn McGrath predicted his Australian side would win 5-0. Now it’s Pakistan’s turn to enjoy that kind of pleasure. A 2-0 victory over an English side that came here looking to assert the hype generated by their own press and followers apropos them being the best side in the world is a memorable feat.
Made even more impressive by the fact that it has been achieved by what is at heart a young, emerging side. Even more remarkably, the only time Pakistan was able to field (or chose to rather) its strongest XI (in Faisalabad) they failed to win. The miracle at Multan was achieved without Rana or Afridi, and in Lahore, Younis Khan and Afridi were missing again. Abdul Razzaq, an integral member of this side over the last season, was injured through out. What then, one may ask, forced a result that will have out lived the expectations of even the most sanguine of Pakistani fans?
Continue reading "Something special"
Comments (19)
December 2, 2005
Posted by Krishna Kumar on 12/02/2005 in Miscellaneous
Cricketing topics you must admit make for the best conversations. For seemingly no real reason you can keep talking about the game. Frequently, when you run out of topics of current interest, periods of nostalgia drift in. And then, your thoughts take totally different turns and the dialogue takes on a completely different tone. Topics merge into one another and everything appears to make complete, continuous sense. A sort of soothing, equal music.
A few days back, a friend and I were talking about how we learnt to play our cricket. The conversation gradually turned to players' mannerisms we'd picked up somewhere along the line during our so-called cricketing lives. He said, as a kid, he'd try imitating Gavaskar. On a hunch, I laughed and asked him whether it was the settling into his stance part that he would attempt copying. He said Yes. Curious parallels like these somehow increase the pace of the Cricketing Conversation. The mood is lightened, frequently, you are chuckling, the world appears a sunnier place, Bangalore suddenly feels like Kerala etc. And, this got me thinking.
It is remarkable how uncomfortable I used to feel when batting (as a kid or even sometimes I must admit as a teenager) if I did not get the time to do the Gavaskar-settling-into-his-stance bit. It partly explained why I could never bat in the Nets. There was simply no time for you to settle into your stance. But, actual matches were different. As the bowler shuffled back to his run, the left leg would already be in place, the right leg would soon swing compactly into place right behind it. The process seemed to give you some sort of presiding authority over bowlers. The bowler about to start off on his run, you sliding your right leg into place. You felt a proper batsman. Settled in your stance, the reference point to your strokes all nice and balanced. You viewed the slips with disdain. Your mind occupied a high plane where edges didn't exist.
Continue reading "Ganguly's stiff hip and other stories."
Comments (2)
Posted by Anantha on 12/02/2005 in Miscellaneous
Time and again, history shows that man has embarked on futile searches for elusive mythical riches. The search for an Indian all-rounder seems have fared no better. And I don’t think that this search is ever going to end, well, not until certain issues are resolved. But far easier would be a simple scope change.
If you ask me, the definition of an all-rounder is all skewed. Ask one the selectors who were in the panel last year to name his favorite all-rounder and I bet I can guess what his answer would be. Oh wait, I was not supposed to write that. But to my defense, I think this mindset is typical of any average Indian, who would define an all-rounder as a batsman who can bowl at least 5 overs a day and keep the batsmen quiet and take wickets from time to time. So, the focus in the sub-continent seems on finding players who would contribute both with the ball and the bat. And there lies the flaw.
Continue reading "All-rounder – adept cricketer or anachronism?"
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Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 12/02/2005 in Miscellaneous
Welcome to the future. This is the 2007 Cricket World Cup. India are playing against the hosts at Trinidad. Chris Gayle, on a recent high of one-day form, opens the batting. Marking his guard, he looks up to see Harbhajan Singh ambling in and handing over his hat to Aleem Dar. Gayle stands motionless for a moment or two, and then takes strike gingerly. The only 'Cool' guy standing near the batting crease seems to be the opposition's decision maker Mohammad Kaif, who has been nominated by official skipper Rahul Dravid to lead for this match on the basis of his spot-on interpretation of West Indian players' habits.
The West Indies struggle to post a target of 242 on a batting beauty, thanks to a meagre 55 runs resulting from the decisive 20 overs of 'strangulator' Harbhajan and R P Singh-on-song which also yielded a few wickets. Post lunch, the home team starts their warm-up to defend whatever little was put on board mainly through the middle-over frantic running of one-drop Ricardo Powell and skipper Sarwan. Darren Powell feels out his shoulders while eyeing the Indian dressing room. Cricket watchers around the globe await an answer to their lunch-break question from the TV channels on predicting the first three batsmen for India in today's match.
Continue reading "Optimised one-day cricket: vision 2007"
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Posted by Lahar Appaiah on 12/02/2005 in Miscellaneous
The start of a Test series always leaves me a little breathless with anticipation. More so if it involves India. I might sound like an old fogey well past his use-by date but, here you go - I love Test cricket, and while one day cricket is always enjoyable to watch and even more fun to play, there is nothing that beats the sheer joy of sitting and watching five days of Test cricket.
On the eve of the first Test between India and Sri Lanka at Chennai, Cyclone Baaz threatens to dampen that enthusiasm a bit. But, only a bit. After ten days of watching powerplays and last ten overs and typical one day fun, the Real Stuff is here. And if you want to find out just why I love Test cricket, then you can.....
Continue reading "This Delicious Anticipation..."
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Posted by Gaurav Sabnis on 12/02/2005 in India-Pakistan
Damn you, Inzamam-ul-Haq! Why can't you be meaner, spew venom and act hostile? You and you men are slowly killing off one of the most mouth-watering rivalry franchises in sports today. You and your men are taking the sheen off the India-Pakistan rivalry.
Remember the sentiment surrounding any India-Pakistan cricket match in the 80s and 90s? A more explosive mix of jingoism and pure hatred would be tougher to find even in the 1930s in Germany. We hated the Pakistani players and every match became a war. People cried and tore their wigs out when close matches ended in the enemy's pocket. Pakistanis celebrated India's defeat to Sri Lanka in the 1996 World Cup semi-finals, and Indians were ecstatic at Australia thrashing Pakistan in the 1999 final.
Continue reading "Damn you, Inzy!"
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December 1, 2005
Posted by Ken Tinker on 12/01/2005 in England
September 12, 2005: The Ashes are England's, the crowds were celebrating in the streets, and numerous and loud were the English fans claiming their team as the world's number one Test nation. Having defeated Australia, on the back of 18 months of glory, there seemed to be some weight to their words...
December 1, 2005: Less than 3 months later, and not even England's blindly patriotic commentators seem to want to push the case of their countrymen’s world dominance. England have been worn down in Pakistan, and even with the help of some very ordinary umpiring decisions, have been made to look very average. All of this begs the question - how good ARE England?
Continue reading "So how good ARE England?"
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Posted by Jai Arjun Singh on 12/01/2005 in Miscellaneous
In the last couple of years I haven’t been following cricket as closely as I earlier used to, but every once in a while something happens (a brilliant Lara or Gilchrist innings, a halfway decent knock by Sachin, a dominant performance by a team - usually Australia, latterly England) that gets my pulse racing again. Currently, that something is Steve Waugh’s wonderful autobiography Out of My Comfort Zone, the 700-odd pages of which I devoured in a day and a half.
One thing that struck me most forcefully about the book was that here is a man who has only just turned 40, and who might well have lived only half his life (or less) so far - and yet he has already published a mammoth, comprehensive memoir. If the subject of this autobiography had been a 40-year-old businessman, or actor, or a celebrity in almost any other profession, it would have seemed gratuitous and marketing-driven. But in Waugh’s case it doesn’t at all seem inappropriate. And this got me thinking about how peculiarly (and poignantly) skewed the trajectory of a top sportperson’s life is compared to that of most other people.
Continue reading "The graph of a cricketer’s life"
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