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September 22, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 09/22/2006 in Miscellaneous
Did you know that besides being an all time great batsman the Indian cricket coach is quite Viv Richards-like in qualifying as one of the top all rounders to have played in ODI's?? I never even bothered to check until I came across this Friday column by S Rajesh on cricinfo.
Chappell has taken 72 wkts in the 74 ODI's he played!! Now I know what makes him bowl so much at the top order men in the nets.
Continue reading "Wanted: batting strike rates on players' stats"
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August 31, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 08/31/2006 in Miscellaneous
Here’s a much-awaited treatise on that great mystery of cricket – swing. While Saad Shafqat mentions a few interesting facts there about the past of swing bowling and touches upon the scientific simplicity of it all, he yorks me with the lines:
It is often said that reverse (super) swing is poorly understood, but in fact it is a simple and straightforward technique that you can try in your own backyard. All you need is a tennis ball, a roll of electrical insulation tape, and a set of stumps to aim at. Cover one half of the ball with strips of tape and hold it down the center, with the taped side entirely to one side. For a toe-bruising yorker, keep the taped side towards leg and deliver the ball aiming for second slip. About two-thirds of the way the ball will curve like a banana and crash into the base of middle and leg. The faster you are the better, but you don't have to be very quick to create the effect. To bowl a menacing outswinger, keep the taped side facing off and aim for fine leg. The physics is elementary. The smooth, taped side creates less turbulence than the uncovered, rough side of the tennis ball. Less turbulence means lesser resistance, and the ball moves in that direction.
Continue reading "Swinging in confusion"
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August 7, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 08/07/2006 in Miscellaneous
What is the best way to celebrate an anniversary? Simple - recreate the original magic.
Test cricket in the year 2006 has so far been generally disappointing. If we delve deeper for reasons we find that most of these Test series were afflicted by at least two of the four principal causes behind nondescript matches: mismatch in strengths of rival sides, loss of key players through injury, pitches that are unconducive to rivetting cricket (bat dominating ball being the bigger problem) and safety first approach from skippers.
Continue reading "A nice celebration for a 1st anniversary"
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July 13, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 07/13/2006 in Miscellaneous
Mr. Martin Crowe is once again caught spewing generous doses of oral vitriol. In his latest outburst Crowe has come down heavily, among other things, on the candidature of some fledgling sides of international cricket. I am an admirer of Crowe's frankness of expression at most times but on this occasion I failed to agree with his skewed notion.
Crowe browses through Bangladesh's Test graph and announces:
"Bangladesh have played a staggering 44 Tests, for one win, over just six years - they simply aren't going to make it."
Continue reading "As the Crowe flies in the wrong direction..."
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July 4, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 07/04/2006 in Miscellaneous
Cricket funda: Hadlee's comet comes once in 29 years
The only 2 bowlers to take modern Australian batsmen for breakfast, lunch and dinner over full series, Sir Richard Hadlee and Harbhajan Singh, were born on the same day, 29 years apart.
Corollary: If we extrapolate that occurence then someone born somewhere on the 3rd July of 2009 may grow up to manhandle Aussie batsmen again.
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June 15, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 06/15/2006 in Miscellaneous
The other day I sent this interesting excerpt from a cricinfo throwback to a friend:
"David Gower was certainly not in the same league as any of the others on this list - indeed, it could be argued that he was one of the worst bowlers ever to have been unleashed on Test cricket. Nevertheless, he became the eighth person - and second Englishman - to be no-balled for throwing in a Test. He had few complaints. With New Zealand needing one to win in the second Test at Trent Bridge in 1986, Gower came on and openly threw his first ball which Martin Crowe smacked for four to end the game. But Ken Palmer at square leg called a no-ball, and so Gower ended with the figures 0-0-4-0."
Continue reading "When elegance went on a holiday"
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June 6, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 06/06/2006 in Miscellaneous
You strut into a home Test series as skipper of the overwhelming favourites to win the series.
You start your 1st day on that note but then ...
Your opponents shock you with a fighting display least expected of them. They make you slog over a drawn opening match. It is a moral victory for them, assuming any such victories exist.
You come back strongly and win the 2nd convincingly. Everybody expects you to hammer the final nail in the coffin but...
Continue reading "Taking the Sting with the Ring"
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May 21, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 05/21/2006 in Miscellaneous
Marlon Samuels exhibited fine fitness in the first two ODI's versus India at Jamaica. That takes care of his 'knee-gling' fitness woes of late. He contributed to a stabilising partnership with Sarwan, and that must give him batting hope for the coming matches. And as always his off-spin bowling was a handy plus for his team. Samuels bowled exceptionally well during each of his spells in the 2nd match that culminated in a classic final over, reminding viewers of the tied Australia - South Africa semi-final of 1999 World Cup. His constrictive bowling was pivotal to a stunning West Indian effort that broke India's 17 match streak of consecutive successful chases by a solitary run.
But what on earth was an 82 mph delivery doing in his armoury?? Yeah, that is EIGHTY TWO Miles an hour!
Continue reading "Marlon's 82 mph Hurl-in"
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May 17, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 05/17/2006 in Miscellaneous
There's a strange cheat lurking around the world's cricket grounds these days. He loves to hijack some specifically chosen international cricketer on the eve of a Test match. Then he painstakingly dons an impeccable physical makeover, Hollywood style, in order to resemble this missing player, all for the sake of a scarcely believable kick. And what's his kick?
Continue reading "Beware of the Imposter!"
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May 5, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 05/05/2006 in Miscellaneous
"We are not going to play names anymore."
"We are going to play to a plan. We are going to have positions. We going to have requirements to those positions, and it doesn't matter who it is..."
"If these positions are being fulfilled in the way that we like these players are going to have the opportunity to continue within the team."
"Right now, we are unsettled in terms of the order, but in our minds we have settled on what the exact positions they need to be, and we are working our way to find the right players in the right position."
The Chappell way catches on and good ole West Indian skipper Brian Lara jumps on the bandwagon with plans to ambush none other than the mastermind himself.
April 30, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 04/30/2006 in Miscellaneous
Stephen Fleming scores a big Test double in the ongoing Test series. Fleming’s 99 from his last Test tour in SA and that one-day ton against the South Africans in the last World Cup immediately spring to mind. This man loves scoring against South Africa. I run the Cricinfo stats filter to confirm, and am promptly told that I drew a blank there. For someone with an overall career batting average approaching 39, Fleming fared a meagre 30.15 runs (573 aggregate) against South Africans prior to this match and the 262 at Capetown stands out like Table Mountains in the Newlands stadium backdrop.
I turn to his ODI stats in desperation. Fleming averages only a point and a half more than his career average (32.07) against his imagined ‘bunnies’, and that World Cup century remains by far his best score playing South Africa. Just two filtering exercises on Cricinfo’s statsguru and ‘pop’ goes a confidently held notion.
Continue reading "Check up on that notion with stats"
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April 21, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 04/21/2006 in Miscellaneous
1st ODI of DLF Cup between India and Pakistan at Abu Dhabi: Pakistan, chasing 198, are 70/2 after 17.3 overs. Irfan Pathan bowls the 4th delivery and Inzamam cuts it to left of point. The diving point fielder Yuvraj Singh denies non-striker Younis Khan a view of the ball as the latter bolts off the blocks expecting it to go past Yuvraj. But Yuvraj recovers from a rubbery full-stretch dive in a flash, ball in hand and flings it at the bowler’s end where Younis is now scampering back from mid-pitch. Throw comes at the wrong side of the stumps.
Continue reading "WG comes to Sheikh Zayed stadium"
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April 11, 2006
Posted by Chris on 04/11/2006 in Miscellaneous
A distant aunt of mine is a psychic. Well, actually, let me explain further. Up until fairly recently Aunt Doris (stage name “Doris Decker-Spirit Queen”) was viewed by everyone in our family as an affable albeit slightly scary fruitcake.
Imagine my surprise then, when last night during a routine family get together, Doris whips out her Ouija board and proclaims to be communicating with Coverdrivicus the Greek God of cricket. Our entire family (being the cricket nuts we are), put down our chopsticks and paid attention to what is transpiring to be some scarily accurate insights into the future;
Continue reading "My Aunt Doris"
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March 29, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 03/29/2006 in Miscellaneous
Take a 5th day match report of Mumbai Test and perform the following precise operations:
Continue reading "Cricket reporting made easy"
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March 28, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 03/28/2006 in Miscellaneous
"Hell! He had just this one over to play and it would be tea."
Viewed from outside the boundary ropes, cricket can often be an easy game to play. Everything the players attempt on the field is but child's play to the majority of us watching from the stands, peeping at the internet scorecard, and gazing at the idiot box. We have seen ex-players failing the temptation to step into this armchair-critic mode.
"C'mon pal, you simply cannot afford to have such an ordinary yorker at this level."
England are 23/2 chasing India's 203 in the 1st ODI. How's this one for the barmy army to boo their dismissed batsmen?
"Sure your coach tells you a thousand times that Pathan swings one way, but you still have to gift him your wicket through another left-handed nick or right-handed lbw."
A bit too long for the regular couch-potato's liking, I guess.
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Posted by Chris on 03/28/2006 in Miscellaneous
Whether you love it or loathe it, sledging is a part of the game. Some cricketers have carved slices of history out of classic sledges and others.....well....some others just don’t get it.
Continue reading "Someone please teach Andre how to sledge"
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March 22, 2006
Posted by Chris on 03/22/2006 in Miscellaneous
If the cricketing nations of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh were a design company looking to bid on a printing contract for a multinational organisation, they would by now have been told to pack up their printing press and hit the road.
But the ICC is not your everyday multinational and this is cricket not commerce, meaning the World Cup 2011 bid submitted by the Asian nations has been generously allowed to remain in contention despite falling foul of the guidelines generated by the ICC.
Continue reading "Tender treatment"
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Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 03/22/2006 in Miscellaneous
Australia score 434 in fifty overs at Johannesburg and South Africa hunt them down with a wicket and a delivery to spare. Thrilling indeed - because they made a match of it as the script progressed, because none dared guess the result till it came.
Sri Lanka struggle to 130 all out against Pakistan at the Premadasa in the 2nd ODI and then hit back to have their opponents at 82/6. They made a match of it too.
Continue reading "'Even contest' grounds"
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March 14, 2006
Posted by Chris on 03/14/2006 in Miscellaneous
Poor old Mick Lewis. None for 113 is the worst ever bowling performance in a one day international. That kind of statistic has a habit of sticking to a player like a teenage girl to a Kevin Pietersen fan site.
Continue reading "Stuff that sticks"
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March 13, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 03/13/2006 in Miscellaneous
5.00 pm IST: Channel surfing was never so much fun. Kumble was taking the English middle order on a ride at Mohali on one button and the Australian captain was batting like some eye-candy Terminator at Johannesburg on another. Found time to message my friend Samir about the folly of Smith referring to Ponting's Aussies as 'chokers' in press. Little need of charging such rivals up on the eve of a decider, I opined.
5:30 pm IST: Australia have crossed 400 and are still going strong. I thought of postponing the imminent 3-hour evening journey back to Haldia (my workplace) and stay back at Kolkata. "Great batting is sure to continue in the South African chase dear; don't miss it" - the Johannesburg pitch enticed with a smile. But what of the very early wake up tomorrow?
Continue reading "12th March, 2006: while I was travelling"
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March 12, 2006
Posted by Chris on 03/12/2006 in Miscellaneous
Cricketers can be a canny lot, prone to using any means possible to eek out an advantage, however small. A well aimed sledge or a gnarly comment at a press conference are examples of cricketers flirting with the spirit of the game but staying faithful to its laws in the hope of inducing rash responses from the opposition. By and large these are tolerated if not exactly condoned tactics.
When a player oversteps the line though, such as Michael Atherton’s PocketGate affair in 1994, they tend to receive a public flogging. Ball tampering is a no fly zone with the cricket authorities.
Continue reading "Replacement ball swings out Windies"
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February 28, 2006
Posted by Chris on 02/28/2006 in Miscellaneous
The last time Australia and New Zealand attempted to co-host a sporting tournament of any significance, the result was nothing short of farcical.
The competition was the Rugby World Cup of 2003 and the outcome was that New Zealand failed to provide some critical logistic and commercial assurances and consequently forfeited their half of the hosting deal.
Continue reading "Second chance for Kiwis and Aussies to harmonise"
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February 16, 2006
Posted by Chris on 02/16/2006 in Miscellaneous
For the vast majority of the crowd at Eden Park, tonight’s Twenty20 game against the West Indies was about just one thing. Saying goodbye to Chris Cairns.
When Cairns walked out to bat a cheer erupted through the crowd that sent a genuine chill up your spine. When he walked off the field only moments later, having spluttered his way to two runs, every man woman and child stood to applaud this iconic cricketer’s exit from the game. Cairns even looked as though he may have shed a tear, and who would blame him?
Continue reading "Bowl off’s, bashed babes and bye byes."
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February 7, 2006
Posted by Scott Wickstein on 02/07/2006 in Miscellaneous
Thanks to today’s result, we now know that Sri Lanka will play Australia in the finals of the VB series. This is good for the series, because in my opinion, Sri Lanka are better equipped then South Africa are to cause an upset win in at least one of the fixtures and push the series into a third final. Which is something that has not happened for twelve seasons. The trend strongly is that the team that wins the first final goes onto win.
So for Sri Lanka, to win the first final is very important indeed. If they can somehow conjure up a win in Adelaide on Friday night, they will have a great fillip and the second final is on their favourite Australian ground, Sydney. Between now and Friday, Sri Lanka’s coach Tom Moody will be working on a game plan to surprise the Australians, and he’ll probably use Cricinfo’s Statsguru program. Let’s see what Statsguru says.
Continue reading "What Statsguru can tell us about the first final between Australia and Sri Lanka"
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February 4, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 02/04/2006 in Miscellaneous
Then shut it away in the locker with priceless jewellery and read on.
Continue reading "Is Silence golden?"
Comments (1)
January 27, 2006
Posted by Chris on 01/27/2006 in Miscellaneous
Raise the subject of Twenty20 cricket and you will inevitably witness a polarisation of opinion on the scale of the Red Sea parting.
To the left hand of Moses is “Team Purist” consisting of those avid followers of the longer version of the game who immerse themselves in statistics and history and are usually fiercely protective of the years of invested time it requires to accumulate such a profound knowledge of ‘proper’ cricket.
Continue reading "Tapping into Generation X-box"
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January 24, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 01/24/2006 in Miscellaneous
On my way to work I was self-exploring for a suitable New Year’s mantra. It was already the 2nd of January in 2006 and I simply could not delay it any further. I reached office toying with a few flamboyant options. A look at my table promptly evoked a largely acceptable though less romantic one: tidiness.
Half an hour later I was sitting at a somewhat cleaner desk (it took longer, to be honest). Now came the digital housekeeping; mostly the two and a half million e-mails. Shift-deleting through some age-old folders with scarce discretion I chanced upon this freak e-discussion about an Indo-Australian Test match at Mumbai in 2004, the one of pitch-controversy fame. The curious coincidence discussed in that string looked a bit creepier in retrospect of the horrors (on-field ones) that these Ashes held in store for the Aussies. I attempted to recompile the multiple bit contributions from participants. It shapes up roughly like this:
Continue reading "K-mystery: the little-known apparition"
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January 23, 2006
Posted by Chris on 01/23/2006 in Miscellaneous
That Malcolm Speed should be compared to Kofi Annan surprises me little. Both are front men for organisations intent on managing perceptions rather than outcomes. That Michael Atherton has written an unyielding article identifying the similarities between the UN and the ICC comes as little surprise either. Athers has for a long time been an astute and poignant observer of the game.
Continue reading "Move over or I’ll wag my tail"
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January 22, 2006
Posted by Chris on 01/22/2006 in Miscellaneous
Okay, so I picked the particular year as a lame Monday morning pun, but my point is to try and take a peek at what the game might look like fifteen or twenty years from now.
Continue reading "Cricket in the year 2020"
Comments (15)
January 20, 2006
Posted by Chris on 01/20/2006 in Miscellaneous
When the cricket equipment manufacturer Kookaburra, describes the composition of their cricket balls, you can almost taste the century of history the company has behind it. “Five layers of cork and worsted yarn” is a phrase that conjures images of Alfred Grace Thompson, a migrant harness maker and Kookaburra’s founder, carefully crafting a cricket ball with the help of his two sons. Add a touch of “first grade alum tanned steer hide cover with finest linen stitching” and you can almost hear the sound of the ball connecting with a cricket bat. (A sound that Kookaburra lay a tongue in cheek claim to patenting.)
Kookaburra provides these wonderful descriptions of its entire range of cricket balls for all surfaces and in all colours and according to the manufacturer there is no discernible difference between the red and white variety of its products. Both are lovingly crafted from identical materials in a mirror image process. The difference, they say is only in the colour applied to the hide of the unfortunate steer.
However, place a white ball in the right hand of Brett Lee and you could be forgiven for thinking that Alfred Thompson had left a bottle of fairy dust in his factory with instructions to add a few drops to each white ball that gently plopped off his Kookaburra production line.
Continue reading "The white ball wonder"
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January 19, 2006
Posted by Lahar Appaiah on 01/19/2006 in Miscellaneous
Bishen Singh Bedi, that gruff and wonderfully entertaining doyen of classical spin bowling in India, sounded almost gleeful in this morning's papers, when commenting about how the world record for the highest opening stand in cricket is still intact.
His article contains a brief line on how Sehwag was not aware of who Vinoo Mankad and Pankaj Roy were. Perhaps therein, he concludes, "lies justice well delivered". True, true. Or, wait a minute- did he just say that one's ability to break records should be directly linked to one's knowledge of the Game's Great and Glorious Past???
Continue reading "The Gods of All Things??"
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January 15, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 01/15/2006 in Miscellaneous
Movie connoisseurs may please return to other websites for there can be nothing but disappointment for them in this post if it showed up on their google search. This is not a review of the classic Fellini movie going by the same name.
That figure in the header is the simple answer to a simple question asked in various formats over the last couple of days by journalists, commentators, cricket viewers and cricketers alike:
After how many years are we seeing as batsman-friendly a cricket pitch as the one being used for the ongoing 1st Indo-Pak Test at Lahore?
Continue reading "Eight and a half: A bit about Lahore pitch and Indian bowling"
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January 12, 2006
Posted by Angshuman Hazra on 01/12/2006 in Miscellaneous
Rahul Bhatia has a point about the television rights row here. The 3rd paragraph was especially hard-hitting and warns about the consequences of whetting the wrong appetites. It is dreadful short-sightedness on part of the state to even insist on such a thing. No compromises possible there indeed.
Reading through the column though, I had mixed feelings. Mainly from a realisation that in some ways this particular topic is far touchier than the regular commercial issue of rights invasion of some private business houses by a new state policy.
Continue reading "To see or not to see live"
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January 1, 2006
Posted by Krishna Kumar on 01/01/2006 in Miscellaneous
Aqib Javed in the exquisitely written Rahul Bhattacharya book, Pundits from Pakistan, talks at length about the effects of taped ball games on cricket in Pakistan. It's a topic a few of us used to talk a lot about, in intense post-match discussions in Ottawa. Aqib makes a bunch of interesting points in the course of his treatise. Those will be taken up shortly. But, let me try building up some context first.
Like a lot of other cricket-mad, homesick sub-continental graduate students stuck on North American campuses, we used to play a fair amount of club cricket in Montreal. Which, surprisingly has (or had, I've heard it's down to two now) three divisions of around 10 teams each. Each team had a first division team and then a second division one. The games were played on weekends and on matting. Cricket was fairly intense, with occasional visits by some West Indian second rung first class players. We used to have a West Indian ex-under-20s team player as captain for a while. Methuen Isaac, very talented, I'm sure if he'd kept at cricket, rather than focus on Chemistry, he'd have come very close to senior West Indian team selection. He used to refer to Hooper and Lara as Carl and Brian, and I remember feeling an odd lump in the throat bowling to him. Back to taped ball cricket however.
Continue reading "Taped ball cricket musings and then a bit more"
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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 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 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"
Comments (9)
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 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 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"
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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 14, 2005
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"
Comments (5)
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 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 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."
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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 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 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."
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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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December 1, 2005
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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November 29, 2005
Posted by Arun Kumar on 11/29/2005 in Miscellaneous
The middle-finger salute by Greg Chappell has had the entire media agreeing on one issue. That it was brought upon by the crowd & that the crowd deserved it. Suddenly “Wisdom of the crowd” and “Customer is the king” thoughts have been pushed to the backburner. People are all convinced that the entire Eden Gardens crowd was unruly & that they brought it upon them. None of them have asked Chappell to apologize or be reprimanded. The general feeling has been that the crowd got what they deserved and the storyline has been that the crowd incensed by Ganguly’s absence, heckled the coach and the coach unbearable at the crowd’s behavior…showed the finger…poor coach, pity the poor coach!
Continue reading "Wisdom of the crowd!"
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