Meanwhile, Jon Culley caught up with Nottinghamshire’s new player Stuart Broad for The Independent ahead of his Notts debut. He finds, like many before, that Broad has a calm head on his young shoulders. While Broad realises that he will be forever associated with Yuvraj Singh hitting six sixes from him, he shrugs it off. His chilled-out approach belies his youth and he’s just enjoying playing Test cricket for now, and learning as much as he can.
Anil Kumble has bowled alongside Harbhajan Singh for a decade and is now his Test captain. Regarding the latest controversy that Harbhajan was involved in - an on-field spat with Sreesanth - Kumble writes in the Hindustan Times that it's important someone ensures that players are given the right kind of advice, that there are professionals around to help them cope with fame and handle the money it brings.
Harmison's progress from now on will be intriguing. He has been copping flak from all directions. But I was impressed by an interview he gave before Durham's first Friends Provident Trophy match of the season against Yorkshire. Too often he has not helped himself in such situations, speaking over-emotionally and appearing to rid himself of cricketing responsibility. But here he was upbeat and clear. "I wouldn't be playing for Durham if I did not think I could play for England," he said cheerfully and defiantly.
It was a good comment for two reasons. Firstly there are too many cricketers playing out time in county cricket with no ambition to play for England. There is, of course, a vital balance to be struck between experience and youth in any team, let alone a county side, but that should not be confused with the pointless tending of dead wood. Secondly, such a long-term scenario is a much-discussed worry - albeit mostly in private - about Harmison now. Will he cruise until the end of his central contract in September and then head for the easy road with Durham thereafter?
Posted 1 week, 5 days ago in English cricket
Christopher Martin-Jenkins is leaving The Times and, as a parting gift to his many fans, he lists 25 of his favourite moments covering the sport.
1981
Headingley. This has to be the Dom Perignon 2000. The match that England could not win but did. Ian Botham's wonderfully free-spirited innings and Bob Willis's sensational fast bowling on a horribly tricky pitch on the last day. As in 2005, the matches that followed, at Edgbaston and Old Trafford, were scarcely less inspiring.
1985
Edgbaston in glorious weather and more Aussie bashing. David Gower in supreme form, ten wickets in the match for Richard Ellison, and Edmonds and Emburey in harness.
Posted 1 week, 5 days ago in Indian Premier League
While the BCCI probes the Harbhajan-Sreesanth controversy, Amiesh Saheba, one of the on-field umpires, offers hints as to what instigated Harbhajan to slap his opponent. Saheba says Sreesanth relentlessly abused the Punjab players through the match, despite being warned twice by the umpires. However, he condemns Harbhajan's reaction. Mumbai Mirror has the full story.
"Sreesanth was sledging Mumbai's batsmen right from the start. He was over-the-top throughout the match and was acting like a petulant schoolboy."
On the topic of infamous altercations on the field, Mid-Day caught up with Rashid Patel, the left-arm seamer who was banned by the Indian board for 13 months in 1991 for chasing Raman Lamba with a stump during a Duleep Trophy match. Patel advices Harbhajan Singh to keep himself occupied and work on his spin variations and forget he's serving a sentence.
During my ban period, I supervised Baroda’s Ranji Trophy preparatory camp. Harbhajan can help his teammates too. I firmly believe that a cricketer can continue to learn by observing others at play and there is a lot of action that Harbhajan can watch.
Meanwhile, Andrew Symonds, who was caught up with his all entanglements with Harbhajan in Australia, says he is "much better off" after his IPL stint in India. Sandeep Dwivedi of the Indian Express caught up with him on the sidelines of an ad shoot.
Posted 1 week, 6 days ago in Indian Premier League
A day after the theft of power cables at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata, there are signs of a larger controversy brewing, with the Cricket Association of Bengal chief Prasun Mukherjee fearing that yesterday’s thefts and the April 20 floodlight fiasco are “linked” and part of a “larger concerted effort to sabotage” the IPL matches in Kolkata. Expect a thick security cover when Kolkata take on Mumbai on Tuesday. The Indian Express has more.
While Kolkata Police Commissioner GM Chakrabarti has deployed policemen in huge numbers at the stadium — almost turning the ground into a fortress — the CAB has hired a 25-member security team from Group-4 Securicos for round-the-clock vigil. The city police chief, meanwhile, briefed that a few people were being interrogated over the power cord thefts at the Eden Gardens.
April 28, 2008
Posted 2 weeks ago in Indian Premier League
Harbhajan Singh has been temporarily suspended from the Mumbai Indians side for his on-field altercation with Sreesanth and the Hindustan Times editors wonder if they were wrong in presuming the new professionalism among Indian cricketers would actually spur IPL rivals to egg each other on when it comes to playing for India.
According to the Indian Express editorial, the BCCI should be concerned about the iconisation of its cricketers.
It was obviously felt that an Indian icon was required by the squads for a sense of city loyalty to coalesce around each of them. Without the stars, it could be said, the IPL as a summertime entertainer would not be possible.
Harbhajan’s outrageous — though unsurprising — behaviour shows the dangers of nurturing the star system.
In the Times of India Sanjay Manjrekar writes that the clash has given the IPL governing council and excellent opportunity opportunity to show the cricketing world and especially its skeptics, that underneath all its million dollars and the glamour, the fanfare and the uninhibited commercialisation of the sport, rests a pure cricketing soul.
Mid-Day, a Mumbai-based tabloid, carries an account of an on-field brawl between Farokh Engineer, the match referee in the Mohali game, and team-mate Abid Ali in a Prudential Cup match in 1975.
The Engineer-Abid scrap did not get physical but water was thrown at each other much to the disgust of late manager G S Ramchand whose expensive suit was more than just damp.
Also read the letters to the Hindu editor from readers disappointed with the incident.
Posted 2 weeks ago in IPL
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Shane Watson - 'blown away' (file photo)
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Will Swanton writes in the Sydney Morning Herald on the galvanising effects of the IPL which is bringing global harmony:
The IPL was supposed to divide the cricketing world. Instead, it's bringing an end to racial hostilities. All they need to do now is get Harbhajan Singh to stop slapping his fellow Indians around.
Shane Watson has been “blown away” by the IPL and thinks it will be good for future international matches. He tells the paper:
“It's like a celebration of cricket. You have Indian players playing with Australians and South Africans and Pakistanis and you get the chance to know blokes you didn't really know before. There's such a different range of players in every team, and it's going to break down a lot of the bad feelings or bad communication there might have been before. There will always be strong rivalries when we go back to having countries playing each other, but this is bringing a lot of people together.”
April 27, 2008
Posted 2 weeks ago in ICC
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Malcolm Speed: worrying more about chrysanthemums than cricket
© Getty Images
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The ICC’s decision to send Malcolm Speed off to tend to his garden for his last couple of months as CEO has hardly met with a wave of approval. While Speed had his critics, the move is seen as unnecessary muscle-flexing and score-settling by those who run the game but shoulder little of the responsibility when things go wrong.
In the New Zealand Herald, Dylan Cleaver pulls no punches, describing them as “too many small men with large egos who have too much at stake”. He added:
“Only Speed's family would describe his stewardship as flawless but he was at least trying to force an endgame in the thorny issue of Zimbabwe. But trying to out those who run the game there cost him his job. Go figure.”
The Guardian reported that Speed “was known to have grown increasingly uncomfortable with what he considered Mali’s policy of protection for Zimbabwe Cricket, an organisation that has become politicised by Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF regime”.
“English and Australian officials are known to be increasingly despondent with the ICC’s failure to demand reform of Zimbabwe Cricket but Chingoka has been able to count on the support of Mali, the South Africa board, Kenya, an associate member, as well as India. Speed leaves after a stormy tenure which ultimately left him disillusioned with an organisation dominated by an Asian bloc that many believe has become close to ungovernable.”
The Age said Australia’s administrators were weary with the ICC’s failure to address the Zimbabwe issue.
"One senior cricket figure, who did not want to be named, said it was sad that Speed had stood up for a principle and paid for it with his job. It exposes the naked politics at play around the ICC board table and the deep divisions in the game. The relationship between Speed and acting ICC president Ray Mali is said to have deteriorated beyond repair when Mali lobbied for the suppression of an audit that accused Zimbabwe of 'serious financial irregularities'."
In the Independent on Sunday, Stephen Brenkley cut to the chase.
“Zimbabwe, in case it be forgotten, have not played a Test for three years, are woefully weak as a one-day team but still retain full-member rights at the ICC. If you want to talk about sport, and not politics or morals or theft or the sins of old empire, what the hell are Zimbabwe doing there? The ICC chose to do nothing except lose a chief executive. Who knows who may be next? But it will be somebody because Zimbabwe gets them all.”
Posted 2 weeks ago in English cricket
England might have a new Troy Cooley on their hands, reckons Steve James in today's Sunday Telegraph, with the appointment of the relatively unknown Richard Halsall as their national fielding coach. Inevitably, thoughts turn to England's weakest fielder and what Halsall can do to help Monty Panesar:
Halsall's ideas are refreshing; his thoughts frankly articulated. Take my question about what to do with Monty Panesar, surely his biggest problem child in the England side.
"I will look to overload his practice and put him under more pressure," he says confidently. "I haven't met the bloke yet - only to say hello - but from all the things I've been told, he's got massive hands and never drops the ball in practice. But he obviously drops them in games. At first I'll probably show him clips of him being poor - to give him a reality check. I wouldn't let any practice situation with Monty become comfortable. I do a lot of sensory deprivation stuff where I actually put a patch on the player's eye. My idea is that if Monty is taking catches with me on a Monday before a Test with his non-dominant hand, and with only one eye, then he should be OK in front of thousands on the Thursday."
Posted 2 weeks ago in New Zealand cricket
Former New Zealand batsman Mark Richardson does not want New Zealand to head to Pakistan for their three-ODI series. In the New Zealand Herald he writes:
If Pakistan is to host the ICC Champions Trophy, then a three-match, one-day international series between New Zealand and Pakistan in Pakistan just prior to the tournament makes perfect sense - except for the fact that Pakistan should not be hosting the Champions Trophy and New Zealand should not tour there right now.
Posted 2 weeks ago in Pakistan cricket
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"I've never tried to copy anyone so I don't think my action matches anyone else's"
© International Cricket Council
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Ahead of the Women's Asia Cup, scheduled to begin in Sri Lanka on May 2, Pakistan captain Urooj Mumtaz spoke to PakPassion.Net about cricket, her life, fitness, legspin, Jonty Rhodes, why she thinks the Pakistan women's team is a committed unit, and a whole lot more.
Sample some snippets from the exclusive interview:
Even now a lot of the girls still have a lot of problems stemming from society (not from their immediate families), where people talk and this causes complications for them. It's very sad actually because it's such a beautiful sport to play. I think a lot of girls will understand when I say that even if the immediate family are willing, they often get influenced by society and that causes them to object to the girl playing cricket. Hopefully if the media give us more coverage and people get to see women playing cricket all the time, then it will become more acceptable to everyone.
or this:
The Shahid Afridi [of our team] is Kanta Jalil who's also a fast bowler but she loves to strike the ball out of the ground and she does hit it a very, very long way. When she gets it in the middle of the bat, the only place you'll find the ball is outside the ground! The Shoaib Akhtar is Asmavia Iqbal, she's the fastest bowler in our team and her favourite player is Shoaib Akhtar. She copies everything he does. The only difference between him and her is that she's completely fit, sticks to her game and does the job she's asked to do.
Posted 2 weeks, 1 day ago in Indian Premier League
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The volatile Sreesanth and Harbhajan Singh
© AFP
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Harbhajan Singh is involved in yet another on-field controversy and Times of India's Bobilli Vijay Kumar wants to know how long have these wounds been festering between these two highly volatile players, what riled Harbhajan so much that he couldn’t keep his fist to himself and whether he has become a chronic case?
Despite having played international cricket for a decade and being one of the more experienced players in the side, Harbhajan is never referred to as one of the senior players, writes Anand Vasu. Kadambari Murali, meanwhile, writes that its difficult to think of Sreesanth and think cricket. What comes to mind is an attention-seeking problem child. Read them in the Hindustan Times.
Posted 2 weeks, 1 day ago in Indian Premier League
In this great attempt to make the IPL appear the biggest success of the century none of us is being told how the organisers, except perhaps in Kolkata, are struggling to sell tickets and most of the full houses we watched are courtesy generously distributed passes, writes Pradeep Magazine in the Hindustan Times.
That the media too has lapped up this concept is evident from the amount of space being given to in newspapers and TV channels. What I found baffling was that when the news channels were discussing the issue of cheerleaders, they only harped upon the wrongs of moral policing and how our politicians are 'spolitsports'. No one focused on the fact that the cheerleaders themselves are feeling harassed by the crowd and find themselves the target of appalling, shocking and disgusting comments.
Deccan Chargers are still to win a game and their captain VVS Laxman is copping a lot of flak for their poor show. Sandeep Dwivedi writes in the Indian Express:
When VVS Laxman entered Eden Gardens to play his first Twenty20 game, it was akin to a maestro turning up for a boy-band on a stage that had witnessed his timeless classic.
The IPL’s entire structure rests on the TV ratings advertising generator for which it is critical that on TV it continues to look like it has host cities agog— for the next five weeks, writes Sharda Ugra in India Today.
Posted 2 weeks, 1 day ago in Twenty20
William Rees-Mogg, of the Times, has seen the great Don Bradman bat, and isn't impressed with cricket's latest format. In fact, he thinks its destroying the game's culture. In his view, Twenty20 "is a good deal less interesting than baseball, which is itself less interesting than cricket". In case you missed it first time round, the piece is now doing the rounds in Australia.
The culture of cricket now seems to be going the way of Troy, or indeed of the Roman Empire. The glory of cricket, with its intelligence and the complexity of the interplay, is sinking into the past. We are moving, surprisingly rapidly, into the dumbed-down cricket of Twenty20. Cricket first developed on village greens such as Hambledon, it looks as though it may come to an end at Bangalore.
Why do I instinctively dislike Twenty20 so much? It is not that I ever played cricket with even the lowest degree of club competence. I did have the good fortune to be a contemporary of Peter May at school. He was the leading batsman of the under-16 XI, and I was their scorer. My objection to Twenty20 is that it purports to be cricket but is a quite different and much less interesting game. Cricket seems to me to be the most fascinating of the team games of summer.
April 26, 2008
Posted 2 weeks, 2 days ago in English cricket
Forget the notion that playing for England is the only thing that matters to Michael Vaughan and his side, says the Independent's Angus Fraser. Taking a look at a recent survey by the Professional Cricketers Association, which shows that 35 per cent of those picked to play Test and one-day cricket would consider retiring from the international game prematurely to sign up for the highly lucrative Indian Premier League, Fraser lends a shoulder to "the hundreds of thousands of cricket fans who continue to spend a small fortune supporting the national side both at home and abroad".
April 25, 2008
Posted 2 weeks, 2 days ago in Indian Premier League
He’s been the ‘Sheik of Tweak’ and ‘Hollywood’ for years, but now Shane Warne is the ‘IPL King’, according to the Australian’s Bruce Loudon. Warne is not only the captain, coach and match-winner, but he has also picked up some Hindi.
There can be no minimising the reality that the Hollywood ending and high drama of the match against the Chargers shows that Warne is king not just of the Rajasthan Royals but the entire event.
Ron Reed says in the Herald Sun he can’t watch more than 12 overs of an IPL game because there is no emotional attachment, which is “pretty much a must-have ingredient if sport is to be meaningful”.
Who cares if the Deccan Chargers beat the Rajasthan Royals? Not this column, that's for sure. The fans in India might, but if it is Australians doing most of the heavy lifting - as has been the case in most matches so far - does that dilute the dynamics?
Jamie Pandaram, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, says there is no telling what character the one-week-old IPL will develop. In the Age Chloe Saltau takes a look at Andrew Symonds’ form.
Posted 2 weeks, 2 days ago in English cricket
Today's Guardian carries an archive obituary of Jim Laker by John Arlott 22 years after the former England spinner died. Arlott, who was cricket correspondent for the Guardian between 1968 and 1980, paid handsome tribute to Laker and carried some short anecdotes, such as the following:
He once asked me how many strides he took in his run-up to the wicket - "Sometimes four, sometimes five, sometimes six." "Well," he said, "you have missed four-and-a-half, five-and-a-half, and the little rock." He had so many arcs of flight - and none of them foreseeable by the batsman - that he took wickets through the air as well as off the pitch. Once that deadly off-spinner landed, though, it tugged at the earth and turned back savagely: or, just when the batsman thought himself used to that, it pitched and skidded and there was a catch to slip - and there was that twisted grin of satisfaction.
Posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago in Indian Premier League
Harsha Bhogle, in his column in the Indian Express, says the IPL has worked after its first week.
The ads have been good, some of the anthems have been excellent; the fireworks have gone off and the dancers are showing a lot of energy. But cricket is winning, as we always knew it would. The first week of the IPL has worked. Now it must draw repeat crowds, it must be a success in its fourth week. Chances are it will do more than just that; I sense we are seeing a lifestyle change, like the personal computer, broadband and digital music.
The sceptics abound and that is not bad because success must be challenged; new thought must stand up to scrutiny. The first people who said the world was round took a long time convincing others. This will be a much shorter journey towards acceptance. Maybe it has already happened
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Meanwhile, the Hindustan Times' Arjun Sen has blamed the Indian Cricket League for the poor turn out for the IPL games in Hyderabad.
April 24, 2008
Posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago in Australian cricket
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Jack Fingleton opened the batting for Australia in the 1930s
© The Cricketer International
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Philip Derriman writes in the Sydney Morning Herald about Jack Fingleton, the opening batsman and journalist, who is famous for his writing – and a lifelong rift with Don Bradman. The centenary of Fingleton’s birth will be celebrated at the SCG on Monday and a biography about him will be released later in the year.
The feud apparently began in the early 1930s and ended only when Fingleton died in 1981. Nobody has ever got to the bottom of why they disliked each other so much, although everyone has assumed religion had something to do with it. Bradman was a Mason and Fingleton a Catholic.
There was also the question of who leaked a dressing-room story to the press during the Bodyline series of 1932-33. Fingleton was blamed for it, but he always maintained Bradman was the culprit and should have owned up.
In the lead-up to Anzac Day Paige Taylor wrote in the Australian about the fast bowler Tibby Cotter, the only Australian Test player to die in World War I.
It is generally accepted that Cotter was shot on October 31, 1917, by a Turk after the famous charge at Beersheba by the 12th and 4th Australian Light Horse regiments. But in his book to be published in October, Andrew Sproul and co-author Max Bonnell advance a new theory: that the 32-year-old was fatally wounded when a Turk prisoner committed an act of perfidy. "I have felt driven, over time, to get the story right and to tell it," Sproul said.
Posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago in Twenty20
Giles Smith has a funny take on the IPl in The Times.
People putting in the most effort at this point? That's an easy one. It's the cheerleaders. They never stop. And the cameras never stop showing them never stopping. The odd thing being, of course, that you have never seen crowds less in need of leaders for their cheering.
Meanwhile the Hindu's Nirmal Shekar doesn't seem too impressed with the shortest form of the game:
The best of sport allows for the pause. It lets us sit back and savour the has-been and dream of the still-to-come. Nothing that is breathless — and therefore leaves no room for a complex cognitive process leading to emotional fulfillment — can lay claims to sporting greatness.
Twenty20 is here to stay, and unless Test cricket and ODIs are given a subtle makeover we will be left with dessert and no main course, writes Dileep Premachandran in the Guardian.
But back to the cheerleaders (briefly). In The Telegraph, Paul Bolton writes about a beach cricket tournament that took place in Australia three months ago that has just now being shown on Sky. There is an inevitable comparison to the IPL, but what may also interest readers is our observation that the IPL was not the first to employ cheerleaders: the XXXX Angels set the trend by giving it some in the tournament, much to the unsurprising delight of the crowds.
The Guardian's Mike Selvey is excited about Allen Stanford's plans in the Caribbean.
How much would it cost him to take over the central contracts of the top players and up their wages to the sort of stratospheric levels that would prevent them from seeking greener grass elsewhere?
Posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago in Indian Premier League
The Indian Premier League (IPL) may think of the Indian Cricket League (ICL) as a rebel without a cause and the feeling may well be reciprocated but, when it comes to hiring technicians, cheerleaders and even Bollywood stars, they seem like brothers in arms, writes Anam Arsalan in the Hindustan Times.
Two Russian cheerleaders, Katrina and Maria, who put on their dancing shoes for the ICL, are now busy entertaining supporters of the Jaipur IPL team. Their choreographer, Sylvester, said: “They are freelancers, so when they were performing at the ICL, they got an offer from an IPL team. So, now you can see them performing there as well.”
In more ways than one, Warne is an ambassador for the IPL, writes R Mohan in the Asian Age.
April 23, 2008
Posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago in Indian Premier League
The Courier Mail’s Paul Starick says Andrew Symonds, the IPL’s A$1.5m man, is being humiliated. Symonds, who was hit for 30 in an over by Virender Sehwag on Tuesday, has struggled with bat and ball during the first week.
It is not the Indian crowds tormenting Symonds – as happened on last year's Australian tour – but his own form. In his first two games, Symonds, the IPL's most expensive non-Indian player, has gone for 55 runs from four overs at an economy rate of 13.75 runs per over. He has scored 44 runs off 52 balls. With Symonds earning an estimated A$200,000 for his fortnight in the IPL, he has yet to turn Deccan's investment into value for money.
News coverage of the competition in Australia is about to get smaller, according to the Australian, due to the IPL’s demands, which led to a boycott by international news agencies.
Posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago in Indian Premier League
The Indian Premier League is a good thing, so long as we understand that it’s only fun because it attracts Test and one- day stars from around the world, writes Alex Parker, in the Johannesburg-based Times.
If not, TV money will devour the sport. Once it is done, it’ll spit out the corpse, which will by then consist of a Twenty20 championship in India, some low-level club tournaments around the world, international “friendlies”, a la soccer, and that’s about it.
Eventually, even the IPL will have nowhere to find its international superstars, and then the game will have eaten itself in a frenzy of greed and TV rights.
Meanwhile in iafrica.com Rob Peters asks what's not to like about the IPL.
While I enjoy Test cricket as much as the next guy, I do not view the T20 format as a naughty child. Truthfully, it only adds to the game for me. You have all the elements that make cricket such a great game with the added excitement of huge hitting, fierce bowling and a carnival atmosphere. I’m not about to complain about dancing girls either!
Posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago in IPL
Amar Shah is doing his best to keep abreast of all things IPL...from Los Angeles at 4am:
Since the league began, I've risen as early as four in the morning each day to log on to my computer to watch live choppy streams of such grandiose (ok, nascent) rivalries as the Bangalore Royal Challengers vs. the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Delhi Daredevils vs. the Rajasthan Royals.
For the next six weeks, top cricketers from all over the world will participate in a league that could shift the entire landscape of the sport. Traditional cricket, the test variety, lasts up to five days. But the IPL's Twenty20 format , where matches are limited to 20 overs (one over equals six pitches), is a run and gun, slap-happy form of the game that perfectly suits the waning attention span, especially my own.
As a recent cricket convert, I've come to realize that cricket is not so much a sport in India, but the lingua franca as Cricinfo.com blogger Lawrence Booth put it. Which makes the audacious experiment of the IPL an exciting proposition for the commercial expansion of the sport. And just perhaps, intriguing enough, for the American sensibility.
ESPN has the full story.
Posted 2 weeks, 5 days ago in Indian Premier League
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Spotting talent: Shane Warne has shown faith in the unheralded Dinesh Salunkhe
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While the Mumbai selectors have ignored the performances of Dinesh Salunkhe, Warne has picked him alongside himself in the both the IPL games for the Jaipur side, writes Pradeep Vijayakar in the Times of India.
Salunkhe had not played for any of the Mumbai age group sides, but after playing for Jhunjhunwalla and Khalsa College, he was picked for the university side thanks to the insistence of selector Sanjay Patil. Kapil Dev rewarded Salunkhe with a stint in Leicester cricket in 2007. Air India then took him on scholarship and he has rewarded them with consistent performances.
Also read S Ram Mahesh in the Hindu writing on the remarkable rise of P Amarnath.
When mulling over the decision to quit his job for one that wasn’t nearly as secure, Amarnath didn’t for a moment consider the transition he would eventually make — progressing in four years from bowling in the city’s fourth division to bowling in the Indian Premier League.
The same paper also has a piece on Sanjay Bangar's penchant for writing.
The seven-article series Sanjay Bangar wrote on a popular cricket website is still read widely. He’ll laugh if you describe it as good, but the feedback to his writing has mostly been positive.
Bangar's articles appeared on Cricinfo. You can read them here.
The quality of spin has dropped considerably over the years and yet the batsmen of today flounder on what would have been an average wicket a few decades ago, writes Saad Bin Jung in the Asian Age.
April 22, 2008
Posted 2 weeks, 5 days ago in Australian cricket
The use of a pink ball at Lord’s has given Cricket Australia hope of finding a suitable object for day-night Tests. Michael Brown, the board’s general manager of cricket operations, tells the Sydney Morning Herald he will be meeting with scientists and Australian Institute of Sport experts next week.
"We want to try and do a proper, orchestrated research project," Brown said. "If we are serious about this issue - to get a better day-night cricket ball and a ball we could possibly use in Test cricket - we need to understand the constraints, which is what the MCC are doing ... We need to factor in the practical cricket people, the scientists, the people who make the leather, the cricket ball manufacturers. We see this as being a really serious project that could have lots of implications, but you've got to understand, too, it could go nowhere.”
Posted 2 weeks, 6 days ago in Indian Premier League
A first look at the ratings by TAM Peoplemeter System shows that IPL has delivered a record opening, write Ratna Bhushan and Surbhi Goel in the Economic Times.
Official broadcaster Sony Max says it will now hike spot rates to Rs 3.5-4 lakh per 10 seconds for the remaining matches. Said SET president Rohit Gupta: “The response from television audiences and stadia has been higher than what we expected. People rooting for Sanath Jayasuriya in an Indian stadium was unheard of but it happened.”
In the Indian Express, Shivani Naik traces Lalit Modi's fetish for funky team names.
Whether it's the Rajsamand Pelicans or Jhunjunu Dragons, they greet you revealing a set of canines that could never add up to a friendly grin. Even the usually-docile camel seems to acquire predatory pouts under the Barmer-district banner. Lalit Modi's fetish for team names, elaborate logos, and scope for merchandising can be traced back to two seasons ago when he decided to distribute these tags to 32 districts, which now play under these banners.
The saga surrounding the Eden Gardens pitch is far from over. An investigation by the Kolkata Telegraph has revealed that the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) did not go through even the basic ground drill before throwing open the ground for the opening game.
Posted 2 weeks, 6 days ago in Indian Premier League
The media continue to pore over what effects the IPL will have on cricket as we know it. Richard Williams in The Guardian takes a positive view:
"Cricket first developed on village greens such as Hambledon; it looks as though it may come to an end at Bangalore," a former editor of the Times wrote yesterday, deploring Twenty20's success. Strip away the cheerleaders, the film stars, the promotion and the players' salaries, however, and I'll bet that last weekend's inaugural IPL match was closer to the game played by Hampshire landowners and rustics on Broadhalfpenny Down in the middle of the 18th century than the weird, distended, passionless version enacted at various county grounds last week.
No one is taking the Indian Premier League more seriously than Shane Warne, writes Simon Hughes in the Daily Telegraph.
He has taken an unlikely character under his wing. Dinesh Salunkhe is a swarthy 25-year-old from Bombay who last year was an anonymous club player ... Warne likes him. "He's got a positive attitude and learns fast. The important thing about leg-spin is not where the ball lands but how it gets there. You vary your grip, trajectory and position on the crease, and you can make two apparently similar balls totally different."
April 21, 2008
Posted 3 weeks ago in Indian Premier League
For many fans there's an emotional disconnect with the IPL, writes Pradeep Magazine in the Hindustan Times.
Whether to enjoy Sourav Ganguly's dismissal or to celebrate Ishant Sharma's pace magic in shattering their own Rahul Dravid's stumps.
Indications are that the cricket-mad Indians, who got hooked on Twenty20 when the country won the World Cup in South Africa last year, are now addicted to the IPL, writes Bruce Loudon in the Australian.
On evidence of the first few games, it appears that the city-based rivalry that the IPL has sought to conjure with rupee power on television could take some time to fructify, writes Avijit Ghosh in the Times of India.
The IPL got off to a great start, but questions need to be answered, writes Steven Smart in the Observer.
Most sports in the world are over in less time than a Twenty20 game, writes Amit Varma in Mail Today. All popular sports, in that much time, pack in immense drama. Regular fans of those sports appreciate the sophistication in each of those games, and can talk about the nuances endlessly. Why then do so many of us speak of Twenty20 as if it is gilli-danda?
Posted 3 weeks ago in Indian Premier League
An erstwhile editor of The Times, William Rees-Mogg, uses his opinion column to rail against what he sees may be the end of cricket:
The culture of cricket now seems to be going the way of Troy, or indeed of the Roman Empire. The glory of cricket, with its intelligence and the complexity of the interplay, is sinking into the past; we are moving, surprisingly rapidly, into the dumbed-down cricket of Twenty20. Cricket first developed on village greens such as Hambledon; it looks as though it may come to an end at Bangalore.
April 20, 2008
Posted 3 weeks ago in English cricket
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Duncan Fletcher and Andrew Flintoff during happier times
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Steve James, in the Telegraph, reveals how Duncan Fletcher, the former England coach, has moved on after the fall-out arising from his controversial autobiography.
Fletcher is at home in Cape Town, "waiting for something interesting to come along", as he puts it. He's in no rush. He is also unusually philosophical. There have been offers of employment, but life has not been without its complications since his resignation from the England job a year ago yesterday.
Not being one to want sympathy, it's not a subject he talks about easily, but his delightful wife, Marina, has been unwell. Cricket has quite rightly been put on the back-burner. For long periods Fletcher has been in charge of domestic duties. For a dedicated family man - a proud grandfather now - it has been a difficult time. Thankfully the worst appears to have passed.
James also says that it was not Fletcher's intention to "humiliate" Andrew Flintoff after disclosing his problems with drinking.
As Fletcher's ghost-writer I know that he did not set out to humiliate Flintoff. Those close to the game know there was much, much more that could have been said. But Fletcher did feel horribly let down. Nobody in his entire life had disappointed him as much as Flintoff had on that last fateful Ashes trip.There were gripes aplenty in the book. Maybe I could have tempered them more. On more than one occasion Fletcher said to me: "I think I'm having too much of a go at people."
Posted 3 weeks ago in Indian Premier League
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A handful of spectators made the trip to Lord's for the match between MCC and Sussex to mark the beginning of the 2008 county season
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The Times' Simon Wilde, who is in India to cover the IPL, says that the England board has faltered by not allowing its players to take part in the tournament's first edition. He begins his piece with a humorous elegy.
In affectionate remembrance of the hope that the England cricket team would soon win a global one-day tournament, which died, at home, on April 18, 2008, while the rest of the world celebrated the birth of the Indian Premier League at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore. The health of the team itself had been undermined by the loss of grave quantities of money offered by a circle of Indian friends. The body will be cremated and the ashes scattered on the Ganges. - with apologies to Reginald Shirley Brooks, the Times, 1882.
Scyld Berry, while analysing the impact of the IPL, feels the tournament needs "major surgery to survive. His article in the Telegraph has more.
But the organisers of the IPL seem, at this stage, to have missed a couple of tricks - and they could prove extremely, perhaps terminally, damaging. Yesterday, sandwiched between the successes in Bangalore and Delhi, came a match in Mohali in front of a stadium that was half-full - a match which saw a superb century by Mike Hussey set up a 33-run victory for the Chennai Super Kings.
The first drawback is that too many unremarkable Indian cricketers are making up the numbers: a problem which can be solved either by reducing the number of franchises (impossible in the short term) or increasing the quota of foreign players from the existing four-per-side. Indian spectators and television audiences want to see stars, whether in films or on the cricket field. It was a point made last year when India staged 20-over matches between state sides, and the country became the only place in the world where the format did not take off. The second point is the IPL organisers are asking too much of fans in expecting them to exchange old instincts for new loyalties.
Meanwhile, Vic Marks, in his blog in the Guardian, critisises the scheduling of the match between Surrey and Lanchashire in the middle of April after the entire fourth day's play was washed out. He also hopes the IPL will force a change in the hectic county schedule.
Posted 3 weeks, 1 day ago in Indian Premier League
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Brendon McCullum can now have his pick of adverts and endorsements in India
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With his fireworks in the opening game of the IPL, Brendon McCullum has had the doors to India's massive commercial opportunities unlocked for him, writes Dylan Cleaver in the New Zealand Herald.
Following his pyrotechnics he was taken to a party in Bangalore, attended by both teams, where he was schmooozed by Khan and an array of India's Bollywood and industrial giants. McCullum was apparently impressed with Khan's passion for cricket and his humility. The star, who is as recognisable in India as Brad Pitt is in Cailfornia, introduced McCullum to his family and the two chatted for the best part of an hour.
Paul Holden takes time out to give you taste of cricket's WWF in his blog Sideline Slogger.
Get a bet on - it is a crass, over-hyped tournament focused on money so you should get on the bandwagon by flinging some dosh around as well. Twenty20 is a complete and utter lottery - witness Indian winning the T20 World Cup with their B team, and England destroying us via Master Mascarenhas. So I’d be heading toward slapping $20 on the least favoured teams - they really do have just as much chance in this inaugural competition where nobody knows what they are doing. Get on Shane Warne’s coachless Jaipur team (aka the Rajasthan Royals) or the Martin Crowe-tillered Bangalore Royal Challengers.
Also read Andrew Miller's interview with McCullum on cricinfo.com.
April 19, 2008
Posted 3 weeks, 1 day ago in Indian Premier League
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Fireworks before the game and plenty from McCullum too
© Aneesh Bhatnagar
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It was perhaps fitting that the new world should challenge the old in the city of Bangalore, a place where old colonial clubs and buildings jostle with cool bars and swanky headquarters of software houses, writes Simon Hughes in the Daily Telegraph.
If Rahul Dravid were to suddenly break into a brief bhangra in between shadow cover drives nobody would be surprised, writes India Today's Sharda Ugra. In another piece she says that if Test matches are extinct two decades later, it will be because cricket—its governors, its players and its entire community—didn’t fight hard enough for them, didn’t believe them to be worth preserving.
For all the well-meaning - if belated - intentions, it was hard yesterday evening to imagine an international event in England matching the IPL for sheer unadulterated hype, writes Lawrence Booth in the Guardian.
This child of hype and bombast needed some substance to make it credible, and it got that from the scimatar-like bat of Brendon McCullum, writes Dileep Premachandran in his Times blog.
Kunal Pradhan has a say in the Indian Express: "The excitement in the match will have to complement the pre-game frenzy for the IPL to hold the audience for 44 days. An abject surrender by the home team doesn’t help their cause."
Stephen Brenkley chips in with his views in the Independent: "India have been bold and if some of the figures would seem to suggest that the boldness strays into fiscal foolhardiness those involved can afford it."
Also check out Hindustan Times' interview with Geoffrey Hampson, the CEO of the Vancouver-based Live Current Media Group who are hosting IPL's official website. You can sample the official site here.
Posted 3 weeks, 2 days ago in Indian Premier League
Emily Wax of the Washington Post writes about the impact of the 12 cheerleaders from the Washington Redskins on the opening day of the Indian Premier League. The girls have been brought to Bangalore by Vijay Mallya, the owner of the Royal Challengers, and are training an all-Indian cheerleading squad.
In white go-go boots, yellow spangled short shorts and bikini tops, they pompomed their way onto the field, bursting right through local notions of modesty. The result was something that few in this cricket-obsessed nation thought possible: tens of thousands of male cricket fans finding it hard to keep their eyes on the game.
She continues …
The Redskins cheer choreographer, Donald Wells, said the Indian cheerleaders he's working with are already adept at shaking their hips and staying on the beat. He noticed that Indian cheerleaders were very expressive with their hands -- Indian classical dance has countless hand motions -- and joked that they probably wouldn't need pompoms.
"The Indian girls who tried out so far were so beautiful and so good, they were practically better than us," said Sharica Brown, 27, a Redskins cheerleader from Baltimore, as she snacked on a plate of nachos before the game at Bangalore's Hard Rock Cafe.
Posted 3 weeks, 2 days ago in Indian Premier League
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No cold vibes between Dhoni and Yuvraj
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Mahendra Singh Dhoni is picking up some Tamil and refusing to call the match between the Chennai Superkings and Kings XI Punjab a face-off between him and Yuvraj Singh. He writes in the Hindustan Times:
I know Friday's game was being seen as Sourav versus Rahul and Saturday's game being spoken of as Dhoni versus Yuvraj, but at the end of the day it will be teams who will take each other on, and not just a couple of individuals.
That's just fodder for advertisers to whip up excitement before a game, and does not translate into actual rivalry. Fortunately, I am not a bowler otherwise the hype on the 'Dhoni-Yuvi face-off' would have shot through the roof! Yuvraj is an aggressive cricketer, and I know that he will come hard at my team, but that's the charm of this format since it pits you against your teammates and teams you up with your opponents. I have been meeting Yuvraj quite a few times since Thursday, and there have been no cold vibes between us.
In the same paper, Poonam Saxena is fed up of the non-stop IPL chatter on Indian new channels.
In keeping with its time-honoured tradition of giving us Rakhi Sawant day and night, Headlines Today did a hundred-hour interview with her about the IPL ... There were three of them in the studio, asking her penetratingly intelligent questions such as which of the IPL videos she likes best (and why she isn’t in any of them), which team is her favourite and so on. Rakhi wiggled her eyebrows and eyes, often both at the same time, and gave equally penetratingly intelligent answers (she favours the Vijay Mallya video because he’s in the company of men for a change).
In the Mid-Day, Anand Naik has some tips for those who want to come to the stadiums to watch the IPL games.
Posted 3 weeks, 2 days ago in Indian Premier League
Shane Warne says in his Herald Sun column the Indian Premier League is here to stay – and his only concern is “the ridiculous new sledging law”.
It will be hard not to say something to someone, but I think the pace of the game will help as there will be no time to sledge. Well, maybe a little sneaky one here or there.
Warne, the captain and coach of the Rajasthan Royals, is excited about returning to bowl after a long break.
Although I am pulling up a little sore in the mornings, it's hard to know if I have lost any zing until we start playing. To be honest, I have not done lots of batting and bowling until this last week and, surprisingly, I feel in a pretty good space and am looking forward to testing myself in the Twenty20 format.
Posted 3 weeks, 2 days ago in Indian Premier League
Alex Brown, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, says the ICC is not listening to the players, the national administrators or those who seek to profit from cricket.
In the inaugural week of the Indian Premier League - a competition many believe will revolutionise the way the game is played, marketed and distributed worldwide - participants have formed a united front to express their belief that, unless the ICC installs an IPL window in the Future Tours Program, cricket could be torn apart.
Alarm bells should be ringing throughout the ICC's Dubai headquarters at a decibel level to rival a Long Bay prison break. After all, cricket should be more mindful than most sports of the threat posed by cashed-up raiders with players in their sights. But despite the impassioned pleas and the painful lessons of history, the ICC does not seem to be heeding the call.
In the same paper Philip Derriman compares the IPL to the popular singer Andre Rieu.
April 18, 2008
Posted 3 weeks, 2 days ago in Indian Premier League
Writing in ABC's Unleashed, Dileep Premachandran believes that the IPL might undermine the primacy of international cricket.
A journalist is preparing to sit down for dinner with his family when the phone rings. It's the agent of a player who wants the journalist to write his biography. "I’m on a yacht in the harbour, with four bottles of champagne by my side," he says cockily. "Our man just sold for close to a million." His jubilation is understandable. After all, he is Mr 15 Per Cent.
The player has just been through a gruelling season, one in which he has enhanced his reputation as one of the game's modern-day greats. Won't 14 matches in six weeks, even if it's Twenty20, be a bridge too far, asks the journalist. The agent's response was revealing. "He can always do a hamstring after three or four games," he says with a snicker.
Posted 3 weeks, 2 days ago in English cricket
The traditional woollen cricket jumper has been cast off with nary a batted eyelid as the winds of change sweep through the clothing at international level. But Patrick Kidd, in The Times, pauses to pay tribute to a garment which has been interwoven in the fabric of the game for decades and decades in a news feature.
Another day, another hallowed cricket tradition falls. After matches that can be completed in three hours, cheerleaders, players auctioned to the highest bidder and pink balls, a further piece of iconoclasm occurred at Lord’s yesterday when the last rites were read for the cable-knit cricket sweater.
The Telegraph is up in arms, but at the same time resigned to the fact that change was inevitable.
Posted 3 weeks, 3 days ago in Indian Premier League
The Indian Premier League is widely perceived as the marriage between cricket and entertainment, and the early evidence shows that the entertainment is certainly the dominant partner. On the eve of the opening match, the Bangalore Royal Challengers, led by Rahul Dravid, weren't allowed to practice in the stadium. Why? Because the preparations for opening ceremony were considered more important. Kunal Pradhan of the Indian Express has more.
The Chinnaswamy Stadium is a hub of activity a day before the so-called revolution. There are huge stacks of speakers lying at various corners of the outfield. At short mid-wicket, a drum-kit takes pride of place on a tailor-made platform. Deep third-man has a troupe of young performers walking on stilts. At long-on, there are Washington Redskins cheerleaders in tank tops and bridal veils practicing an expansive jig.
In the same paper, Harsha Bhogle says it would be unfair to compare the Indian Premier League to a Friday blockbuster release, where fortunes are made and lost in the first three days.
This is more like a brand launch, to be assessed at the end of the season, for commitments are in place for much longer. Few brands get it right the first time; and when the horizon is ten years, the first year becomes a learning phase rather than a do-or-die shootout.
In the Hindu, Nirmal Shekar wonders if the IPL’s big money will subconsciously translate into ‘high value’ and ‘quality’ in our minds.
As players see their bank balances swell by hundreds of thousands of rupees with every over bowled or every brief innings played, some of us might lament the demise of cricket’s so-called soul (for the want of a better metaphor) and the game’s selling out to commerce.
The Telegraph lists out the luxury items available at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore on opening day.
Respecting your freedom of choice, we would like you to sample IPLT20.com
Posted 3 weeks, 3 days ago in Indian Premier League
In the Sydney Morning Herald Alex Brown speaks to John Buchanan, now the coach of Kolkata's IPL franchise and a man whose radical ideas perhaps don't seem as outlandish in the wake of the IPL explosion.
"This is just the beginning," said Buchanan, prior to the Indian Premier League's first match between Kolkata and Bangalore tonight. "Administrators need to make very good decisions over the next few years. I believe all three versions of the game can coexist, but I think this particular form of the game has the potential to take off round the world.
"I can see cricket getting to a stage where in the next three to five years the world is split into zones, like in soccer, with the winner of each zone playing off in an annual world series under a roof somewhere. Players will be spread round the world. Here at Kolkata we have eight or nine internationals, and I think that's a model you'll see more and more of."
Some have likened Buchanan to a bread-board toting street preacher in recent years, proclaiming the end of the world as we know it and making wild predictions of what form cricket's future might take. But as the league and other Twenty20 competitions have taken hold, the former Australian coach's views no longer seem so radical, suggesting he may yet prove a soothsayer.
April 17, 2008
Posted 3 weeks, 4 days ago in IPL
Many of the county reports in the media made the comparison that the cold start to the Championship is in some ways a metaphor for the shadow cast on the English game by the Indian Premier League. In The Guardian, Paul Kelso observes the knock-on effect of the IPL on the opening day at the Rose Bowl and finds Hampshire chairman Rod Bransgrove in fighting mood.
I think the challenge is to respond to the IPL. We invented this game, it's our game and we should be leading," said Bransgrove. "Hopefully the chairman and the board will found a vibrant, exciting Twenty20 competition in this country that will decide our players to stay, as well as attracting the best players from around the world to come here."
Geoffrey Boycott is typically forthright in The Telegraph and looks to the long term implications on central contracts, among other issues. In a must-read piece he is firstly sceptical about Allen Stanford’s potential Twenty20 match involving England players, calling it “a brilliant publicity stunt”. He calls for England’s two-Test series next year to be scrapped, while demanding the players are allowed in next year’s IPL, but not to play all of it so that they can play the first three county matches ahead of the Ashes:
if the players don't like the idea of missing half the IPL, the ECB have one big ace in the pack. They can come back and say: "You don't have to have a central contract at all. And we don't have to pick you." Once these lads stop getting international exposure, all their endorsement deals are worthless, no matter how
