Sunday, January 27, 2008

Taare Zameen Par

So I was listening to this song while in the shower today and I kept thinking how it applied to our Indian bowlers. Zaheer Khan, Sreesanth, RP Singh – all fine bowlers lost due to the minefield that is one-day cricket. Irfan Pathan to some extent. It is awful how we let this happen.

Just earlier this year these bowlers (well Zaheer and RP at least) bowled us to one of our greatest series wins ever and then within six months we have lost all of them to injuries. All because they played so many one day games. schedules, officials, ignorant public !

It is obvious that the India Australia test series is the most important thing in cricket and yet these fools made no effort to preserve these valuable resources for a important series.

Today when our bowlers are unable to create an impression on the flat slow Adelaide wicket my minds goes back to thinking how Zaheer Khan and Sreesanth and RP Singh could have made a difference. And even if they hadn’t isn’t it important to have our best possible men serving at such an important time.

Mark me, I have nothing against Ishant Sharma. He is a fine young bowler and I believe he has a great future ahead (Oh hang on has he ? Who is to say that he won’t succumb to injuries like Zak and Sreesanth and RP did due to that ODI cricket ?)

Even Irfan Pathan – although in his case the immediate reason was slightly different – but it was still ODI cricket that did him in IMO. Anyway I don’t see any one do any thing about it. The BCCI of course don’t care at all. All they are bothered about is the money. No long term planning, no goals no targets whatsoever. Oh yeah there are targets in terms of money but no targets in terms of cricketing achievements.

If they had they would have marked out the tour to Australia as a important (what an understatement) event in their calendars and tried to conserve and optimize their resources for it. Once they identified the fast bowlers who bowled us to victory in England every effort should have been made to conserve them for the big series down under.

This is certainly not the way to go about it. Between the 2 big series India played 20 one day internationals not to mention another 3 test series and 8 2020 games. Not just that so many of our resources were expended on these largely meaningless ODIs.

Zaheer played in 17 of these ODIs, Sreesanth 5 and RP a 13. Add to that Sreesanth and RP played in all 2020 games too. Predictably Sreesanth missed all 7 tests, RP missed 4 and Zak missed 4 more importantly almost all the ones in Australia.

To be continued …

Thursday, January 03, 2008

I Can Spend My Entire Life ...

... watching VVS Laxman bat !!!

(On January 4, 2008 the virtuoso artist painted a most magnificent masterpiece on the grand canvas that is the Sydney Cricket Ground as he had in Januaries of 2004 and 2000)

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

WTF ...

... did Anil Kumble not think of bringing on Harbhajan Singh when Brett Lee was just settling down today ? What is the point in bowling Tendulkar at a new batsman ? And then taking the new ball without even letting Harbhajan have a look ?