Nose Problems !!!

Here is an extract from Wisden Cricinfo:

Styris also admitted that he used the time off to correct another long-standing problem with his nose. "Basically I've been breathing out of one nostril so they've opened up the airway and it should help with breathing and sleeping."

Interesting, ha ??

Selectors Strike

I predict India will lose the ODI series 5-1 if not 6-0. That is truly what they deserve. Not only is an irrational and woefully out-of-form Ganguly still captain, but the selectors have refused to be shy the second time after being bitten once. They have been bitten again. I think after the World Cup 2003 and the VB Series 2004, there was one issue that was discussed over and over again and probably should have been made a law. The gist of it is:

Mongia over Laxman ?? Never again.

Unfortunately the selectors have not followed it. Also Ganguly's favourite blue-eyed boy Nehra finds a place over Ajit Agarkar the man who has taken more than 4 timees the number of wickets at a much better average and the legend Anil Kumble has to sit out at the expense of Murali Karthik.

The Blame Game

At the end of the series, Wisden Cricinfo usually gives each player points on 10. Turning the tables around just a little bit here, I am awarding players "blame points" on a scale of 1 to 10.

Gambhir 4
Most inexperienced member of the squad and did nothing wrong except running out Sehwag on the last day.

Sehwag 0
No complaints whatsoever.

Dravid 4
Won the Eden Gardens match with a Dravid special, but failed to come good when the chips were down in Bangalore.

Tendulkar 5
Consistent, but nothing great. Failed in Bangalore like Dravid though he made a fair effort of hanging in there.

Laxman 5
Had few chances, but did not take the one big chance on the last day that he had to make a hero of himself.

Ganguly 9
Terrible with the bat. Pathetic as captain, except on the last day of the Eden Gardens test.

Karthik 1
Did everything that was expected of him and more (but then not too much was expected of him) The 1 is because he couldn't face up to Sami's yorker in Bangalore.

Pathan 6
Made a great effort with the bat to fight it out but was absolutely ordinary with the ball

Kumble 3
Superb in first 2 tests, but came up a cropper in Bangalore with the ball, having said that the others should have stood up some time.

Balaji 4
Started brilliantly in Mohali but tapered off towards the end

Harbhajan 5
Did fairly well despite the external pressures but could not deliver the killer punch

Zaheer 3
Didn't get too many chances at all. Could have done better in Mohali.

Coming Up ....

It is not that I am shying away from India's humbling defeat to Pakistan in Bangalore. It will all come sooner or later in parts ... the castigation, the excuses, the frustration, the suggestions (both genuine and sarcastic), the congratulations and oh yes the bickerings about some individuals !!! Just give me some time ... these birdbrains made me stay up till 6 am in the morning clinging to hope reducing my sleep to a pathetic 4 hours - as a result I had a splitting headache for a while and only now fresh from an afternoon siesta am I back in action !!

"Nipped In The Bud"

was what just done to a potentially great innings by Lou Vincent. Trailing by 91 and 4 down for 35, Vincent and Astke had decided that attack was the only way out and the 2 launched a blistering attack on the Aussies. Vincent had hit 2 sixes with 4 fours in just 33 balls to score 42, when he was Sob Sob RUN OUT. Dammit !!

Since I started writing this post NZ have also lost McCullum, so they are now 2 runs ahead with 4 wickets in hand.

Around The Globe ...

1) He came he saw he hit

This is not some journalist's redundant description of Sehwag's or Afridi's innings in Bangalore, this is what Ricky Ponting did by his own admission in Auckland the other day.

2) No Lara, No Cricket !!!

Here is a passionate view of an ardent cricket-HATER ... vow what kind of a species would that be ??? - well always nice to know a bit about the ones who are located 180 degrees opposite to your ideology - but yeah, he asserts that without Brian Lara, Trinidad and Tobago should boycott the match. Can't say I disagree too strongly.

3) The English fans and co-bloggers are (surprisingly) silent about this !!

Too Hasty ?? Yeah !

I must admit and I'm sure Sehwag would agree, that we were too hasty to brand the Bangalore wicket as a flat drawn-match wicket. Indeed, the match has now been set up nicely with theoretically all 3 results a possibility. The draw however still leads the race by some margin over a Pakistan win.

It is going to be a real tough ask on a pitch which is "progressively deteriorating" and that's the key word here unlike Mohali that played somewhere close to its best on Day 5. I wonder who will put up his hand for India tomorrow. Will Tendulkar choose this stage to make a nice slow 35th hundred ?? Will Laxman carry on his good form in the first innings ?? Will Sehwag break his second innings jinx ?? Will The Wall stand tall again ??

Would it not be ironic (and great) if Ganguly were to see India to safety. An 80 not out batting till the end with 7 or 8 wickets down and he will be hailed as Captain Courageous all over again - the critics will have changed colour with the ease and grace of a chameleon. Knowing the Indian captain, I wouldn't be shocked if he pulled a rabbit out of the hat ?? Remember the 98* in Kandy 2001 when he was going through a similar bad patch ??

Anyway fingers crossed, India should pull off the draw required. (Though a win wouldn't hurt either)

Man Of The Day (Bangalore Day 4: Shahid Afridi)

In a period of 60 minutes, Shahid Afridi wrested control of the match from India. First he ended the crucial last wicket-partnership with a delivery faster than Pathan or Balaji's average ball and 10 minutes later padded up and proceeded to demolish Irfan Pathan and the other Indian bowlers.

Both Yaseer and Younis capitalized on the start to give Pakistan a big lead, but clearly The Pathan from Peshawar was the man of the day.

Can't Bat With The Tail ??

It has been said all over the media today and would no doubt be repeated several times in the future : "VVS Laxman can't bat with the tail." Agreed, that line of thinking has some merit given some of Laxman's recent performances with the tail, in particular the early part of yesterday's play.

What is glossed over is that these tail-enders pretty much threw away their wicket in what Arun Lal would call a "jiffy" before Laxman had a chance to get his eye in. Yes, he was batting 50+ overnight, but it can always be tough to start on a new day. And when he did get that time, he again played some exquisite strokes. Great partnership with Anil Kumble. If India manage to save the match tomorrow, that's where Pakistan will look back to where it all went wrong.

What a costly miss that could yet prove to be by Kamran Akmal !!

Tantalisingly Close ...

There are plenty of people on the verge of landmarks in World Cricket today. McGrath needs 5 wickets to get to 500 (second fast bowler, second Aussie, fourth bowler overall) - he has 1 innings to do it - otherwise he will have to wait till August !!

Harbhajan is on the verge of 200 (sixth Indian). Tendulkar has been on the verge of a World record number of centuries for quite some time now. While no one knows when that is going to happen, another fact curiously overlooked by the media is that he requires now only 5 runs to be the highest run-scorer for India. The odds favour him to get to THAT landmark in this Test don't they ?? Otherwise he too will have to wait till September for that world-conquering Zimbabwe side.

How Does It Feel To Be ...

Back From The Dead ??

Would be a question not too inappropriate to pose before Stephen Fleming who pulled himself out of a rut of poor scores (in Tests against Australia) with a responsible 60 in Auckland.

Rahul "Marathi" Dravid

I knew he had some Marathi background, but did NOT know that he was completely Marathi until I read this. This makes me even more proud of him !! Note, that he was, is and will always remain my idol regardless of his roots.

Cricketing Nonsense #1

"If it were not for Virender Sehwag's astonishing innings of 201, India would have been in big trouble"

What kind of a nonsense statement is that ?? Made several times over in the media today by a whole spectrum of respected writers. I mean sure, that innings was the essence of India's batting but that came right at the top. It happened. It was a good solid unquestionable truth. What is the point in bringing in the conditionals and trying to compute the posterior probabilities of that event not occuring ???

OK, sorry if that was too heavy for some of you - but to put it in simple Sidhuistic terms, "If ifs and ands were pots and pans there would be no tinkers". How can one debate about what would have happened if such a big truth had not existed ?? This is pointless, inane debate. This is fit to be carried out by those mysitcs who do not believe that existence exists. Who do not believe that A is A.

Come to think of it, if Sehwag had scored a duck, we might have been bowled out for 200 !! Again, it could well have been that Dravid and Tendulkar would then have put their heads down more, carved a couple of big innings and we would have been say 300/4. The possibilities are almost uncountably infinte (which is what makes this game the great game it is). For precisely, this reason, it is pointless to keep wondering about what could have happened.

OK. If someone coming in at #7 or so had hit a quickfire hundred with the tail rescuing the team, the usage would be more acceptable. The fact is that a certain situation has occured. One that needs to be reacted to. One that can be reacted to in one of several possible ways. In this context it makes sense to say "If #7 had not scored, so and so would have happened".

But with openers they set the tone of the innings. They create the situation, not react to it. (except perhaps the opposition score). But with Sehwag Im sure he would have played the same way had the score been 170, 270, 370, 470 or even 670. It does not matter to him.

Dear Sourav ...

I have been (still am ?) one of your greatest fans/supporters. I have always backed you when others have pounced upon the earliest opportunity to bash you. A large section of ignorant masses and vengeant experts want you out. I believe that despite not having had a big score your fairly consistent performances of the last year still earn you a place in the side given your past record.

I take pains to point out to friends that this is the only bad series you have had with the bat for a fair while now. I was terribly disappointed with your captaincy against Australia but again respecting your past record, I still supported you as captain.

I concede you were out of you elements in Mohali and made a painful effort to score but were just unable. Then you played an atrocious shot at Kolkata and I passed it off as "one of those things". I was even willing to forgive you for that rather pathetic short innings when India were in some trouble; even giving you the benefit of the doubt : that since you threw your wicket away, it gave a chance for Dinesh and Rahul to put up a great partnership.

After today's dismisal however, I feel that patience is running out. Today was the time when you should have shunned your urge to loft Danish Kaneria; the urge to recapture the glory of old; those skills that you have so clearly lost. Today you needed to stay there to make sure India did now waste another great Sehwag performance. I am saddened by your shot today. There is no Rahul around to cover up for your shoddy performance. You'd better hope that VVS and the tail pull us put of this one; otherwise you might find yourself sharing a series that we should have won after 2 Tests. If that happens I hope you will feel pretty angry at yourself. The critics will get even sharper. The selectors will lose even more sweat, And I ? I will probably still have faith in you. But the patience is being lost with every passing innings.

Man Of The Day (Bangalore Day 3: Virender Sehwag)

For a more detailed acclamation see post below. Keeping aside the aesthetics and the superlatives, 201 off 262 balls of the 379 runs scored by the team. Test match hundred #10. Of which the scores read {309, 201, 195, 173, 164, 155, 147, 132, 105, 102}. A first innings average of 75 - second only to Don Bradman .... blah blah blah

And in the context of this game, the innings that has kept India in this match.

Another Sehwag Post

Excellent article here by Amit Varma on Wisden Cricinfo. In particular note the first para:

"To be great is to be misunderstood," Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, and how we have misunderstood Virender Sehwag. At first we thought he was a one-day utility player; then a good one-day slogger but surely not a Test player; then a Test batsman capable of the occasional belligerent innings, like Krisnamachari Srikkanth, but no more; then an opener as good perhaps as Michael Slater or Herschelle Gibbs, but not in the same class as his team-mates like the Tendulkar-Dravid-Laxman trio. We were mistaken each time.

I can never tire of recounting all the records this man is putting up - also of describing how much he means to this Indian batting lineup. However, I'll leave that to the stats men for now. I'll just go on to say that he is well on his way to achieve the greatness of 3 of his teammates - Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman - probably caught up with Laxman already - but then can that 281 ever be compared ??

Just a week ago Ram here wondered whether Sehwag had been sorted out. Moreover he went on to assert that Sehwag "would fail" in the rest of the series (after Mohali). I hope he has got his answer. How can people even think of "predicting" that someome will fail especially when it comes to a genius like Sehwag ?? I hope the critics are silenced now.

And to think that till today there exist some souls in this World who have the temerity to compare him to Afridi !!! Comparing Sehwag to Afridi is like comparing Aamir Khan to Govinda !!

Marshall And Marshall

Is that Hamish Marshall ? Or his twin brother James ? Who knows ? That will be the question facing the Aussies when the 2 will be batting together in the Auckland Test. Although Mark and Steve Waugh the famous Aussie twins graced the game for so long, Hamish and James are the first ever identical twins to do so. It must be a daunting, perhaps boring task for the opposition bowlers - To keep looking at the same batsman all the time; Even after the strike is changed. Perhaps they will come up with the best solution. Dismiss one of them quickly. However, right now the Marshalls are batting together and have put up a pretty good fight. 34/1 is a great start for NZ against Australia. James has scored 17 off 38 balls and the more accomplished Hamish 14 off 21. Or have they ?? Who is to guarantee that after some mid-pich conference, Hamish did not sneak to the batting end to take strike for James ?? Why not have some twin fun out there ?? Maybe the Aussies have insisted on them wearing ID cards while batting or that one wear a sweater throughout or something like that !!!

With You Mate

I empathize with Stephen Fleming. He is having a bad time of it and when things go bad, they can well really go bad from all sides. From personal experience. I think Fleming is one of the finest captains and ambassdors and batsmen NZ have ever produced - people have got to give him time to get out of this wretched patch rather than burden him with all sorts of advise. Here Martin Crowe puts forward another theory and tries to provide further advise while Fleming tries to counter that.

Give him a break, guys.

Man Of The Day (Day 2: Younis Khan)

He was touted as a "limboo-timboo" vice captain at the start of the series. He had a horror Test in Mohali. Yet Younis has struck and - how !! 267 - the highest ever score by a visiting batsman in India !! I always knew that one new Pakistan batsman would leve India a star - I always figured it would be Asim Kamal - it has turned out to be Younis however. Wisden Cricinfo talks about his innings and the similarity with Dravid's innings in Rawalpindi last year. Younis indeed admires Dravid greatly and thinks of him as a role model. That's the best choice you can make, mate.

Playing For A Draw

I did not see any of the first day's play but figured from the reports that the pitch was a batting featherbed. Today however, the pitch did afford some help to the spinners with Harbhajan Singh getting some sharp turn. This could be a real tester for India's famed batting line-up with the talented Danesh Kaneria and the wily Arshad Khan bowling for the first time with a huge score to back them up. This is exactly what happens when you "make pitches for a draw". Clearly, if India had batted first, they would have been in a similar position as Pakistan find themselves in. That must have been the thinking - we have the lead let's make a pitch where we can't possibly lose - guess what, we are going to be under real pressure to save this match from here on.

Rahul, Saurav and VVS have a combined average of less than 45 at this venue, so SRT will have an oportunity to make a real difference to the fortunes of the team here by scoring a big one. This is the kind of situation where his recent liking for big slow hundreds might actually work to the advantage of the team. Then again - it might not - his 94 in Mohali was so painful it almost had a negative impact on the side. That was when India was trying to get in the ascendancy however.

When India were faced with 510 against South Africa in Kanpur earlier this year on a similarly pathetic batsman-friendly wicket, they responded pretty well with 466 - although it was the efforts of Sehwag mainly that helped them - and guess what his was a typical free-stroking innings - not a painful one. SRT scored 3 runs in some 20-odd balls. That time however South Africa had scored painfully slowly, so that a draw was very easy to obtain.

In Adelaide 2003, when faced with a similar total, (ah that grand grand test match !!) We actually managed to pull off a win thanks to the super efforts of Dravid and Laxman - SRT scored 1 - but then again Australia had scored too fast for their own good giving us enough time to win.

I would also ask you to try to reminisce Mohali 2003 against NZ, a match that tried to kill us (it is impossible to believe that someone could create a wicket like that just for the sake of creating it) when NZ humiliated us by enforcing a follow-on and almost pulled it off !! Again Sehwag 100, VVS 104* and 86*.

So there are instances when various batsmen have done the job in recent times.

Today Pakistan have scored at just the right rate. This match could go to the wire (and by that mean to decide whether we draw or lose). Sehwag has already made his intentions clear !! That's the spirit Veeru !!