CricDigs Blogs

Justin Langer, the former Australian opener who recently went past The Don’s record for most first-class runs is planning to come back in the ongoing Ashes. Given the poor form of Hughes and the fact that the Aussies don’t have too many options in terms of opening batters, it may actually happen. However, Langer has categorically made it clear that he would have to be officially appointed as the opening bat for the rest of the test matches if the CAB wants him back. At the age of 38 this does seem like a bit too stretched to believe but then the Aussie selectors have been known to make some bizarre and brave choices and this one too might just happen. Langer is still pretty active in the Australian first class and the county scene and is among the top three run-getters until now, in 2008, in the domestic circuit. Given his excellent record against the Englishmen, Langer could well get a chance to play in another Ashes, albeit without his former partner, Matty Hayden.

IPL2 in on and it was supposed to have provided the Indian selectors with some options beyond the obvious for picking the squad for the forthcoming T20 World Cup in England. However, till now there aren’t many new names that have made a case for themselves. In fact, some the players who had impressed in IPL1 have been found wanting in the second edition. Players like Gony and Dhawan haven’t lived up to the expectations and it is difficult to think of any new names that might come up in the near future.

Even Ravinder Jadeja who was looked upon as a surety for the T20 squad has not batted with conviction so far. Only Yousuf Pathan is living to his reputation, but then his selection was never under any question. Among the bowlers, there still isn’t a single break-away, pacy sort of a fast bowler who could do a Malinga kind of job — keep firing in yorkers during the death overs. It would be hard to swallow if Rohit Sharma is picked again. I guess Badrinath and RP Singh are the only two players who have made a case for a comeback to the team.

Well, to be precise, I should be saying that the England team has been clueless throughout their Caribbean tour but let us give them a bit of appreciation where they deserve — test cricket, though not in the very recent past. The team has always struggled in the shorter versions of the game, be it the 50 over format or the more recent 20-20 version. The reasons are pretty obvious — their batsmen just can’t seem to adapt to the idea of hitting big when the pressure is really on. Apart from Flintoff and Pietersen, they don’t have too many match-winners in the ODIs. Strauss isn’t tailor-made for big hitting and Owais Shah seems to be playing with some perplexing uncertainty. Yes, Collingwood could be a handful on occasions but he alone can’t deliver every time. The England team just about scraped through (only God and Dyson himself knows what went wrong) due to a mathematical miscalculation! Their bowlers have been unable to bowl the variety that is needed in one-day bowling and keep on bowling the length that would do well back home. Just look at Bravo, he is perhaps among the best middle-over ODI bowlers today.

West Indies on the other hand are slowly building a squad of all-rounders (not the typical world-class ones) as they realize that their batting continues to be susceptible to unbelievable failures. In come the likes of Pollard and Darren Sammy, who can contribute with the ball and bat. They are being complemented by Gayle and Bravo while Chanderpaul and Sarwan are ensuring that there aren’t any more batting collapses. I guess, leaving out Benn is confusing some folks at least it is strange to me. He bowls with a simple but awkward-looking sort of action and could have been very effective to limit the flow of runs in the middle overs, but then with England, there isn’t much flowing usually, is there? The series is at a 1-1 situation now but I am voting for the Calypso flavour to overwhelm.

Here is what Sachin Tendulkar has “achieved” so far.

41 Test Centuries, 42 ODI centuries (Total 83 International Hundreds), Almost 29000 International runs with an average of 55 and 45 (Test & ODI),
Countless number of Man Of The Matches, including
Player Of the World Cup in 2003.

Other than Ponting with 36 Test Centuries no one is even close to Sachin with these numbers…..

What more does he have to do?

In recent times….

He scored most runs in the Test-Series between both the teams during India’s tour Down Under last year.
He scored heavily in the CB Series Finals to ensure India’s 2-0 victory. Played some important knocks when the Aussies visited India in Oct-Nov 2008

But then he has never played under pressure……So they say…So looks like when Sachin scored all these runs India has always been in a great and position of strength…..Come on get real…..

I guess when he scored that unbeaten hundred in Chennai this Monday to lead India to a record-breaking 387 run chase, one would think that he will get the credit, but when I was watching a show on Neo-Cricket, a lot of the caller were saying the it was because of Sehwag that we won the match. So Blame Sachin when he beings us close to victory but does not finish it but don’t give him credit when he takes a start given by someone else and gets India to the unbelievable win on the 5th day..

So regardless of what he has done so far or will do in the future, unless Sachin single handedly wins the World Cup for India and mind you it has to be single handedly, with no one else contributing at all (how one can do that in a team sport is beyond my comprehension), he will always be criticized by many for not doing “anything” when it was required…

But who cares what these people think or say…For someone like me and I am sure there are millions like me, it is true that….

Cricket Is My Religion And Sachin Is It’s Ultimate God!!

I wrote a tribute story on two players we have grown to love, Dada and Jumbo. It’s found at http://christopherdavid007.blogspot.com/2008/11/legendary-farewell-for-two-legends.html

Hope you come and take a look at it (It is quite big). But worthwhile reading never the less.

I read somewhere that Hayden blamed “Third-world” conditions that they had to deal with in India for Australia’s bad performance and especially their poor over-rate….

So much for the macho man that he is considered. I guess physical and mental toughness are 2 different things. Hayden mentioned that Heat was one of the reasons that they could not get it done fast enough. I did not know that Hayden came from Western Europe and not Australia…

Here are some of the excuses Hayden gave (it’s coming from an unofficial and anonymous source)

1. Some of our bowlers were not fit and therefore were taking forever to complete their overs.

2. We have a Captain who does not know how to lead when we are behind and did not know how to call the toss….

3. We were all home-sick and thinking about families back home and therefore had a hard time focusing.

4. The Indian Batsmen out there were speaking in “Hindu” or whatever that language is called and we had to relay that over to the dressing-room to get it decoded so we could understand their strategies. This added to the delay in our over-rate.

5. There were a lot of centuries/double-centuries scored and the celebrations took forever.

6. A lot of boundaries were hit and we had to run all the way to the fence to fetch the ball.

7. The music played on the ground was not to our liking (not sure how this matters….)

8. We had to travel to different cities to play different Tests and that confused our bowlers.

9. Due to poor ground conditions our bowlers had to lengthen their run-ups to get generate the same pace.

10. We did not really have good spinners….Not sure what is happening with Shane Warne’s return. We really need him bad….Rest of these folks are just bad.

I am sure there are more reasons that Hayden put forward. May be you have heard some of them….

I can understand if some of you may have developed some feelings of sympathy for the Aussie skipper — Ricky Ponting. When is the last time anyone heard an Australian player admitting that they would be returning home with their tails between their legs? Well, I am not one of them. I am enjoying every moment of the backlash that Ponting is receiving back home and with the Indian media. Cricket Australia has pulled up Ricky asking for an explanation of the events that lead to a very rare 2-0 defeat in a test match series. People are questioning his defensive tactics. I guess most of them are forgetting what Ian Chappell keeps repeating — a captain is only as good as the team. Just look at the Aussie squad.

It is depleted without any world-beating pace bowler with Brett Lee’s form nosediving. Krejza might have impressed a few people with his 8-wicket haul in the first innings of the Nagpur test, but he is certainly no Shane Warne, but is that really a valid excuse? After all, the Aussies have always been proud of finding the best replacements for their world beating squad. Even the staunchest of Ponting supporters like Steven Waugh have left him in the lurch. Everybody is baying for his blood. It isn’t every day that an Aussie team is defeated 2 to nil. Ponting has been guilty of letting the Indians dictate terms to him. His fast bowlers never seemed to keen to try and bounce the Indian batsmen.

He chose Cameron White despite reservations from the selection committee. What role did White exactly play in the squad? He never looked like a wicket-taker. He never threatened as a batsmen and he was uninspiring with his presence on the field. Further, the reported spat with Lee has spoiled Ponting’s reputation. To add to his problems, Ponting has taken upon a somewhat uncharacteristic role when facing the media in India. He seems to have humbled down and does no longer seem like the foul-mouthed, will-shoot-from-the-lips before thinking sort of a person he was till last season.

The fourth test match at Nagpur was eagerly awaited by fans and the cricketing fraternity across continents. Day one happenings weren’t as dramatic as some people might have hoped them to be but there were still some noteworthy innings played by the Indian batsmen. India’s new opening pair of Sehewag and Vijay did lay some sort of a foundation with almost a 100-run partnership. There was one surprise package though and it came from the Aussie camp — the debutant off-spinner, Jason Krejza who went on to break the opening partnership by claiming Sehewag and then sent back Dravid for a duck. Sehewag’s belligerent ways were eventually replaced by the cool and calculated approach of Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman.

India had lost the debutant Vijay — who looked pretty comfortable for his debut match, Dravid and Sehwag within 30 deliveries. It was left to the old warhorses — Tendulkar and Laxman to put an end to the Aussie charge as they chose to play straight down the V, seldom trying to get too cute with the bowlers. For some strange reason, Laxman did seem anxious and over-defensive. May be this being his 100th test match and the retirement of his old pal, Kumble had something to do with that. Some more concerting strokeplay from Tendulkar and Laxman ensured that India did cross the 200-mark without too many hiccups. Sachin eventually did get to the 100-mark, he seemed so focussed upon reaching but got out soon after that. Laxman too didn’t survive too long after scoring another half-century.

It has to be said that Laxman’s appetite for scoring half-centuries is perhaps amongst the best in the business. Trace his performance over the last few seasons, it is dotted with half-centuries and some of them have been very crucial for the team’s cause but still one would hope that VVS tries and converts more of them into centuries. When the day ended, India had barely crossed the 300-run mark for the loss of five wickets. On such a placid track and a track rendered impotent by retirements and lack of options, it doesn’t sound that great a scoring card. India should endeavour to score at least 500 runs to give themselves a realistic chance of winning the series 2 to nil.

It is apparent that retirement hasn’t been that easy for the former Aussie keeper, Adam Gilchrist. From the looks of it, the keeper and the game’s most destructive batsman can’t stop himself from raising one ungrounded point after another. First, he was questioning the sporting spirit of Sachin Tendulkar and what happened? The Aussie media itself and some major sporting channels started displaying pictures of what had actually happened during the infamous Sydney test. Realising that his theory had no takers, Gilly turned head-over-heels on his opinion and apologised to Tendulkar. Then, he created some sort of concoction that combined the happenings of that Sydney test match and his retirement.

If he is to be believed, it wasn’t his age but the way in which the match was played and the method in which the Indians conducted themselves that led him to announce his retirement from the game. Guess what happened? Gilly realised that not many people believed him and he again did a U-turn and somehow twisted his views into a sympathy-gaining forum by stating that he was apologetic for falsely claiming Dravid’s wicket during that test match. Now, the ‘Mouth from the South’ — that is what some people are calling him, has come up with another tale of supposed cricketing injustice.

According to him, the media and the ICC has been too lenient on Muralitharan. He believes that the ace spinner’s action is flawed beyond doubt, indirectly suggesting that Murali throws the ball rather than delivering it legally. Don’t be surprised if in a few days from now, Gilly goes back on his views and claims that Murali is the greatest spinner in the world and deserves every bit of appreciation he has got. Just reading these things suggest that hanging up his gloves hasn’t been too kind on Gilchrist’s mental faculties. Rather than trying to attract some sort of attention towards himself in this pathetic fashion, Gilly needs a psychiatrist, a good one. May be someone who can actually explain if these problems are endemic to the Australian dressing room only?

Ponting is smiling a bit after all. The Indian tour hasn’t been most kind on the Australian skipper’s sense of humour. Most of the times he has been caught with the old tongue-in-cheek habit of his. Still the Aussie captain insists that it is the Indian team that is under more pressure to win the test match and that it would be difficult for them to do so with a number of distractions that could derail the team’s focus. He believes this, ignoring that the Aussies are on the verge of losing the test series and even if they draw it, this would be regarded as one of Australia’s worst foreign tours in recent years.
It seems that Ricky is upbeat about the fact that India has lost the services of Gautam Gambhir for the final test match in all probability. That does make some sense but he seems more gung-ho about the problems faced by India. This notwithstanding the fact that Lee, Michael Clarke and Bollinger were missing from the training session because of stomach ailments until Wednesday morning and the rookie, Krejza would be playing in all probability, despite looking very ordinary in the preparatory games. Ponting seems to have ignored the fact that Australia couldn’t dismiss India twice in any of the first three test matches.
The new Indian test captain, MS Dhoni, is however more than confident about his team’s chances. He feels that the retirement of Anil Kumble would only spur on the team to give him a worthwhile farewell gift. Laxman would be more focussed for his 100th test and not distracted, as claimed by some people who can afford to think like Ponting. Dhoni believes that even Ganguly would like to exit on a high which can only be good for the team’s cause. Again, he believes that Bhajji would be more motivated and focussed to take his 300th test scalp and win the match for India. He doesn’t believe that there is any reason to get too emotional or be sidetracked with already-disclosed retirements and records that would be created.