Post "Big Five Silver Lining", will it be dark once again?

This is the last straw.

I gave away my life-dream in the previous post a year back, and wished that post to be my last in Pavilion View. Sadly, I could not leave in the bitter-sweet afterglow of that nostalgic post which I had made when I started the most uncertain, indefinite and difficult time of my personal life. That phase continues and grows darker and I wanted to keep the blog out of it.

But I cannot. This blog, once nurtured chiefly by my continued addiction to cricket and sustained by the interesting times we saw in Indian Cricket, must now end in a scream of horror. Horror at the looming shadows that threaten to molest the game that I once so loved and stood by when it needed me to.

The bright spot of the post is, as usual, the Big Five. And to make it as positive as possible I will speak of the bright spot instead of the darkness around it.

I take this opportunity to say, one last time, that which I tend to repeat like a parrot having just that one line:  

The true measure of Indian cricket’s Big Five (not Big six or seven or eight) for their game and for Indian sports, in that specific era of theirs, will emerge only in posterity.

Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman.

It is widely seen that they achieved WITH the system they worked in.

That understanding may not stand the test of time by the looks of it.

Future history may observe that to a certain extent the Five Musketeers of Indian Cricket might have achieved their folklore-inspiring feats INSPITE of the system around them - and still managed to put to sword the Greatest Team in last 30 years. While the latter were likely working WITH their robust system.

When the mud settles the much-‘crazed’ (more than loved) game in the Big Five's country may record, at either chronological end of their conjoined careers, steep slopes into professional and moral troughs.

It did not seem to be so even in the toughest of times then. Now we know why. Because they were around. Perhaps we mistook the brilliant combined glow of these five, the 'silver lining' in the all-encompassing gloom of over-prioritised money eating away the fibre of sport in the name of sponsoring it, as a daybreak for those few years. This too is passing, as it seems..and the gloom is set to return.

For the past week or so we have watched with irritation, and annoyance, three of the five musketeers dispute each other in media on incidents from a buried past. It seemed a tad ‘beneath them’. Well it doesn’t look as bad any more. Indeed, we can debate the right and wrong about playing for one's century (or double) and holding grudges for 10+ years, OR about letting out an ex-colleague friend's hint of frustration with coach in front of media. The Big Five have their share of flaws, but none that cannot be forgiven and forgotten. The past few weeks and their Sydney / Multan / Chappell controversies shall be like baby pool splash in the aftermath of the disastrous tsunami we are waiting for.

With a tired smile I remember a 'lateral thinking' puzzle that all of us learnt as kids: if you want to make a long line short without erasing, you draw a longer line next to it.

In this respect the admirers of Big Five, the ones about to be indicted, are proving themselves to be true-blue die-hard fans of the quintet. A grand inadvertent 'self-sacrificing' service to the Five, if ever there was one. By becoming news that drowns the latter’s mild discord. A hugely longer line this surely is.

I dread to see the names, though I am sure that they will emerge one day.

Quite painfully, some of them would have been lovingly 'hand-grown' Chinese Bamboos in the orchard that was once sown, grown and ruled by the Big Five. An orchard that stood together, unlike before and after them, and refused to cower even when faced by a rampaging Cyclone called Australia.

I am glad I don't follow cricket these days. I am still smarting for the rumblings of 2000 and I could not have gone through that period of shock again - to sense his name coming up from the hints dropped in newspaper articles, and then actually finding the man, the icon who brought me to cricket and who I loved and wished well more than anyone else not personally known to me, getting named with evidence.

It’s curtains for Pavilion View. This time for good. It has been a privilege. I shall be forever indebted that you took time to even have a look at these pages. And return back to them from time to time. I hope once in a while I could light up your day, sometimes when you needed it most. It has been well worth it. Thanks for the good wishes and kind patronage.

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Okay, I am making a laboured attempt to make it a ‘smiley’ ending. I am changing topic. And sport.
It is hardly easy to smile though when it features an injury to Roger Federer. Wish him a quick recovery, he is shaping up well for one last hurrah.

I hope some day Andy Murray writes a movie script, and I shall queue up when the movie gets released. I love his British one-liners, besides admiring the no-fuss sport lurking in him:

Roger Federer gave Novak Djokovic a walkover in the final of the ATP World Tour Finals on Sunday after he pulled out of the tournament due to a back injury. The announcement came just 30 minutes before the final was set to begin and Federer addressed the crowd himself, apologizing and explaining he was unfit to compete against Djokovic. 

Knowing that Federer was unfit to take the court, the ATP scrambled to come up with a solution to give the fans a show. Chris Kermode, head of the ATP, called up Andy Murray at 2pm to see if he would be willing to come down to the O2 to play a series of exhibition matches. Murray was at home on the couch playing videogames when he got the call. He immediately agreed and drove himself down to the arena to play an exhibition set against Djokovic and then team up with John McEnroe to play doubles against Pat Cash and Tim Henman.  

"I was playing Mario Kart on my sofa when I got the call," Murray said. "I was winning at that. It's better than my tennis at the moment," he joked. 

My alter ego

I always thought I had jussssst a bit of Rahul Dravid in me....and that did me proud. Now I am ecstatic - 'coz I just learnt that Dravid too perhaps has a bit of me in him!!
Check his 'tree analogy' for Test cricket, while trying to explain why other forms of cricket don't have a hope in hell to survive without it, even though these other formats do not 'appear' to depend much on Test cricket right now: http://post.jagran.com/rahul-dravid-bats-for-daynight-test-matches-with-pink-balls-1376997540


Now check the 'family analogy' this old Pavilion View post, supporting Dravid and Pink Ball Cricket while the former started actively promoting the latter couple of years back: http://pavilionview.blogspot.com/2011/04/need-your-support-in-favour-of-marching.html

If you find similarities in the two analogies, I will buy you a drink. Not that such analogies are unlikely to come to anyone's mind, but forget that mundaneness and imagine how much happy a Dravid admirer can be when he finds that his idol's mind thinks along the same (albeit obvious) lines as his own on while thinking of the same issue!

Ready for the drink I offered? Now give me your sweat analysis report....:-D

Greg Chappell, the cricket visionary: caring(!!) views on Indian cricket

I was going through some of Greg Chappell's articles in The Hindu. They make for intriguing reading, quite far removed from "the guy that rubs everyone up the wrong way", an image that Indian cricket fans make of him due to his negatively eventful 1½ tenure as coach of Indian cricket team (end 2005 to Mar 2007). In fact, on the contrary these articles are a testimony of why then-captain Ganguly thought of him as a personification of astuteness in 2004-05, and strongly recommended Greg to BCCI as next Indian coach.

The articles were especially delightful to read in this tough period for Indian cricket. These are times when fans are not sure if anybody really cares for Indian cricket. If we can detach the much-hated name while going through the content of these articles, these are valuable views and analyses coming from someone with no ulterior motives and wanting to share his knowledge for the betterment of cricket in India.

Sample this one: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/greg-chappel/karthik-thrown-a-deserved-lifeline-sreesanth-could-do-with-one/article4702845.ece?ref=sliderNews

Even more than his fine take on Karthik in that piece, the discussion on Sreesanth's cricketing talent was my takeaway - perhaps because Greg kept the section to just that: discussing Sreesanth's cricketing talent (even after the IPL spot-fixing fiasco). However he has also touched upon the latest controversy. Like a wise statesman, he has clearly  hinted at the fact that accepting Sreesanth as an eccentric talent and handling him accordingly JUST might have avoided him from turning into a wasted cricketer with unfulfilled potential. I liked the tone of that comment. 

There is a hint of sadness as he witnesses the fall of Sreesanth, a player that Greg still believes to be a major talent. He suggests that there was scope of improvement in the way Sreesanth was handled, but he makes his point without looking to transfer the blame of the errant cricketer's own indiscretions towards BCCI's incompetence at talent management.

Greg himself was hardly better at managing talent....while he was excellent at spotting talent, he failed abysmally in turning it into finished product. I reckon he still cares for these young guys he backed, if not for Indian cricket. Perhaps he realises today that HE could have done things differently as well.

[BTW, this is not the first time that BCCI's talent management woes are costing Indian cricket of its talents. If they had been even half decent at it, then Yuvraj Singh should have been India's next cricketer to retire with 50+ Test average, and Zaheer would have been our spearhead much before 2007..not to be.] 

And this marvellous piece on what EXACTLY is needed to be done for improving a batsman's concentration: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/greg-chappel/curing-crickets-attention-deficit-disorder/article4769944.ece

What I found during this phase, was that I tired very quickly and actually began to make mistakes after a relatively short period of time. If I did succeed using this method, I was usually so tired that I couldn’t relax easily afterwards and I was generally ‘flat’ for a few days.

On reflection, it dawned on me that this method was bound to fail and I had to find an alternative method. The alternative I chose was to train myself to concentrate for one ball at a time.

Concentration is the ability to focus on what is important at that moment.
From that point, my practice sessions became a contest with myself to see how well I could manage the conflicting messages in my head. Training was no longer an exercise in polishing my technique, but a mental exercise in engaging with the bowler at the appropriate time.

What I learnt to do was to switch-on to the bowler once he reached his bowling mark. The fiercest concentration was saved for the time that the bowler reached his delivery stride until that particular play was finished.

In between balls, I had a quick look into the crowd to give my mind a break before returning my attention to the field of play. I re-engaged with the bowler again once he got back to his mark.

The look into the crowd was an important part of my concentration routine. If I was playing at home, I would pick out someone whom I knew to look for. I astounded my family and friends when, at the end of the day, I could tell them what time they had arrived at the ground, who they had spoken to and what time they had a drink or something to eat.

Once I perfected this routine, I was never fatigued during play nor was I exhausted at the end of a long innings. Effectively, I had only concentrated at full intensity for a matter of minutes, even if I batted all day.

This is a pearl of wisdom coming from one of the finest batsmen ever. I wish to take printouts of this article and share with cricket crazy kids in our backyard. It is a must read for anyone who wants to become a better batsman at longer versions of the game (i.e. longer than 20 overs).

Last but not the least, Chappell’s article celebrating Sachin on his 40^th birthday: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/greg-chappel/sachin-still-pushing-the-boundaries/article4648090.ece?ref=sliderNews

What did surprise me was the meticulous attention that he gave to his bats.

I had seen others who were quite protective and caring of their bat, but I had never seen anyone who showered their bat with such loving attention. He constantly altered the batting grip and spent hours with a scalpel scraping and cleaning the blade so that it was pleasing to his eye.

As he explained it, he did not want anything out of place when he looked down at his bat when standing at the crease. I can’t say that I ever noticed my bat to that degree. It was an implement that I used, and as I often had to get used to another one, I did not want to be too attached to my current bat in case we were separated, for any reason.

Sachin built a symbiotic relationship with each bat that he used. Batting, I began to realise, was why Sachin lived and he was taking every part of it very seriously indeed.

A special and sensitive insight from a great batsman admiring another within the sacred confines of the Test match dressing room. Another section of that article discusses about the changes Sachin made in his batting stance and preparatory movement over his career.

I am looking forward to his Hindu articles hereafter, expecting those to be the best insights into Indian cricket that I am going to get on print or web in coming months.

Update: Here's another offering from Greg - discussing the reasons for India's cricketing upswing (barring those two 2011 away series) coinciding with Australia's downswing: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/greg-chappel/things-to-be-learnt-from-the-indian-model/article4902529.ece

How about Gurunath getting a 3rd degree called "24 hours of compulsory attention to Shastri's commentary"

Ravi Shastri is selected in BCCI's three member committee for probing spot fixing. 

Hope he can fire on all cylinders and drive some tracer bullets into fixers, make them disappear like huge sixers before the contest goes down to the wire. it's his for the taking, that's what the doctor ordered. 

However Shaz's greatest achievement would be bringing down the (BCCI) president if he can...he has got good credentials as a 'president shooter' to start with: a three letter initial (same as LHO and JWB) !! 

That will set the cat among the pigeons...c'mon Shaz, throw caution to the wind and be like greased lightning. The situation is touch and go...it's a pressure cooker, and something's got to give.

Can almost hear him commentate on the findings: "what Indian cricket needs now is a wicket...what Srini needs now is a partnership. Srini is rapped on the pads and the finger goes up....the umpire knew exactly what he was doing there. This decision sets up rest of the enquiry nicely ...now Guru..edggeeed, and should be taken...aah, Delhi police have dropped it. Unbelievable - they will take it ten out of ten times. the atmosphere is electrifying..is there another twist in the tale? One gets a feeling Guru may have injured himself there..."

[acknowledgement: http://blog.rohandsa.com/2010/04/ravi-shastri-commentary-generator.html]

What on earth is happening with Irfan Pathan

A relieved Irfan Pathan turned up for a post-match interview after Delhi Daredevils' close win over Pune Warriors in IPLT20. They say Irfan lost confidence in his bowling. But whenever Irfan speaks, I see a confident & communicative young man ready with intelligent & frank responses without having to be prodded. Today I saw that sparkling side of Irfan once again. I even see shades of the current Indian skipper when Irfan is in this mood. Try as I did, I could not match the bubbly guy I saw today with people's general perception of him (and with his own lack of performances in domestic cricket).



If Irfan Pathan shows decent returns in domestic cricket, then with his kind of ability I cannot believe he can EVER be a lesser preference to selectors than Ravindra Jadeja, Piyush Chawla and some of the others tried out these days. His middle overs bowling was key to Dhoni's T20 WC final win in 2007. Currently in ODI's the Indian team needs a medium-quick bowling all rounder MORE than spin-bowling ones. Yet here we see Irfan, showing much fluency with the bat at number 3 and speaking brightly in T20 interviews while betraying NO SIGNS of returning to India colours. It would be interesting to see his response had the interviewer thrown that question.


Has Irfan Pathan lost interest in international cricket? Is he happy as he is today? Is he no more keen to come back to Team India? I won't dwell again on the twisted incentives that IPL paychecks present for top T20 players. I have blogged generally on it earlier. He may even be going through genuine form issues. However, I find 'years of bowling form lapse' quite phoney for someone who, 5 years back, only had to turn up at the bowling crease for the ball to start swinging.

The other intriguing aspect about his current IPL stint: inspite of his moderate showing in previous IPL's he fetched a staggering price as an all-rounder, a price that is normally reserved for'guaranteed performers', or in other words the top players in the world who excel in other formats too. There must be something in him that the IPL franchisees are seeing and investing on, but the selectors & Irfan himself seem to be unaware of it!


Strange, the way some truly promising careers shape up in this game...especially now that IPL adds a twist that was not seen till 4 years back.


PS: I have seen and read about the 'Chappell effect' on Irfan's career. I am sure some of you would want to go back there. However I have my reservations in even starting to discuss the argument that a major talent continues to get defocussed 4 years after Chappell has left.

[developed from the note posted on my Facebook profile;
cross posted with minor edits on cricketcountry.com ]

Need your support in favour of marching towards floodlit first class cricket

My appeal to any cricket followers that read this post by intent or by accident:
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Please spare a thought about supporting first class / Test cricket played with pink balls. It needs support. No use supporting the branches and leaves (read ODI's & T20) of a tree whose roots (first class cricket) are shrinking by the day.



Currently floodlit first class cricket has a downside: it leads to more consumption of resource (power) but I believe that can be managed in near future by advanced solar energy harnessing resources. A cricket stadium receives a lot of solar energy in daytime - which can be used at night!

Want to see the pics? Here they are: http://www.lords.org/latest-news/news-archive/mcc-v-nottinghamshire-champion-county-27-30-march-2011-sheikh-zayed-stadium-abu-dhabi,33,PS.html?imageNo=4

 
While the cricket crazy world is keeping collective eye on the climax of the global event, a silent revolution has been started by people concerned with the health of the 'Mother' format of the game - first class cricket.
It is clear now that while the Son (Tests) augmented the mom's health since itis inception, Grandson (One dayers) had been a mixed bag- positive in some ways and negative in others. Mother was still doing fine but now the Great Grandson (T20) threatens to finish it off by pumping away all blood (read talent) from it by lucre of money.
This development is quite a shocker, as the lifeline for all 4 generations resides solely in the mother. Without survival of the mother, the next three generations might either perish or go into a coma (read 'associate member quality'). Problem is: the Great Grandson is kind of a 'bull in a china shop' guy, one who has immense power but does not know about using it for family's good.
For the Mother to stand a chance of survival, she may need to raid the Great Grandson's territory. The 'positive move' may or may not work but it is worth trying as the mother is dying anyway if she tries nothing.
The preparations for that assault into grandson's territory started at Abu Dhabi on 27th March. Support the cause.
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More links:

MCC website report of Rahul Dravid endorsing to take 'pink ball first class cricket' experiment forward: http://www.lords.org/latest-news/news-archive/dravid-pink-the-future-for-tests,1969,NS.html
Pink ball day-night first class match between MCC & Notts at Abu Dhabi - scorecard: http://www.ecb.co.uk/stats/fixtures-results/score-card.html?Pfixture=com.othermedia.ecb.stats.Fixture-L-16738

Here's a link to my previous post listing the exact concerns on health of first class cricket that I discussed heart to heart with a cricket loving guy I know very well - MYSELF.

This is the cricinfo report where Dravid, after completing his participation in the experimental floodlit first class match at Abu Dhabi, has endorsed the new idea as good for cricket's future. The comments in that article list concerns of the readers - one of which was negative impact on energy consumption.

Commando's walk in the storm

This is the video link of the famous desert storm innings, Sharjah 1998:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXRkHervQJc&feature=fvwrel

India were facing elimination in the tri-nation tourney if they lost this match by a certain margin. After a major early collapse, there appeared no way that India would even come close to overhauling that margin. Sachin helped the team get over the minimum runs required to make the final..and then even tried to go for an impossible win (before falling just short). This innings had everything - EVERYTHING that an ODI batsman is expected to do for his team. Have you watched Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Commando"? No? Watch Sachin's 143 instead. Barring the end result, it can put even Miandad's last-ball-sixer-knock in Sharjah'86 to shade.


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For those who questioned the intent behind Sachin's walk in 2011 WC (suggesting it was prompted by fear of getting caught at UDRS):


YES, that could have been a possible reason for his walk (I am sure it will be THE reason for many future walks)...but Sachin had started walking long back.


Watch the closing moments of this video - he had 'walked' at the end of his innings. He waited to check if it is a no-ball due to height - and walked away when he saw no no-ball signal...even after the umpire gave him not out. As I had opined to my FB friends earlier, there was a time before 1995 when Sachin used to let umpires decide if he was out. But from late 90's ever since he become a role model (or ever since Ponting started playing for Aus & took up the 'non-walker' mantle ;-) I have always seen him taking the decision himself.


[I am willing review that stand if I get proof that he selectively chose not to walk even after 1998. Unlikely - this was a high octane match against his eternal foes Australia, he was the lone fighter badly wanting to win this match (I am 75% sure he would have won it that day had he stayed...and there was no UDRS at the time.]

Alternative climax of Commando: Just before slaying the villain, Schwarzenegger turns into a monk and walks off into the mountains.

The videotapes that never were

I was searching for youtube videos of our featured player of the day. We share those amongst a FB forum of colleague friends trying to make the most out of the cricket World Cup. Each day we have decided to have a World Cup great as a player of the day.

I picked up a number of videos from the net to pay tribute to this man...for example this one, or that one - even this.

Then I tried to search for a final video, the pinnacle of his achievements..only to remember I CANNOT show it.
No one can. It was never videotaped, that's why.



"Why are India perched at number 1 position in Tests?"
'Coz they have great players for some years.


"Why do India have great players?"
Because so many people in the country play and follow this game.


"Why do so many people follow this game?"
Because it shot up in popularity after India won the 1983 world Cup.


"Why did they win the 1983 world cup?"
 Because...


....as much as all other reasons in all other games of India in that Cup, one man - their captain and best player Kapil Dev - emerged from the pavilion with his team grovelling at 17/5 & played one astonishing innings of 175* to win India a lost cause against Zimbabwe at a venue called Turnbridge wells in UK.


He did that on a day when the British media went on strike....

But honestly, how do you make them honest?

I just read an interesting article by Rudi Webster on 'the psychology of cheating', including possible ways to encourage integrity in sportsmen. Recommend it even for non-cricket fans..especially the results of the tests with and without vows of code of honour.


What the article does not say: Does it work as well even on sample students taking their 100th test with such vow? Those tainted guys across all sport - none of them did it in their first match. In all likelyhood they would not have done it even if there was to be an offer.
 
Sharda Ugra has her individual take on the factors that may lead to sportsmen demonstrating loss of morality. She tries to answer her question:

Sporting heroes build their careers, their lives, on reputation. Of athlete as fighter, athlete as adventurer, athlete as risk-taker, but a man or woman doing so always within the rules of their sport. When the boundaries around those reputations begin to fray, we are faced with the same old, weary questions. Guilt and innocence. Reason and impulse. It's what was asked of Hansie Cronje or Mohammad Azharuddin or Saleem Malik, even of Mark Waugh and Shane Warne. Why? Whatever the hell for? What on earth were you thinking?



We want to know what leads men of such skill, achievement and fairly firm financial ground, to make choices that, before they are unethical, are so utterly illogical.

She cites another example of a non-cricketing great sportsman explaining the 'why' what for' 'what were you thinking' questions by looking back to that dark phase:

Tiger Woods described what life was like inside elite sport: "I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to, deserve to enjoy all the temptations around me. I thought I was entitled. Thanks to money and fame, I didn't have to go far to find them." That was his answer to the questions "Why?" "Whatever for?" "What were you thinking?"

I also found some words of interest in Sandy Gordon's study of such incidents as excerpted by Sharda. Along side his famous contributions to international cricket teams, Sandy is professor of sport and exercise psychology at the University of Western Australia's School of Sport Science, Exercise and Health.

One of the more unusual terms Gordon used in his responses to ESPNcricinfo was the "derailer". It comes from a psychological questionnaire called the Hogan Development Survey (HDS), used to study an individual's responses under stress.


The derailer refers to traits that belong to the "dark side of personality", which can sometimes take over under pressure and play an important part in decision-making - traits that are normally tolerated, even indulged, as Gordon says, but which, when "tempted with opportunity", can derail. "It's about character meeting opportunity and/or sport revealing character," Gordon said. Temptations come in many disguises; what stays constant, though, is the powerful lure.


The personality types on the HDS scales include "colourful" (seekers of attention, productive, with ability in crises, and possessed of belief in self and ability), "bold" (overly self-confident, arrogant, with inflated feelings of self-worth) and "mischievous" (charming, risk-taking, limit-testing and excitement-seeking). Gordon says "bold" and "mischievous" characters abound in the entertainment industry (e.g. professional sport...) We may often call them "characters" in cricket.

Comparison of Warne and Murali (Test bowling career stats only)

Purpose of this post: Stating a closing argument against the malpractice of deriding Murali's achievements in comparison to Warne's.
[statistical closure, I meant - there is no remedy to people using baseless 'arm twisting' tactics of getting away from the statistical argument]

The Test bowling stats of Warne and Murali
The career Tests stats - TAKEN EXCLUDING BANGLADESH AND ZIMBABWE - demonstrate that the two bowlers were statistical twins in geatness stakes, both in terms of their averages & strike rates against various oppositions and also their averages in various lands.

I suspect the Murali baiters will still fish through and come back with one glaring aberration - I am including my closing note on that point at the bottom of this post.

Murali's stats (Tests excluding Zim and Bang):

[Click for LARGER view]

Warnie's stats (Tests excluding Zim and Bang):

[Click for LARGER view]

Dear Murali baiter

I hope you have found out from above career figures
- that both bowlers have consistent and similar bowling averages & strike rates against most teams,
- that England is a common delicacy at (or near) the top in menu for both bowlers
- that both bowlers fare poorly against India (Murali struggled more when touring India, while Warne struggled both home and away).

That was the House of Commons.

Now the BIG DIFFERENCE:
Your favourite point, perhaps: Murali's bowling average falls to an abysmal 75 when he tours Australia (5 tests) while Warne does not have figures anywhere close to those against any team or at any country...

Well are you seriously looking for explanation why that happens to a bowler who is specifically targetted by 30000 strong crowds for heckling in the ground over 5 days, then by the umpires and then by the media including the nation's President?

Let alone bowl, Shane Warne would be unable to turn up in the field during SL tours if the crowd there had gone for his throat by flashing his underwear clad sleazy photos across the grounds and the media. Picking even 12 wickets in 5 matches (Murali's figures in matches played in Australia) would look like matching Laker in such hostile conditions.

Summary:
Even excluding Zim-Bang matches, Murali still scalps better than quarter-to-six wickets per Test @ a bowling avg that is 2% better than Warnie's and a bowling strike rate that is 2% lesser than Warnie's.

Forget the six wickets per Test - it is that big due to Murali getting longer bowling spells with lesser bowlers. Those other two comparative figures tell the story of their amazing equality of greatness in bowling capabilities - within 2% within each other in any which way we look at it.

Should we now close this issue once and for all???

[Stats courtesy: cricinfo]

PS: There is a case for delving further into their stats and finding percentage of top order wickets against each country. But I will leave that exercise to others.

And Afridi retires...again

Afridi has done it again - from being the Pakistan Test skipper, he has retired from Test cricket after the 1st Test of a 3-Test series.
Today's quote on the cricinfo page happens to be:

"I wasn't good enough"

Shahid Afridi doesn't mince words when announcing his retirement from Tests

And he goes on to drive the point home:

"I took the decision in the best interest of the team and hope a youngster with a Test temperament takes my position. I also feel that there are other players who are not fit for the longer version of the game and my advice to them is to concentrate on the shorter forms."

Anyone unintroduced to Afridi retirements could be forgiven for thoughts like "Phew - this man shows more patience in T20 games than in making career decisions." Probably true, but history shows that this charismatic 'King of T20' takes these retirement calls backed with a sound knowledge that unlike onfield hit-or-block decisions the retirements can be reversed pretty easily, within a very short time, and without asking for referral. Request you to go through some earlier Afridi retirements if you think I am being unnecessarily sarcastic.

That opening quote was pretty blunt for a self-assessment. Having seen Afridi for over a decade now, we can expect that to be a real call, of him calling a spade as he sees it, rather than an excuse to 'leave the battlefield' or 'insult Pak cricket establishment' that some people are accusing him of.

His ex-Pakistan teammate and skipper Moin Khan is relatively moderate. He opines:

"If he was not prepared for Test cricket then he should have thought about this before accepting the captaincy. His decision has come at a wrong time for Pakistan cricket and will complicate issues in the team."

Poor judgement, Moin. Did you truly expect him to have so much 'thought'-fulness alongside a strike rate close to twice that of the next fastest player???

The point is: It can change in the near future - by the 3rd Test, or by the next Test series...or even further down the months, say after the 2011 World Cup.

Why? 'Coz he does not have Test temperament, you see. For most others a career is like one long Test match. To Shahid Afridi, a career probably looks like a series of numerous T20 matches, each dissociated with the other. You never know what the next match throws up!

When walking is not fun

"There used to be a bloke who gave himself out by walking when he'd hit the ball. The popularity of that within his team-mates may be shown by the fact that since his retirement, they no longer reply to any emails, phone calls or text messages."

Adam Gilchrist gives a tongue-in-cheek response to his own philosophy of 'walking'
[source: cricinfo quotes]

Tongue-in-cheek? I thought I detected an element of hurt in it.

Now we get a hint how difficult it can be for an Australian who intends to practice walking at international level. It is equivalent to risking being a social outcast! Makes Gilchrist's decision to continue walking even more divine.

Lessons that will not be learnt

Cricinfo quotes Australian captain Ricky Ponting thus:

"Some of the older players are probably looking at this as their last Test series. There are all sorts of things going around in the media at the moment, with claims that some of them will be forced out and told they have to retire at a certain time. Guys like Laxman and Dravid. And who knows when Sachin is going to call it quits.

"He's probably going to be the only one who is going to have the luxury of deciding when he is going to retire by the sound of it. I'm sure they'll be reminded of that on a daily basis, and not just by us. Their media will be all over them if we start the first Test well and put pressure on them in lots of different ways. "

Sad part is: Perhaps he is true with that last sentence. I remember the Australian captain saying similar words ahead of their 2004 campaign as well. It is like saying 'Indian media will help our cause.'

Even sadder: Very few, if any, in media will feel insulted by Ponting’s insinuation at the the way Indian sports journalists put pressure on THEIR players instead of the opposition. Most of them will STILL do as Ponting says if Australia do well in the first Test.

Ponting goes a step further and predicts the exact words that will come out in criticism of some Indians:

"If we can make their fielding look as bad as it is by some good running between wickets and good hustling and good pressure," Ponting said, "then you know straight away all the old stuff about the old bodies and 'Ganguly can't field' and 'Dravid looks a bit slow', all of that stuff will come out."

More of the 1996 Indo-Pak QF

While on that 1996 World Cup QF match, check out at 06:35 min of that same clip referred to in previous post for that memorable altercation between a gallant captain who lost his temper before losing his wicket and a calm but competitive bowler who turned a slipping win into a grand memory for himself and Indians with a great spell of one-day bowling.

One of the memories of that match was the Aamir Sohail-Saeed Anwar opening partnership. While the Indians rode Tendulkar-Sidhu's steady opening stand and Jadeja's famous Waqar-bashing 25 ball 45 to set the old foes a rather big target of 288 (in those days) , that advantage was nullified barely forty five minutes into the Pakistan innings (*). Faced with a big ask, the Pakistan duo took their team score to 84/0 after 10 overs. Saeed Anwar got out in the 11th over to Srinath after scoring the classiest 32 ball 48 you will ever see anyone score under pressure (barring a 32 ball fifty scored by a Sri Lankan number four some days later against the same opponents). Thereafter the QF match gradually turned in India's favour.

A little over an hour and a half later, when 38 year old Miandad's slowing legs ran out of steam and failed to respond to that quick single pioneered by the great man atop them, the cricket world saw the last of Javed Miandad on that 9th evening of March 1996 as Pakistan were eliminated. It was his 6th World Cup spanning 21 years.

You can get a glimpse of the euphoria created by the match in this report.

How sadly incorrect the 2nd para of that report turned out to be four days later. Most Indian cricket fans remember the pain of that tragic semi final encounter with Sri Lanka more than the joy of this memorable win. I, having been a spectator in the Eden stands on March 13, am no exception.

(*) - Here we need to rack our brains and recall that in 50 over games 45 minutes used to constitute roughly 20 percent of the innings instead of 60 percent.

T20 or Test, Bhajji is a pest

Just crapping with the subject line there. But the incident that happpened today goes to show the essential danger of trying to be something else without getting to the depth of it. When Australians or South Africans sledge, they are mostly putting on a facade that they consider part of their professional duty. There's always this underlying knowledge that this is an act. When an Indian sledges, he is not acting but often reacting to someone else's act. That itself indicates emotion and not logic is ruling.

Sledged players often get eager to get back at the 'offender' by letting the emotions out instead of ensuring to pay him back in cricketing kind. They often forget that a teenaged Sachin has made a worldful of verbal enemies vanish into thin air just by adopting that silent punishment procedure. Any other reaction to a sledge, and the offender has succeeded.

We have often egged on the 'young brigade' for their 'tit for tat' approach to the big teams but today when Bhajji behaved abysmally with another temperamental Indian player Sreesanth after an IPL loss, it is a slapping proof that bad behaviour can easily be bad response to pressure and most Indian players are not really putting on a rehearsed act.

And I even traced a little bit of history of the latest showdown in a Test match earlier this year. It was no less shameful. Sreesanth may have dropped an easy catch off your bowling but you simply cannot do that to a teammate, Bhajji! How much you must be letting the proceedings affect your reason to behave in such fashion with a colleague in a Test match.

The two sides of the IPLT20 coin

Side 1:

Amit Varma raises his voice, defending both the quality of cricket and the money in it.

Purists – and I used to think of myself as one – often speak of Twenty20 cricket
disparagingly, as if it has reduced the fine game of cricket to something absurdly simplistic, where sloggers rule, hand-eye co-ordination matters more than finely honed technique, and bowlers are irrelevant. If you’ve been watching, you’ll know that isn’t true. Twenty20 is not a dilution of the game but an intensification of it.

Some commentators take issue with so much money being spent on a sport in a poor country. "[M]ost of these millions will be leaving India," de Lisle wrote in his
piece, "filling the coffers of Australian stars who are already very highly paid. Money shouldn't travel in a direction like that." If that logic was correct, we might as well stop poor countries from importing anything. Every trade happens because it leaves both parties better off, and the IPL's foreign players are being paid so much because they bring that much value to the table. That value, the return on those investments, will happen within India.

Side 2:

Gideon Haigh sees some light in the new toy but is concerned about the numerous dark patches. Those patches involve both the money and the quality of cricket.

On the cricket:

Already, however, I'm struck by the fact that what I've enjoyed are those moments when Twenty20 has looked more like cricket rather than less. And this is a problem, because there simply aren't enough of them. Twenty20 is envisaged as a concentrated form of cricket, without the pauses and longueurs that test the patience and understanding of the uninitiated. But it's less concentrated than crudely edited, and what is missing are those aspects of the game that make it linger in the mind, that impress on the imagination, that take time to understand, that need effort to appreciate. It requires nothing of its audience but their attendance and their money. Apparently, the first episode of Shah Rukh Khan's Indianised version of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? airs later this week. Pardon me for thinking that Khan's two new presentations have a few things in common.

Twenty20 has rightly been called a batsman's game, but it is a very particular kind of batsman: the type whose game is built on eye and strength. If a new Dravid were to begin emerging now, I suspect he would face a career as a second-class cricket citizen.

The game's skills, meanwhile, have been massively rationalised. What we see in the main is not so much batting as hitting, not so much bowling as conveying. The batsman is assessed by the change his strokes are leaving out of six; the bowler is like the fall guy in a comic routine stoically awaiting the inevitable custard pie.

And on the money:

Profit maximisation is the name of the game - and that goes for administrators, franchisees, players, managers, broadcasters and sponsors alike. The possible negative consequences for other countries or other forms of the game are of no account compared to the commercial, and doubtless also political, ambitions of the likes of Lalit Modi and Sharad Pawar. It is not even about giving the people what they want; it is about giving the people what Modi and Pawar want them to want, and can then make a packet out of selling them.

Exactly why the people deserve this is not abundantly clear. Perhaps it is an instance of what I once saw defined as the Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences: "Whoever has the gold makes the rules." But the contrast I noted earlier between the proceeds of my own humble cricket event and the IPL's was not merely a matter of quantum. All of the Yarras' hard-won $583.50 will go straight back into the game's beneficiation. Of what proportion of the billions raised by the IPL, I wonder, will that be true?

Gideon's taken a goofy dig at the clamour from various quarters, including the English players' clan, that ICC create a window for the IPL in its annual calendar:

You don't have to be Einstein - hell, you don't have to be Napoleon Einstein - to realise that if the IPL contains even a glimmer of promise, it won't be stopping there: pretty soon cricket's schedule will have more windows than the Sears Tower.

The Future Guys of Indian cricket & the non-‘plus’sed seniors

I could not believe my ears when I heard Maninder Singh defending Yuvraj Singh in the face of questions raised on his form and fitness in a tele-discussion on dropping Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly from the one day side.

Upon being reminded of Yuvraj Singh’s inability to last long in any of his Australian outings Maninder argued that Yuvraj is mostly getting dismissed through slip catches in the first class matches; however since Yuvraj bats at number four / five in ODIs & T20s there will be no slips when he comes in and he should score! Whether that comment was more insulting to Ponting’s captaincy or Yuvraj’s batting ability is for you to decide.

I have long been supporting the cause of picking only those players in ODIs who are either good batsmen or good bowlers depending on their trade but who necessarily have the accepted ‘plus’-es called good ground fielding and deft running between wickets. The philosophy is more rigidly applicable to T20 teams.

I have always believed that Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly should have retired from ODIs just after the 2007 world cup. Both are very good batsmen. But unlike Sachin Tendulkar the Lords 1996 twins do not have quick feet; they are neither skilled ground fielders nor quick runners between wickets. They are not going to contribute that little extra to the team in normal ODI / T20 conditions where we need slip fielders (Dravid’s specific plus) for only 10-15 overs and part time seam bowlers (Ganguly’s specific plus) only in overcast conditions. This means they are susceptible to finger pointing and selection hazards even if they do not perform in 2 or 3 games. You don’t want to see players of their calibre facing it.

However Australia is a place where the Golden generation boys’ batting assumes greater importance than that of the next generation of batsmen simply because the men hold their performances in these shores while the boys have been unable to do so. It happened during the 2003 tour and it has happened this time too in Test matches. I see no reason for that not happening in ODIs unless the matter is as simple as explained by Maninder.

These two ex-captains should have deserved serious thought from selectors just as the right, experienced horses for the course. There are horses by the dozen for Indian courses but the away courses have not yet been happy for the colts. The benching of the senior pros could be postponed by one series in this context.

Moreover, the specific ‘plus’-es of Dravid and Ganguly (and even Laxman’s catching, for that matter) come into play so much more in Australian conditions.

Let us ignore that all. Now we go to their ‘minus’-es, i.e. lack of the commonly accepted pluses. Since both were dropped after a very short run of failure in ODIs and don’t look likely to be considered for a re-admission we can safely attribute their dismissal to their minus-es which can no more be improved unlike form.

Surely we can then safely assume the chosen few for the ODI side for the tri-series to have those ‘plus’-es.

Let us check up on the facts with the names in the announced squad. We will call them the ‘Future Guys’. Bowlers first.


S Sreesanth
Speciality: bowler
Plus: Virtually None - not much batting, was not impressive in the outfield in the last series he played, is coming back from injury

RP Singh
Speciality: bowler
Plus: Virtually None - not much batting, not the quickest outfielder.

Ishant Sharma
Speciality: bowler
Plus: None - No batting at all, quick legs but lousy outfielder.

Piyush Chawla
Speciality: bowler
Plus: batting has never clicked in international matches, but a good outfielder.

Irfan Pathan:
Speciality: bowler
Plus: Has developed into a very good outfielder, good runner between wickets
Plus 2:. Very capable with the bat

Praveen Kumar is unknown to me. Harbhajan is an adequate selection displaying some plusses for his lower order batting and decent outfielding in ODIs.

The batsmen’s list: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt & wk), Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag, Dinesh Karthik, Robin Uthappa, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma.

All the batsmen are good outfielders, and most are good runners between wickets. Some are excellent catchers.

So even if the omission of Ganguly & Dravid looks unjustified if we look at the bowlers, it looks less debatable when we see the people they are competing with. If some of these guys can perform like a Ganguly or Dravid in his prime over the upcoming tri-series they would be justifying the selectors’ faith in them as the ‘Future Guys’. They would have then rightfully ousted the two iconic batsmen from the ODI squad simply by being better than them.

What if they do not live up to it? It has already happened once, and the same Ganguly was at the centre of it.

We will all be watching. We have been hearing this ‘blooding youngsters’ theme for sometime now. We have seen how our youngsters can be relentless in 20 over games some months back. And we have also seen in the very next ODI series against Australia how they start looking like amateurs in longer games. We have seen confirmation of it in the ongoing Test series.

We remember that these same ‘Future Guys’ fielded incompetently and batted poorly for first half of the ODI series at home against Australia. That they won two matches out of seven. That the 1st win came from the bats of Sachin & Ganguly, the second from the bats of their bowlers and they wasted the platform to win a third that was laid by – who else – Sachin and Ganguly.

It is not the fault of the ‘Future Guys’ themselves. Many of them are talented, agile and intense (enough for T20s) but have not yet acquired the stamina required for long games. Moreover Sourav and Rahul are greats – and to replace such people you must develop their successors over a period of time. You can’t just select their replacements in the hope that you will be as lucky as the guy that picked the two of them for the same trip 12 years back. The system they came up from did not ensure Sourav and Dravid were excellent by the time they played in the national team – they just turned out that way. Are we living in the hope that such players will just emerge out of nowhere?

We hope the concerned people – the selectors, the board members, all that are party to this young team theory - have studied the reasons of failure of the earlier ‘Team building for the future’ effort ahead of the 2007 world cup. We hope they have ensured that the youngsters included in the sequel to the big flop are adequately groomed. If not then I’m afraid the whole exercise, even when done with best of intentions, can look like one big and dangerous experiment quite resembling a conspiracy against the seniors to replace them with inferior players. Just as it did the last time.

Suresh Raina has already faced one such ‘battle with oldies’ in his first stint with the national team. It may not be good for people like him if they are to be declared losers in this ‘war’ the second time round. The missile, however, has been launched now.

The future of Indian cricket will look healthy if the Future Guys achieve the double bill of performing with the primary skills as well as the 'plus'-es right throughout the series. However if they do not then people representing the BCCI selection process should accept their inability to develop (as against ‘select’) replacements for the older generation in public and ask the rich board of India to arrange a detailed training for them from Cricket Australia.

Meanwhile, the effect this selection has on the team morale ahead of the Adelaide cruncher remains to be seen. I would have no doubts on the effect if Dhoni was also the Test captain. However Kumble’s absence from the ODI side should help calm down the dressing room infinitely.

PS: Let’s give the selection guys, at least one of them, some relief. Vengsarkar picked and backed Ishant Sharma all through and must be complimented for the way he identified this boy’s gift of natural bounce and accuracy.

[cross posted on Desicritics.org]

Marlon Samuels' quicker one..

..is under the scanner once again. I am unable to speak on the legality of his action in delivering that 'Perth special' but I was amazed a year and a half ago that he could deliver it at that kind of speed. 82 miles an hour, to be precise.

He was bowling those darts off five steps when India toured West Indies in 2006! I have a sneaking feeling that the trauma of watching Marlon effortlessly go past them on the speen guns was too much for our nascent medium pacers to handle. Irfan Pathan lost his pace soon after, Munaf Patel his fitness while Zaheer had already lost his form and place in the Test side at that point of time. I am reproducing what I thought at the time about the delivery that shattered their psyche:

"AND.....this creep n' slime delivery got unleashed while their fast bowler Ian Bradshaw was consistently clocking late sixties from the other end, with a flummoxed Carlton Baugh standing up at the stumps. I almost screamed in protest (muted it with great difficulty, as it was midnight in India) when the otherwise lovable bore Tony Cozier tried to vilify the poor keeper for missing a stumping chance. Guess he wanted to call the little gloveman a dumb ass for not realising, after all those years of keeping to 'fast' and 'slow' bowlers, that a stumping was easier attempted off quickie Bradshaw?!

West Indies cricket losing potential quick bowlers to basketball? Huh! Ever thought of blaming off-spin?"

Why just blame the Indian bowlers for succumbing to the Samuels shock? If you think hard about the match where he clocked such speeds and the state of Indian cricket in its aftermath, it is easy to rule that the 1 run defeat in that 2nd ODI against West Indies toppled the fortunes of Rahul Dravid's invincible ODI juggernaut and turned them into a shellshocked lot over the time span of a 50 over match, a setback that they are still recoving from.

You say the 82 mph stuff is taken a few miles too far? Well here's more damning evidence. It took R P Singh's vigorous 140 kph stuff at England in the summer of 2007 to assure the poor Indian pacers and their supporters in India that the the giant leaps of our quicks could yield slightly better results than the 5 steps of Marlon. You will agree that the Indian new ball bowlers, post RP's quick overs in England, have looked a more confident lot and done far better than they did in 2006 in all forms of the game. Zaheer got back his hunger and Pathan his place while Ishant Sharma is making people sit up and take notice.

It is hardly surprising to me. These days all four (those three along with RP) are easily capable of crossing the 82 mph barrier..