"You have been lucky if you have failed with time left to benefit from the lessons"

Actually that thought, posted as subject line, came to my mind as I was browsing through some old Facebook posts in my profile.


I came across one on 12th March, as South Africa were taking advantage of India's inactive fields / bowling plans during middle overs. Here's what I wrote as a comment at 8-51pm (at around 40th over of South Africa innings):

"Dhoni lets opponent get away in middle overs...I am seeing this coming loss as a blessing in disguise - may be now he will be forced to rethink his strategy in middle overs.. he will see that he is winning INSPITE OF it and not due to it...but then these opponent batsmen,they get out just as I see a silver lining - and perhaps give MSD a chance to carry his poor strategy to the KO's."

Well luckily for Indian team, South Africa did NOT panic for once and scraped through to win that match..in retrospect we can thank this loss for the obvious rethink of Indian middle over strategies that subsequently worked so well against ALL the former World Cup Champions (West Indies next match, Australia in QF, Pakistan in semis & Sri Lanka in finals).

Let all Indian Cricket fans therefore gather at India Gate, candles in hand, and shout thankfully in unison to commemorate the last over of that match:

"ASHISH NEHRA AMAR RAHE"

India Revisiting all WC champion teams in chronological order

Who won the WORLD CUP since its inception (barring 1983, which was won by India)?




1) West Indies (1975, 1979)..& defeated in India's last group league match


2) Australia (1987, 1999, 2003, 2007)..& defeated in quarter final


3) Pakistan (1992)..& defeated in semi final


4) Sri Lanka (1996)..waiting in final



India is a nation that respects history.


We undo things in the EXACT order those were done.
 
[Shared on my FB page today]

Raina's crystal ball

As expected before the finals, the Indian players are nervously energetic.


None of the Indian players has any idea of how the final will play out for him.

Sehwag returns back to his room from a special lecture by Ravi Shastri on "Hitting deliveries to the boundary like tracer bullets" and immediately feels this tension. Being a social animal, Sehwag has no intent of withstanding this uneasiness alone. He has set up an Facebook invite to a nail biting party for all his mates. Ex-captain Sourav Ganguly is the Guest invitee.


About 12 suo-moto responses came promptly from Sri Lankan players volunteering to join the party but Sehwag had to refuse the invites.
Papparazzi saw a controversy in that refusal but the story turned out to be less engaging than was initially thought.


The hotel staff have only agreed to clean up KILOS of bitten off nails resulting from the party. TONS of nails will be out of the agreement and the room owner will have to clean it himself. As we all know, Sehwag prefers to sweep Sri Lankan deliveries ONLY on the cricket field.
13 other Team India players have accepted Sehwag's invite for nail biting party ahead of finals. Tendulkar's acceptance reportedly came within 13 seconds of sending out invite...making Sehwag tweet on it.


All except one man.


Suresh Raina.
He is not chewing his nails for a change. He is unaffected by tension.
Why?
Because he knows EXACTLY what he will be doing in that match as the 7th batsman.
How does he know that?
He has a secret crystal ball that has given him his secret brief in all EXACTNESS.


This is his brief:

 - Irrespective of whether India bat 1st or second, the fifth wicket will fall EXACTLY at the score of 187.


- The fifth wicket falls in EXACTLY the 38th over too.

- After coming in, Raina will be required to take the Indian total to EXACTLY 260 by playing cautiously at the start and aggressively at the end.

- And in the process he will get to an unbeaten personal score of 34 (not EXACT for a change, but thereabouts) in those overs.

Raina reopens the cricinfo statsguru page. He wants to check the number of times he passed 34 in ODI's with a new filtering criteria he just thought of. He would next go to the ESPNcricinfo camp to ask for those videos.
[End of story]

Don't you believe me on Raina's brief? Check up for yourself on the QF with Australia and SF with pakistan - you already know that India scored 260 in both matches. Now see the over# and team score at which 5th wicket fell - and also Raina's score in each of the 2 games:

QF: http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/engine/match/433601.html

SF: http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/engine/current/match/433605.html


Are you an Indian? Then pray that Sri Lanka do not bat first and get > 260 ;-)

[Acknowledgement: This is an expansion of cricinfo's stats article today on no. 7 performances in India & SL teams]

Hunt for the "ODI Sobers"

We look at the contribution of cricket's genuine ODI all-rounders to matches won by their side. We are silenced in awe.
1) Jayasuriya averaged 41.3 with bat and 27.5 with ball in the 233 ODI's he has played for Sri lanka and ended up on winning side. Essentially he provided an additional player to his skipper: a specialist bowler (it was not occasional partnership breaking spin - he got 222 wickets in those 215 matches) and a specialist attacking batsman

His stats in Sri Lankan wins featuring him in playing XI:
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/player/49209.html?class=2%3Bfilter%3Dadvanced%3Borderby%3Dstart%3Bresult%3D1%3Btemplate%3Dresults%3Btype%3Dallround%3Bview%3Dmatch



[And inspite of many requests Cricinfo still refuses to show strike rates for modern batsmen in lmited overs cricket - THAT would have revealed his full value]

2) We come to the other great all round contributor of our times: Jacques Kallis.


His stats in South African wins featuring him in playing XI:
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/player/45789.html?class=2%3Bresult%3D1%3Btemplate%3Dresults%3Btype%3Dallround

Batting avg. of 52.8 and bowling average of 26.3 (186 wkts in 201 ODI's) in South African wins during his career...


[Kallis' stats look significantly better than Jayasuriya's, but the reality of the impact made by these two guys is not exactly in line with the figures. Kallis' comparatively slow pace of scoring and inability to accelerate at key situations often makes him an also-ran in those wins, which very rarely happens to Jayasuriya.]


Anyone else coming to YOUR mind to compete with these two - amongst current players or from yesteryears?



Then please propose your man in the comments column....it will help if you add a statsguru summary of the player's filtered stats of batting avg & bowling avg in all matches won by his side during his career. We can discuss the contenders thereafter.


[Min. qualification: 75 matches won over career length of 10 years+]

[cross posted on Facebook on 23rd March 2011]

WC'2011 Pak vs SL group league match: Watching Pak after a long time

Once again pals, I can only share my match summary as posted on Facebook a while ago after the SL-vs-Pak match ended:
 

SL vs Pak: At last a proper WC match...where we got good batting and good bowling in both innings..Would have been a very good match with close finish if Chamara Silva would have scored more than 13 in his first 40 balls...

First the backdrop of my Pakistan review that will follow:

I was watching Pakistan today in an ODI after God knows how long..certainly more than 18 months. The last was perhaps the Ind-vs-Pak match in ICC trophy 2009 - which came after a similar previous gap.

It is no better in Tests, and perhaps slightly better in T20's. I have missed all the controversial stuff tht Pak were involved in. I missed the entire career of Mohammad Amir..except in highlights. I barely followed even Indian cricket in the last 3 years, and hence the only familiarity I have of non-India teams / players are those that played against India.

So here's my observation, again from Facebook:

Pak reminded me of old days.



Early wickets while batting , followed by great middle order work, followed by stop start final overs (inspite of having magnificent hitters)..


And then while fielding they showed variety+quality in pace & spin.......combined with good outfielding and terrible catching.



And a proud, fiery skipper who bowls brilliantly at crucial times and backs his players @ 'unforced errors' (While also getting livid when they serve up poor stuff) - almost saw reflections of another mighty Pathan lurking in Shahid today



Only change from those days: their keepers used to be ALWAYS good...(Akmal can cost them the cup)...and their pace bowling was even greater!!! [Qadir looked like a relief to most - so you imagine].



A rejuvenated Pak was much needed for the Cup...now there is an outside chance of this edition becoming a bowlers' cup!! May be Afridi's..



Abdur Rehman / Shahid Afridi / Umar Gul / Akhtar can make life difficult for right handers coming their way - it is a little too much variety for 'sameness' fed right handed batsmen of today to handle over 50 overs...Sri Lanka needed their left handed opener to last today.

Some 'fresh additions', in case you think I have sold out to the dark world of Facebook:


1) Ahmad Shahzad looked like the only one capable of catching anything, just as Mr. Sania Mirza - or whatever his name is with same initials - did in matches played 8-9 years back. [Well I am being dishonest here for sake of crude humour - I rate Inzy as a good catcher]


2) In 12 WC matches over last 3 world Cups spanning across 2 other decades, Shahid Afridi pouched only 7 wickets. 2 matches into this World Cup, he has bagged nine scalps. Five of which are all to him (bowled / lbw). He also leads his team in 2011.


Compare that to Dravid's WC career who started with Shahid in 1999. Tell me you have seen any greater paradox??!!

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.

I am an Ajantha Mendis fan

[Click for LARGER view]

The gallant man from Sri Lankan army left no choice, after playing an unforgettable innings of 78 as the Lankan number 10 in the 3rd Test against India on the 4th day.

To put the relevance of Mendis' effort in perspective:

• 
  
  Sri Lanka are ranked number 3 and are playing a prestigious series against India, the number one ranked team in Tests (thought not the number 1 in bowling); the SL team wants to win this series desperately for pride
• 
  
  The results of this 3rd & final match changes series result [SL have 1-0 lead coming into 3rd Test, but a loss can make it 1-1]
• 
  
  The teams have scored virtually the same runs in the 1st innings.
• 
  
  He came in when his team was struggling at 125/8, with Indian bowlers on rampage.
• 
  
  This pitch offers assistance to all bowlers
• 
  
  He was continuously hit by Ishant's bouncers on his 'business' finger which sends down those carrom balls
• 
  
  His highest score in 1st class cricket was 37 before this innings (refer picture above - freezeframe dt 06Aug10 of his player page) - it was also his highest score in any official form of the game
• 
  
  As a result of his joint effort with the brilliant Samaraweera, India are asked to chase down over 250 on a 4th & 5th day pitch which is already offering assistance to bowlers

Mendis' player page will show a highest score of 78 by close of business on 7th August. And when we look at that Mendis player page again after Ajantha is done with his career, that page would tell us that he scored big in some more important innings. That lost half-smile of his, it hides some steel.

[courtesy: Cricinfo player pages]

Elite readership?

Is it possible that Rahul stumbled upon the last "Pavilion View" blogpost? After painstaking innings in the first two Tests, a new avatar of Rahul came out in this Test and scored his first 20 runs off 5 boundary hits. Wonder if it is a first for him in any cricket - leave alone Tests.

Dunno, but the haughty b*****d in me would want to believe that this somewhat Sehwag-ised (or Vir-ile) edition of Dravid may be a fallout of "Pavilion View" playing Bagger Vance and requesting him to 'stand out of his own way' and 'let his shots find him'!
Had there been an answer in the affirmative, we won't hesitate to close this blog in that blaze of glory. We (PV) are surely not going to reach a greater high in the next 400 years of operation.
Jokes aside, let us see things practically...Rahul was probably playing to the team vision. Indians were focussed on forcing a win and the purposeful batting of the entire order reflected that. They can take credit for their current position in this Test#3. They have approached 3rd Test like a team that deserves their current Test ranking. They have left a lot of time for this Test to be decided.

Our 'imagined' R Junnuh probably plays one final Test innings in the Asian Emerald Island to improve his contribution to this series at the moment of reckoning (SL are having a 130+ 2nd innings lead at lunch with 2 wkts in hand)


As I close this post, Sri Lanka lead India by over 170 now with no further loss of wicket. Great rescue act from Samaraweera for 2nd consecutive time, this time with Mendis in supporting role. Got to bid good bye, get back to TV and help pick up the last two. [Again the same b*****d in me thinks he can play a role in changing not only Dravid's batsmanship but also the fate of his team...]

Back in the space of an sms

I sent an sms to some of my friends on today, the 4th morning of 3rd Ind-SL test at the P Sara stadium. I started keying into my non-qwerty pad at 45 mins point after start of day’s play when Sanga and Mahela were batting, managing to send it about10 mins later.

"Ishant looks like Perth'08 bowlg brillntly 2 Sanga who is takg blows but protects wkt. Grt climax, result jo bhi ho (whatever be the result).
23 kiya (made 23) but RD is finally lettg his strokes find him, looks he will score now. Mahela looks doing(sic) good - hurray, Ojha picks Mahela as i sms. Both morng wkts by Ojha.
Keep Saturday free, it is Sanga's genius vs Indian 4th inngs on a grt pitch fr spn & pace. Aah, Ishant not givn extra ovr like Perth....Viru comes on, so going 2 be interestg. Nothing like Test on a pitch like ths...
Sanga out 2 Ojha fr 28 to a flat pull straight to fieldr. Pinch me awake - Mahela and Sanga go within the span of an SMS!!!"

Well that was not exactly an sms (‘short’ msg) but I bet you would feel similarly if you are in front of TV at the time.

Stats lovers: I would have provided links to the individual series & career stats of Mahela and Sanga up until this innings but for the torment to Indian minds.


[Acknowledgement: Thanks AD, for sending the message back after I had deleted it]

Take a well earned rest, smiling assasin

This post aims to clear a few 'Murali' cobwebs and let the sunshine come in at the time when this great cricketer most deserves it - on the eve of his Test retirement.
His action first. Here is a frank and reasonably fair assessment of the great Murali's action from that other great Warnie:

"Murali's action has been passed by scientific tests, I always thought it was probably legitimate," Warne said.

"But because of the way he bowled, I was worried that young spinners would try to copy his action and end up bowling illegally."

I loved those last words from Shane Warne. I find it quite possibly the main reason for various umpires outside Sri Lanka crying foul on his action repeatedly even though his bent elbow looked all right to me (and Warnie) by remaining bent till the end of delivery. These umpires, catastrophising on the impact that his action could possibly have on young minds, probably desired to stop Murali more as a precaution than to punish his actual bowling action.

Now to his achievements and the other 'calls' on his reputation. This cricinfo feature, apltly titled "An Unparalleled Match Winner", dwells on various notable career stats of Murali. It reminds our forgetful minds of the magnitude of achievement he is leaving behind, besides the small matter of returning a ratio of almost six wickets per Test.
For starters the man has taken 560 Test wickets since 2000.

We often hear a lot of comparison with that other spinning great Warnie of the 700 plus club. At times partisan cricket followers suggest that Murali's stats are inflated ONLY due to Bangladesh and Zimbabwe tours. S Rajesh does a favour to Murali's argument by presenting a stat for "Best bowlers between 2000 and 2008, excluding Tests v Zim and B'desh (Qual: 150 wkts)".


Under that particular stat Murali still comes out tops over Warnie in the averages, while Warnie returns a better strike rate. Considering quality of Murali's bowling support compared to Warnie's, a better strike rate for Warnie is expected as he found more favourable situations to take wickets and was seldom used as a stock weapon. Murali's better average is still a credit to Murali.


[Note: Bagging more wickets per match is an advantage Murali derived from having lesser bowling partners, and tha is why we are not discussing that. I believe Warnie too would have bagged close to six wickets per match had he bowled for a lesser bowling side than Australia - but perhaps his average and strike rate would both have been worse]

PS: This link has another post on Murali's retirement.

Update 1: If you are a Murali fan you may like to go through Rob Steen's excellent piece on the 'Ultimate MVP'

"Should Murali retire now?"

A nephew asked me this question on Facebook. His personal take was that Murali could have continued as he had more to offer.

This is always a difficult question - to 'foretell' what could have been for a top cricketer depending on his advancing age and his diminishing form. We did that once or twice earlier (most notably with Dada in 2005).... we did not spare Sachin in 2006 either...(hard to believe now) - and look what happened.



Nevertheless this was my reply, and it is based mainly on Test matches:

As per my observations for the last 1 year it was time to go for Murali. I checked the stats in cricinfo and they supported me: From 1st Jan 2009 till date (18th July 2010), Murali has taken only 23 wickets in 8 tests against opposition (excluding Ban or Zim). His average in these tests is 47+ (almost double his career avg) and his strike rate was 89 (much increased from the customary 50's). He was too great a bowler to be bowling to ignore that year-and-a-half long signal - getting to milestones matters less than being of value to the team. In this case, probably he is only just holding his place in the team (but still not a burden) - and a great cricketer needs to step back when it comes to that stage.

As usual I backed myself up with stats there. But I confess that I would not have been able to state the above with any conviction had Murali himself not called it a day.
 
And what about limitd overs cricket? Well I believe he may just have a role to play in the 2011 50 overs WC. but T20 is also going beyond him...at least that was my first thought while watching Murali a few times in Chennai Super Kings matches of IPL-3. He was not quite the Murali we saw in the first edition of IPL.

Jayasuriya

Peter Roebuck writes a piece on Jayasuriya who rose above himself as a batsman but never added the negatives that people often inbibe in their nature on that treacherous journey.

Who else can fill your mind if you try to think of a Viv Richards who is not throwing attitude, a Sehwag who is even less complicated than Sehwag on seeing bad balls and knowing what to do with them, a great player who always carried out the orders of his various skippers like an excited schoolboy right through his journey from twenty to forty in international cricket?

We see him so less these days... and I thank Peter for reminding us that another great career is coming to a close andwe should be ready to stand up and cheer with gratitude for what he did to the game.

Here is another old post of mine on Jayasuriya from his amazing days.

Thus ends a cheaply peddled World Cup..

..when I am down to writing a blog post away from live television even as the final stages of a game no less than a Cricket World Cup final is being played out.

Scene 1: A damp morning awaits the World Cup Final. Play starts in the morning after a 2½ hour delay. The match is reduced to 38 overs a side even before a ball is bowled.

Scene 2: Chasing Australia's mammoth total of 281, Sanath Jayasuriya falls into the vicious trap of Duckworth Lewis. He eyes the rain clouds and senses that a rain interuption, possibly the last one, is round the corner. He desires to keep his team ahead. In trying to manufacture an ugly across-the-line swipe off the last ball of a Michael Clarke over he surrenders his wicket and sets Sri Lanka further back on the D/L chart after the loss of third wicket.


Scene 3: The 5th ball of the 25th over is bowled. Fairly dense droplets of rain are pouring for quite a while now. The pitch is getting mucky and the outfield / bowling run up gets more dangerous by the minute. However the batsmen Chamara Silva and skipper Jayawardene do not budge as that could mean the last of their team's hopes to win the cherished title. Umpires Steve Bucknor and Aleem Dar had hesitated on forcing a pause of play under the exceptional circumstances but now they decide enough is enough and call out for the covers.

Scene 4: The play resumes soon with two overs missing from the over quota available to Sri Lanka and the target reduced to 269. For the last few overs a couple of new-to-the-crease batsmen of a brave team making a valiant attempt to chase a steep target against the world's best side in the biggest and most watched cricket match of all have had the small additional worry of looking at the skies after every delivery as well as the 'parallel' scoreboard of M/s D/L for playing to two different game plans at the same time. One game plan is to win the game over the full distance, the other to stay ahead if rain interrupts the match.


All of this is actually taking place even though the tournament rules provide for a reserve day for EACH of the matches of the tournament. Unbelievable! When I first heard of the extra day during the group league matches I failed to appreciate the cricketing logic behind curtailing rain affected matches by more than 10 overs at any time earlier than the 2nd day. I still cannot reckon just how they could allow a final to be played under that same set of rules.

Perhaps remaining true to their ever-greedy selves that owe allegiance only to the telemedia & their sponsors, an all important group of entities that naturally want the matches to end on scheduled days, the rulemakers of International Cricket Council have decreed that:

(i) the reserve day is to be used "only if we have a match with any unfinished innings of less than 20 overs" for any of the sides; and that
(ii) the match starts afresh on the next day instead of the simple matter of completing an interrupted but full 50 over match over two separate days.

And who on earth would prefer that sort of painfully obnoxious enforcement of the word "one day" in "One Day Internationals" in exchange of a proper game of cricket? Who would refuse to even spare the Big Final that crap? Of course the self styled 'keepers of the game', the International Cricket Council.

As indicated in the previous mid-match post I had reckoned Sri Lanka to be overwhelmed by the concession of 30 odd extra runs to sublime big hitting skills of the Aussie wicketkeeper, runs that Adam Gilchrist had no business getting against a bowling side as good as the Lankans, runs that turned a potential nail biter into an expectedly one-sided affair barring an improbable 2nd miracle. However the speculation about the final margin - a fair one - is destined to remain just that as Sri Lanka, who unlike Australia had to suffer mid-innings downpours and consequently let a few crucial mid overs go by while they were helplessly torn between the two game plans, have been as badly hit by the ICC's rule makers as by that blinder from Adam Gilchrist.

Shame on you, ICC. Can you not just do us cricket lovers a favour by disappearing from the face of cricket? The game cannot seriously go on any worse by itself than it is doing at present under your central regime.

Update: These excerpts from cricinfo's text commentary sums the sad end to the people's World Cup aptly. Read on:

6.12pm The light's been offered and Sri Lanka have taken it - meaning Australia have won the World Cup again. They certainly deserve it and are huddling in celebration. A bit of a damp squib of an ending, which is of course fitting.

Now what's this? Aleem Dar is having a word with Australia, telling them they can't yet celebrate. Officially this match isn't over. You couldn't make it up. You don't have to.

And the farce continues! Now the stands for the ceremony have been brought on... and are off again, as the umpires shoo them away. My word.

6.17pm It's what is traditionally known as night. It is so dark but the umpires are now saying the match will continue. Heads should roll for this. The man is out putting the 30-yard circles back out. He needs a torch to do so. The batsmen are heading out to the middle accompanied by a guide dog.

6.30pm Congratulations to Australia who were the best team from the first match and maintained their relentlessly high standard throughout. Sri Lanka gave them a game but on the day came up just short.

There's a certain irony that cricket's four-yearly showcase ended in farce ... Australia, Sri Lanka, the Caribbean and millions of spectators deserved more but given what has gone before today, it was almost inevitable. You can spin it all you like, this tournament has not done the game any favours and people at the top, if they had any decency, would be contemplating their futures. But we all know that won't happen.

[cross posted on Desicritics]

Adam Gilchrist's Green Mile

We are into the lunch break of the 2007 Cricket World Cup final. Even if the break were to be of 10 hours instead of ten minutes I would be groping for words to describe that innings. I have decided that I will rather let this collage of images from various points of the Gilchrist innings. These can narrate what transpired till the 31st over of the Australian innings of The Final better than words ever would.

10.2 (ov): The first powerplay is over. Sri Lanka have restricted the Aussies to a rather low 1st Powerplay score of 47 in a 38-overs-a-side winner takes all encounter. Dilhara Fernando smiles ruefully as he failed a collect a very low c&b chance from Adam Craig Gilchrist, then batting on 31. The next three balls disappear for 4, 4 & 6.

22.2 (ov): Malinga bowls an inswinging near-yorker (outswinging for Gilly) that pitches on leg-n-middle and threatens to split the gap between bat and pad through late movement to hit off stump until Gilly, already predetermined for a big hit, still manages to make a little adjustment to middle the ball for a straight four over the bowler’s head. An international batsman on another day or even another international batsman on this day would be mighty pleased just to survive that one. [cricinfo text commentary: “Where did that come from?”]

30.3 (ov): Adam Gilchrist skies a riser from Dilhara and Chamara Silva take the catch at mid on. Gilchrist departs for 149 off 104 balls. It makes the incident from 10.2 the turning point of the match.

If you are about to write off the Sri Lankan bowlers for having conceded 281 in 38 overs think again. A mere 109 runs were scored off the 129 balls faced by other Australian batsmen. That is very good against this batting side in a 38 over match. Add an Andrew Symonds coming in at the slog and scoring just 2 boundaries in nearly eight overs of stay and you’ll think that the Australians finally met their match. It all, however, came to nought because Gilly rattled up 149 runs from the 104 deliveries he faced.

Just how special was it? I reckon that return of 149 to be at least 30 runs more than what any Australian batsman in prime form (including Gilchrist himself, perhaps) could have recorded against this bowling. Gilchrist hit no less than 8 sixes and 13 fours and yet so many of the shots went in and around the ‘V’.

From whatever we know of the man, Adam Gilchrist will be speculating hard during the lunch break on announcing his ODI retirement today in the event of Australia pocketing their third successive World Cup title.

My vote is on a ‘yes’. And so it should be.

Quote of the day: Adam Gilchrist hit his seventh six off the first ball of Sanath’s 27th over and took a single off the next ball. Ricky Ponting played out two dot balls and then another one. Michael Holding observed: “That’s a nice ploy by Sri Lankans, to keep Ricky Ponting on strike. You never thought you would ever hear it, did you?”

[cross posted on Desicritics]

The Final Match-up

Since waking in the morning I wanted to carry out a stats study of the three best bowlers and four best batsmen from each of the finalists to guess what to expect from the World Cup final. The match is going to start in a few minutes from now (7 pm IST) and I finally get the time to do it. The cricinfo folks have done some job on Australia-Sri Lanka encounters from the past. Their study firmly reiterates that Sri Lankans have a dismal record against Australians, particularly so in the World Cup.

But then so much has changed in the last year or two. We have a Sri Lanka that has played exceedingly well outside Sri Lanka for one year now, one that has the best depth and width in bowling resources. Equally we have an Australian side that has shown over the last 11 matches that their batsmen can go the extra yards and even dwarf their already lofty standards to cover up for any perceived weakness in bowling.

I have a simple plan for comparative measurement of bowling and batting strengths of the two sides. We sample them from their last 15 matches. Since 70% of those have been played in the World Cup, the current form of these players gets adequately reflected in this sample. At the same time the temporary troughs and exceptional circumstances facing a few players (e.g. Mike Hussey never got a decent opportunity to express himself this Cup) get slightly evened out by extending the sample a few games prior to the World Cup.

The prime criteria of judgement for bowlers is, as always, wickets. Runs, for batsmen. However to get a fairer picture of the player performances we would modify the wicket tallies of bowlers with a factor inversely proportional to their economy rates. For the batsmen we will modify the run aggregates with the factor of their batting strike rates. So here are the basic rules:

Bowling: We take the top three bowlers of one side. We divide the wickets taken by each in the last 15 matches with his economy rate (expressed in ratio of six – i.e. an economy rate of five will be 0.833 and so on) for the period and add the resulting modified figures for the three. We do the same for the other side and compare them.

Batting: We take the top three batsmen of one side. We multiply the runs made by each in the last 15 matches with his CAREER strike rate on date (expressed in ratio of hundred – i.e. a strike rate of 80 will be 0.8 and so on) and add the resulting modified figures for the four. We do the same for the other side and compare them.

[Filtered strike rates of players for recent matches are not readily available. We are therefore forced to make do with career strike rates]

We are not taking up a fielding comparison. In pre world cup previews I rated these two as comparable fielding sides and their performances from the world Cup indicate as much.

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SL – bowling

Lasith Malinga: 28wkts @ 5.17 ~ 32.5
Chaminda Vaas: 23 wkts @ 3.35 ~ 41.2
M Muralitharan: 31 wkts @ 3.80 ~ 48.9
Total: 122.6

Aus – bowling

Glenn McGrath: 29 wkts @ 4.57 ~ 38.1
Nathan Bracken: 22 wkts @ 4.11 ~ 32.1
Shaun Tait*: 28 wkts @ 5.47 ~ 30.7
Total: 100.9

[*played only 14 matches so far]


Bowling Strength Analysis: The Sri Lankans are holding a slight edge there, 21.5% precisely. The Aussies do have an in-form left arm slow bowler (Brad Hogg) as their 4th bowler but Sri Lanka are equal to it. Their crisis man is Sanath Jayasuriya of the left arm slow-medium-fast variety.

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SL – batting

Sanath Jayasuriya: 500 runs @ 90.73 ~ 454
Mahela Jayawardene: 570 runs @ 76.07 ~ 434
Chamara Silva: 501 @ 72.70 ~ 364
Kumara Sangakkara: 419 @ 74.3 ~ 311
Total: 1563

Aus – batting

Matthew Hayden: 927 runs @ 78.6 ~ 729
Ricky Ponting: 850 runs @ 80.24 ~ 682
Andrew Symonds: 340 runs @ 92.23 ~ 314
Adam Gilchrist: 371 runs @ 96.12 ~ 357
Total: 2082

Batting Strength Analysis: Aussies hold a 33.2% edge there. This value is significantly more than the 21.5% deficit in the boeling analysis. Also these figures do not take into account the increased batting strike rates exhibited by Hayden and Ponting in the present tournament in comparison to their overall strike rates, or else the batting would have looked even more of a mismatch.

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If the number crunching is beginning to put you off then just dwell on this: Mike Hussey is no more amongst the top four Australian batsmen for being reduced to an unknown quantity in WC’07. However Sangakkara, also going thru a dip of form (and having no excuses of exceptional circumstances like Hussey) since the Super Eights, still qualifies amongst the top four SL players.

Sri Lanka will need one last World Cup ton from the blade of Sanath Jayasuriya to bridge that gap. For all the wizardry of Murali, he has only ten overs to bowl and Australian batsmen are quite unlike Indians and New Zealanders in that they know it.

Acknowledgements:
1) Huzaifa, for correcting me merely two days back that the final happens to be on the 28th of April and NOT 29th
2) The rain in Barbados, for letting me complete the post without missing the match!

[cross posted on Desicritics]

I blink for eight hours and miss it again

Keeping late nights over the last week took a rather heavy toll on me last night as I fell asleep right on the floor in front of TV sometime in the lunch break of SL-v-RSA match.Being no ordinary doser I refused to part my eyelids for the next eight hours. You can bet on cricket matches featuring South Africa to explode into scarcely believable encounters whenever I miss them and sure as today's sunrise this happened while I slept.

Graeme Smith thought he aged from 26 to 40 in those pulsating final overs. A glance at the fag end of cricinfo's live commentary for that match (where Sriram Veera & co apparently did a more-than-satisfactory job of describing the indescribable) and I am ready for an hour long sermon on the absolute advantage of fishes, those magnificent eyelid-less creatures, over humans in following month-and-half long events taking place in the other half of the globe.

I was not even travelling this time.

On deserving luck

Cricinfo's S Rajesh and HR Gopalakrishna summarise Indian misfortune in yesterday's match on their stats analysis thus:

"Sri Lanka clearly outperformed India in the second half of the match, but Rahul Dravid will be justified in believing that with better luck his team would have been chasing far fewer than 255. In the first 20 overs of the Sri Lankan innings, the Indian seamers - Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar and Munaf Patel - beat the bat or found the edge 39 times, which is nearly twice per over. On another day five of those near-misses might have resulted in dismissals; today, Sri Lanka had the rub of the green, and once they survived that early passage of play, India didn't have a chance."

Memories of that who-blinks-first start of play yesterday will remain forever. But as much as the stat indicates India's ill luck on the day, we need to appreciate that the stat also shows good technique exhibited by the Sri Lankan top order against the moving ball. Videos of the match will confirm that fact.

On Friday the Indian batsmen randomly picked their balls to get out even though they got none of the probing stuff their own bowlers dished out (they batted in the afternoon) but I can think of at least 4 batsmen out of the Indian top seven who would have edged quite a few of those near misses nonchalantly even in a more professional batting display.


As they say, you get 'luckier' as you try harder. The Indians would have been better at edging those by customarily poking at the ball after it moved away instead of staying committed to the original shot they played and accepting getting beaten. In yesterday's match the Sri Lankans did the latter (i.e. accepted getting beaten by not trying hard) with considerable regularity, a measure of the little but telling improvements they have made in their cricket. Unlike the Indians they have learnt that when the ball moves regularly batsmen are better off not poking at it.

The SL batsmen put up 250+ in conditions assisting swing and seam bowling without any of Jayawardene, Jayasuriya or Sangakkara firing. It was the Sri Lankan equivalent of India setting up that score without contributions from Ganguly, Dravid and Sachin in a similar setting.Sri Lanka have always fielded better than India and of late they have been bowling better than India, even outside their country.

Now gently but firmly they have shown us that they bat a lot better as well.

Trinidad, 23rd march

Time: Interval of the India-v-Sri Lanka Pool B match

When Zaheer bowls a leg-side wide to flag off the match I feel a surge of anger rushing up but I refuse to shout. It is difficult for a date-happy fan like me to forget that Zaheer Khan had yielded 15 runs in his first over on this very day four years back and started the proceedings of an Indian flop show in the final of the last World Cup. I manage to control myself nevertheless and gently utter, “You can do it Zach.”

To my boundless joy he hears it, as does his team! Admittedly he does not do it that over; he continues bowling leg side and yielding extras. But then Agarkar does something first up that millions in India will thank him for if India scrape through the ordeal and end up as the winners of this unfolding epic. He starts off as a man possessed and has Sri Lankan openers in all sorts of problems in five of his first six balls. Becalmed, Zaheer gets back his groove and with later support from Munaf they send down eighteen overs of seam bowling that I would like getting replayed back to any team with an all-seam-no-seering –pace attack as the model way to do it on a slightly helpful track.


The first Sri Lankan wicket falls in the seventh over, An all-time classic, it could have been straight out of a Test match. Six overs had gone by and Sri Lanka, after being kept quiet, had taken 9 or 10 off the last one thru Chamara Silva. An iffy Jayasuriya has survived a few close shaves. Now he faces Zaheer and is promptly struck on the pads by Zaheer. Everybody in the ground and around the world thinks Sanath is out except umpire Aleem Dar.

Now, Jayasuriya has already benefitted from an even-harder-to-believe lbw let off from Daryll Harper off Ajit Agarkar’s very first ball. This second one threatens to be the last straw for a team not renowned for its resilience in adversity. Today is a little different though. Zaheer blasts one past Sanath’s ears the very next ball. Today’s Sanath can only swing at it as an afterthought.

Zaheer makes the ball move both ways in the next two deliveries. Somehow in the space of four balls he manages to distract Sanath from his original game plan of seeing out the first spells of Indian opening bowlers. Convinced that he is only waiting for the ball to gobble him up Sanath swings at the next one outside off stump without getting to it and Ajit Agarkar gets to pouch it at 3rd man quite like the Sri Lankan dasher’s Eden 1996 dismissal. All’s well again.

Agarkar by now has seen some of his gems prove to be too good for the batsmen but then funnily enough he picks up the team’s 2nd wicket off an ‘Agarkar’ – that familiar full ball he bowls every now and then just outside the batsman’s pads. Those generally disappear into the boundary to the exasperation of Indian cricket lovers. Today is a little different here again, in that the ball disappeared into the glove of a magnificently diving Dhoni off Mahela’s faint tickle.

Agarkar and Zach only pick up two wickets in the excellent spell and Munaf remains wicketless in a relentlessly incisive spell to remind you-and-me of His Unluckiness J Srinath. I can easily recall at least six or seven other deliveries by the medium pace trio which could have got a defending batsman out for no fault of his. The bounce helped them but so did a discernable steadfastness to remain unfazed in the face of ill luck and umpiring horrors.

This period of play is almost as good Srinath’s unforgettable opening challenge in Ashish Nehra’s match from South Africa 2003 when India were defending a modest total against England. Srinath put up an unplayable spell and set the batsmen’s mind up for Ashish’s taking. [BTW that ‘no seering pace’ fails to apply to that match as Ashish was easily clocking 148 kph in it – nursing an ankle injury.]

No one takes six wickets today but things do not get too bad either. Hereafter skipper Dravid takes over and is made to look even smarter because his other three bowlers do not disappoint him. The only one to go wicketless is – once again – Harbhajan but he does not get much help from the seaming surface (contrary to the claims of commentators) and is distinctly unlucky to miss an lbw by way of another umpiring horror.

Ganguly had picked up a wicket in the last India Sri Lanka match back home and the book-ish (or studied, as you look at it) decision to make him bowl pays off rich dividends as he picks up the best Sri Lankan bat in my book, Kumar Sangakkara, in only his 2nd over. Dada bowls four on the trot and the remaining 5th bowling quota is taken over by one dunno-what-he-is bowler called Sachin Tendulkar.

Sachin has been having a ball with the ball since that Pakistan trip last year when his confidence skyrocketed after picking up Inzamam repeatedly on featherbed surfaces. On that occasion he bowled seam up. He did so not because the conditions were assisting seamers but because spinners were generally getting murdered. But then we saw the same guy turn up as the familiar leggie against West Indies two months back to play a critical role with the ball in the low scoring second one dayer on an underprepared Cuttack surface.

Today, Sachin Tendulkar puts on his preaching specs and offers a free masterclass on both varieties of conventional swing. And he does that with a 30-over old ball. He swings the cherry both ways at will like Zaheer and keeps the batsmen guessing right till his eight over by which time it is too deep into the slog overs for the batsmen to play Sachin with respect. [Besides, ICC’s Anti Corruption Unit are reportedly keeping vigil on the match; who wants to face questions for the crime of not hitting Sachin for boundaries in the 45th over….]

Rahul Dravid rotates his bowlers frequently for good results. Interestingly he is seen readily making field changes to suit the bowlers’ liking. The last three overs of the innings yields 31 runs but that is understandable as Vaas and Arnold stay put till the end. If anything the relative ease of scoring for Sri Lankan lower order bats during end overs should actually be some cause for joy to Indian players as the pitch betrays signs of easing up there.

Must say something though - Sri Lanka are certain title contenders this time. They are way too poised in all situations not to reach the semis.

The match has resumed and I must sign off.

Thoughts on upcoming India Bangladesh match

India play Bangladesh after a long gap; 2 years and 3 months to be reasonably precise. The second last time they played a match India ended up on the losing side. Virtually everybody in this world, including people who know nothing of cricket, remembers that day for a far heavier reason. It was Boxing Day of 2004 when the killer Tsunami struck on the east facing coasts of many South Asian countries extinguishing hundreds of thousands of lives.

Two of the badly affected countries, India and Sri Lanka are group B rivals of Bangladesh this World Cup. ICC associate member Malaysia and neighbours Indonesia were the worst hit by the calamity. It is needless to repeat stuff that people know too well but the thought of so many cricketing nations tied by a second common thread of grief makes it resurface spontaneouly.

Cricinfo's enchanter-in-chief Siddharth Vaidyanathan explores a few areas of the Indian game that Bangladesh will look to assault. One of them can be an ambush with their left arm bowlers. Siddharth observes:

India are likely to face a slew of left-arm spinners in that (middle overs) period, with Mohammad Rafique's darts complemented by Abdur Razzak's loop and Saqibul's accuracy. Razzak and Saqibul arrive with economy-rates of 3.5 and 3.7 respectively and India will need to find innovative ways to manoeuvre the ball around with the field spread.

Indeed Habibul Bashar and Shahriyar Nafees hold the key to Bangla doing well in the match. Indians are in pretty decent nick but Bangladesh are at the top of their game with a warm up win over the Ashes beating (Oz and now England) Kiwis. And Mortaza, if he knows anything about latching on to good form, will be a handful for the openers.

Talking of left-arm menace, ace cricket writer Mukul Kesavan was really upset about certain aspects of the Indian think tank's vision around six months back and strung his grievances together in a piece that can make you chuckle when Indian cricket is doing well. The post (a rant really) is dated but nevertheless enjoyable for his delicious take on left handers.

My left-handed left hand says it looks forward to meeting you, Mukul.

[cross posted on Desicritics]

Sweet and sour dates from 'real cricket'

“..the real cricket for us starts on March 17”, says Rahul Dravid. Wish you beginners' luck, skip. And quite a significant date, that. ‘Real cricket’ touched Group B rivals Sri Lanka on this very day –they won the World Cup on this day in 1996. Understandably the Sri Lankans are not wishing Dravid's men a similar touch at this stage. We meet the Sri Lankans on March 23 and that is another significant date - in a reversed context.

The 2003 edition of 'real cricket' and India’s challenge in it ended on 23rd March. Australia snatched the African Cup. Worse, they thrashed the Indians mercilessly like a heavyweight boxing champ would do to an immature amateur daring the former to a prize fight. They landed the first blow in the very first over of their innings (and the match) by despatching Zaheer for 15 and they did it again in the first over of the Indian innings by sending back Man of the Series and perpetual thorn-in-the-Oz-flesh Sachin Tendulkar for a duck.

I’m sure the one-sided proceedings of that evening continues to prick the flesh of many others like me. Team India can hand their fans a soothing balm by ending their Group B campaign with happy memories of the day.

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