August 11th, 2010
“Gee” the guys who played the first ODI must be saying, “the players who can actually play swing and bounce get dead pitches and we get this sponge bounce track. How unfair”! Just out of IPL and other Twenty-20 games, they must be wondering why BCCI hasn’t influenced ICC yet to declare it a no-ball if the ball doesn’t follow the straight line as expected by the batsmen and swings to confuse him. Or, after pitching, it rises above the waist height. Imagine having to play on the back-foot!
But seriously, it’s a good coincidence that the next ODI World Cup is in India and BCCI can control the pitch preparation. Otherwise teams the world over now exactly know how to handle India, especially the batting. This is becoming increasingly common now for the ODI/T-20 team players. Great IPL followed by early exits from international tournaments.
I have no doubt that the current players are what we need for ODIs on pitches where teams score 350+ and their fielding, when they focus, is definitely much better. But when there is swing and bounce and the scores are around 200-250 mark, it might make sense to have a Dravid or Laxman in the team.
The low score in the first ODI itself is not unusual. While it’s unlikely that anybody will get all out for under 100 against anybody in Sri Lanka, India does this occasionally - the first ODI after a good test series (or vice versa), players suddenly don’t know how to adjust. The best such example was the mixed test-ODI home series against Sri Lanka in 1986. Yes that was the time when people had to adjust between formats almost every week as ODI games were planned in between two test matches. In the Kanpur test that year India scored their then-highest score of 676. Two days after the test they played an ODI and were bundled out for 78. Same players, same opposition, same ground, 676 in test and 78 in the ODI!
Posted in cricket, India, Dravid, Dhoni, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Twenty20, World Cup, BCCI, IPL, Laxman | No Comments »
August 8th, 2010
We all know how good fourth innings chasers India traditionally are. I almost wrote a book about it. Even recently there were occasions where the opposition bowlers had to only ensure they didn’t bowl no-balls or wides and our batsmen did the rest. You would barely take an hour break to do something and then come back to see Kumble and some other tail ender delaying the defeat with commentators telling us they were batting better than the established batsmen who got out in a way that had nothing to do with the wicket, conditions or even the bowling.
Seems that glorious certainty is changing, slowly but surely. Despite its grand on-paper batting India has successfully chased a 200+ score a whopping 8 times in its entire history of 440 matches, in 137 of these India had to chase something. 5 of those 8 have come in last 10 years. 3 of those are outside India (Kandy, Colombo and Adelaide).
Add to these some of those recent innings where India batted long enough to draw the game when the target was too much, like at Lords in 2007 and there is reason to think it’s worthwhile to see India’s batting in fourth innings after all. Here are those recent 200+ wins and major batting contributors. I have not listed bowling contributors because in case of a fourth innings chase the roles change - the bowlers can set the game up but not win it, the batsmen do:
258/5 against Sri Lanka, 2010: Laxman, Tendulkar, Raina
387/4 against England, 2008: Tendulkar, Sehwag, Yuvraj
203/4 against Pakistan, 2007: Ganguly, Jaffer, Tendulkar
233/6 against Australia, 2003: Dravid, Sehwag
264/3 against Sri Lanka, 2001: Ganguly, Dravid
Another thing to notice here is the recent three such wins feature significant contributions from Tendulkar, the guy who was always (for Tendulkar “always” means during some 4-5 years phase of his career) criticized as not a finisher. He stayed unbeaten in two of these three games, once against Pakistan.
Posted in cricket, Australia, India, Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, England, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Sehwag, Kumble, Laxman | No Comments »
December 6th, 2009
India is the no 1 ranked test team now with this win against Sri Lanka. I guess now the tough part begins - to maintain this ranking. But if some other team takes this away soon, it will be mostly due to that team’s results. This is because India doesn’t really have many tests planned until the next world cup. There is an away series against Bangladesh early next year and then I don’t know what’s next in tests.
With this win Dhoni now has gone his first 10 tests India’s captain without losing any yet. I first thought this might be a record already but then a quick search on Cricinfo Statsguru told me that Gavaskar had gone 18 matches like this when he started. Dhoni has been the main captain only for just over a year now after Kumble retired last year. Prior to that he led India as a stand-in captain a few times.
A couple of amusing news. After some decisions went against Sri Lanka in the third test Murali said the ICC needed to use the Umpire Decision Review System everywhere and not leave it to mutual choice as it is right now. On an unrelated note the use of UDRS irritated umpire Mark Benson so much in the second test between Australia and West Indies that he has decided to retire after this match. Tony Cozier then wrote that the review system doesn’t work.
BCCI has appointed Mike Young as a fielding consultant to the Indian team for three weeks. Mike Young is a former baseball coach. So I started wondering how he can coach the fielders to catch a ball without those mittens, whether he is going to make the fielders more efficient by asking them to not stop after running a batsman out, instead try to make the other batsman out as well (”not bother about that dead ball thing”) and whether he is going to pay any attention to the balls that are hit behind the wicket. But it seems he has been coaching the Australia team for a few years already and they turned out just fine. So we have nothing to worry about. In one of the documents referred on the Wikipedia page about him, he knows this much at least “The ball is about the same size (as the one used in Baseball) but harder…It’s been a real positive sport to be involved in and it is very popular. The players are tremendous athletes”. On the last statement there, do note that he was talking about the Australian fielders and not the Indians.
Posted in cricket, Australia, India, West Indies, Dhoni, ICC, Sri Lanka, BCCI, Baseball, Gavaskar, Kumble | 1 Comment »