Wednesday, 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 »
Sunday, 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 »
Friday, October 30th, 2009
It’s not always that you are almost at the end of October and don’t know what cricket India is playing this season. The Future Tours Programme of ICC had listed a tour by Sri Lanka and an away tour to Bangladesh. But nothing was announced until recently when schedule for Sri Lanka’s India tour came up. So after these one-day matches against Australia it will be the Lanka series starting in November - 3 tests, 2 Twenty-20s and 5 ODIs. Probably the Bangladesh series schedule will come up later. Still not sure what’s after that.
On the other hand the previous season never seemed over. There was that New Zealand tour earlier this year (India won both the test and ODI series but lost the Twenty-20 games), then there was IPL in South Africa, followed by ICC World Twenty-20 (India didn’t make it to the main games). Probably that should be considered end of the 2008-09 season then! There was a little break after that for a couple of months. Then the 2009-10 season started with a triangular one-day series in Sri Lanka. India won that. Then there was ICC Champions Trophy where India were knocked out, immediately followed by Champions League in India - which was a Twenty-20 tournament featuring top 2 teams from such competitions from many cricket playing countries. IPL teams didn’t make it to the semi-finals in that too. There was been so much cricket that it’s hard to remember even recent tournaments.
Now India is playing Australia in a 7 game series at home. It’s 1-1 in two matches currently.
There are many interesting things to follow in the upcoming season:
Recently India went past the stage where now they have won more matches than they have lost, overall. India’s record in the last few years has been generally much better, even considering that they played minnows in many matches. India’s record since Saurav Ganguly took over and till now- 152 won, 114 lost out of 281, since Dhoni took over and till now- 37 won, 20 lost out of 63. If this trend continues it will mean India will continue to win a lot of matches which is good for people planning to follow them.
Tendulkar will go closer to the 50 century mark both in tests and ODIs
It will be interesting to see how many matches India goes before it loses a test under Dhoni’s captaincy. So far it’s 7 tests with 5 wins and no losses. Since it’s a home series against Lanka, followed by a series against Bangladesh the chances of adding to this record are pretty good. Having said that, there aren’t many of “team A has never beaten team B at home” situations in test cricket anymore (especially since India beat South Africa in South Africa) and Sri Lanka not winning in India is one such record. Obviously they will have their eyes on it.
Sehwag hasn’t had a big test hundred for 10 tests and almost for a year and a half now. He has had scores of 90, 92, 83 during this time but no hundred. Of his 15 hundreds, his last 11 were big 150+ scores. Not that it matters when he is in form, but playing Sri Lanka at home might be just what he needs.
If Ajit Agarkar does get to play in ODIs, he will get closer to 300 wickets mark, which seems very remarkable for somebody who always seemed on the fringe recently. He needs 12 more for 300. He hasn’t played ODIs for over two years now but has been playing IPL. After his initial success around 1998 he has had success only in spurts and strangely has always been in selection through the captainship periods of Azhar, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Dravid. India has a rich bench strength now but the injury and fitness issues are too many to rule Agarkar out.
And these are the just the ones that I remember. There must be more.
Posted in cricket, Australia, India, Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Dhoni, Sri Lanka, South Africa, BCCI, Bangladesh, Sehwag, IPL | No Comments »