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, 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 »
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
Although Sachin has completed 20 years in international cricket, I hope and believe he still has a few more left and this is not quite the time to write summaries of his career. There are many records that he has established or broken already. But it makes me wonder how people can say “he has broken all batting records”, as clearly there are many obvious ones that he is yet to break or achieve. So instead of going over his stats so far I am trying to highlight the things we fans want him to do.
There is a reason for that. Tendulkar had a lean patch starting somewhere in 2004 that lasted till the World Cup of 2007. He did score a few hundreds during this time but never looked like the Tendulkar we knew. People, even players who are supposed to know about lean patches, started writing Tendulkar off. But then he came back to form in the tour of Ireland and England of 2007. Since then mostly he has been in great touch and has been even doing things he hasn’t done much before - like staying unbeaten in a big chase of fourth innings to win India a match, like he did in December 2008 against England at Chennai. So what fun it would be if he starts breaking those other records that are not in his list yet!
The record that comes to mind immediately is a test triple hundred! But before we go there, Tendulkar definitely has had many attacking innings before - I am listing three that come to my mind and I chose these three because they represent three different match situations:
Against South Africa at Bloemfontein, 2000 - India were 68/4 when Tendulkar and debutant Sehwag came together for a 220 run partnership in just 47 overs. Tendulkar scored 155 off just 184 balls. Many teams have exploited such situations to win games, but India wasn’t quite there yet there then. There was hardly any other substantial score from anybody else in both the innings and our bowling’s inability to restrict South Africa prevented India from winning or saving the game. Here is the YouTube link.
Against Australia at Chennai, 1998 - India had conceded a lead in the first innings which was already wiped out when Tendulkar came to bat in second innings. But the match was still open and Warne’s reputation was still intact. Some 60 overs later Warne had been taken for 122 runs and India set a “historical” target of 348 runs to Australia (in the tied test of 1987 Australia had set India the same target at Chennai) and India won the match.
Against England at Leeds, 2002 - Tendulkar came to bat at a healthy 185/2 but what was more important was it 74 overs were alredy bowled in which Bangar and Dravid had seen through the most dangerous period of the match. Then Tendulkar and Ganguly put together a 249 run stand in just 60 overs with both going on total attack in the later part of that partnership. India scored 628 and won the game as well. Here is the YouTube link.
So there are many matches where Tendulkar has played attacking but a huge double/triple hundred while playing like that has been missing. I know there are exceptions, but most of Tendulkar’s great centuries are scores around 150. As far as I remember none of his double centuries were very interesting to watch. He hasn’t scored even a big attacking double century yet.
A triple hundred itself doesn’t seem to be a measure of greatness, but many great batsmen of the current generation have them - Sehwag, (DPMD) Jayawardene, Jayasuriya, Gayle, Younis Khan. Then there are Kallis, Ponting, Dravid, Mohammand Yusuf, Graeme Smith, Laxman who have none.
I guess in general terms Tendulkar hasn’t had a huge attacking innings and it will be fantastic to see him do that!
Posted in cricket, Australia, India, Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Lara, Dhoni, England, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Sehwag, Ponting, Ireland, Laxman | No Comments »