Cricket: From the Far End

All out 88!

admin — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 04:56:04 +0000

“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!

Chokers, not anymore!

admin — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:13:40 +0000

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.

No 1 ranking, Dhoni and new “consultant”

admin — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 08:31:09 +0000

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.

Will Sri Lanka go for it?

admin — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 06:05:38 +0000

Will Sri Lanka go for a possible win in this match? At the end of the third day of the Mumbai test they are 322 behind with two full days remaining. Of course saving this game will be the first priority and I know for a session or two they will first look to ensure that. But whether they will be just satisfied with that will tell us how far they are ready to go to get to the top of the international rankings.

In the recent years both India and Sri Lanka have won a lot of matches, they have even won abroad and in statistical terms there isn’t much to separate them. India gets more visibility probably because they have won more at places like Perth, Leeds, Johannesburg and Jamaica, and may be another reason is India’s fierce rivalry with Australia in the last decade.

(Source: Cricinfo Statsguru) In the last 10 years Sri Lanka have won 44 of their 96, India won 39 of 105. In the last 5 years it’s 23 of 45 and 21 of 53 respectively. India’s record is better ‘away from home’ - India has won 11 of their 29 matches abroad whereas Sri Lanka have won 7 of their 23. But consider that some of these matches were played against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe and we realize that the overall record is not massively different, at least statistically. In terms of the quality of the opposition India has a better records in last 5 years where they have won at least one match in each away series except the one in Pakistan in 2006.

Where these teams are also similar is the apparent lack of the intent to go for it when there is a choice. I think in the third test in New Zealand Dhoni was criticized for not declaring early enough to account for rain to force a result. The situation was a little different then though as India was already leading and so even with the draw India won the series. Here Sri Lanka faces an entirely different situation - they have never won a test match in India. So if they lose or draw this it will be no different anyway. But if they are able to win it it will be a big thing. Of course there will be criticism but the rewards of success are much bigger for them if they win.

The three scenarios appear to be like this, in the sequence of likelihood:

India win: This is where either India gets them for under 333 or just over it and achieve it. India has enough time to do this.

Draw: For this to happen Sri Lanka needs to either bat out the whole time, or score enough runs by the time they are all out that India can’t get those in the remaining overs. So they need either bat very long for whatever no of runs or bat really fast and get more than 500.

Sri Lanka win: For this Lanka needs to bat at least 4 sessions and that too with a high run rate. That would mean they might get 400+ by that time and have a chance to bowl at India on the fifth day pitch. But it’s a delicate balance as if they declare too defensively they will neither leave India enough overs to get those runs nor for them to get India out. If they need to have about 60 overs for a chance they need to make around 510 runs in 120 overs. Not entirely impossible but very difficult - and then you add a chance that India can still get those runs in 60 overs. As we have seen most of the times both India and Sri Lanka seem content to declare only when they know they won’t lose.

But Sri Lanka have in front of them an opportunity to show that they can take these risks in their pursuit of being the no 1 team. If they go for it, apart from other things what it will also mean is that this match will get very interesting to watch!

Tendulkar: The “Dil Maange More” list -1

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:11:18 +0000

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!

Third innings, under pressure

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:24:10 +0000

In the first test against Sri Lanka at Ahmedabad, looks like when India bat again they will face a lead of around 200-250 runs with somewhere around 150 overs remaining in the match.

It’s quite known how India generally gives up when faced with a big target in the fourth innings. Recent exceptions like Chennai 2008 are there of course, but I wanted to find out how the team has performed in the situations where it’s batting third against a big lead. So after going over last 10 years records at Cricinfo Statsguru here is what I notice:

Of the experienced players, Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman average 36.54, 36.52, 45.28 and 45.95 respectively in such innings. Laxman has 2 and Sehwag, Tendulkar and Dravid has one centuries in such situations.

In each case some of these scores do not reflect their corresponding first innings scores which were much bigger. I am not sure that should matter. In general we have seen this tendency in most Indian players to not make two consecutive big scores (for example except Dravid doing it two times, nobody else in the current team has scored two centuries in a test)

For Dravid and Laxman some of these scores are when they had opened the innings

Of the younger generation, Gambhir, Yuvraj and Dhoni have been in such situations only twice so far. Except a 69 from Dhoni in one case there are no big innings from any of them so far.

In the last 10 years India ended up in this situation (batting against a big lead in second) 17 times of these 12 times they lost the match, drew it 4 times and won once. But overall there have been very few of these situations in the last 5 years - meaning whenever India batted first they either took a lead or did not concede a big one (won 11 of 26 matches batting first in last 5 years)

Now some of the memorable performances in recent years in such situations:

Nottingham 2002. India lost the earlier test at Lords and was trailing in the second test here by 260 runs. At this point the series turnaround began - Dravid scored 115, Tendulkar 92 and Ganguly 99. The match was drawn. But these three took it further in the next test at Leeds -all three scored centuries and India won that match to level the series.

Kolkata 2002-03. It was a dead rubber as India had already won the series. But in the third test India was trailing by about 140 with two full days to go. Then Tendulkar (176) and Laxman (154) came together to save India.

Adelaide 2007-08. After the resurgence at Perth in the earlier test India scored 526 in the first innings here. But late on the fourth day they could have collapsed to give Australia another chance. Sehwag hadn’t scored a century in the second innings before, but here he scored 151 and more importantly played 236 balls to shut Australia out of the match.

Sydney 1999-00. Laxman gave Australia a glimpse of things to come by scoring 167 in just 198 balls with 27 fours.

Season 2009-10

admin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:50:23 +0000

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.

The way we react

admin — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:21:36 +0000

Let me clarify this before I write further - I have always felt that if Dravid feels he still has enough cricket left in him he should take a break, go back to domestic cricket and then when he feels ready announce his availability. He should not have to “prove himself” by making big scores in domestic, although if he is in form that should happen automatically. But for players who have been tested internationally for a long time, such a condition should not be necessary. If he feels he is ready we trust him enough. Right now he is hardly visible in the game and has been like that for quite some time now. Personally, my “fan’s judgment” is his problems seem to to be in his mind. So a break for a series or two shouldn’t be a bad idea. There could be a situation where his replacements play so well that Dravid can’t even get in. That will be a good problem to have, but you don’t replace Dravid because some player X scored 150 on a flat track in India. The real test of who can replace Dravid will come only when India tours abroad - the next one outside the subcontinent is against New Zealand in March. Until then we can never be sure as on the subcontinental pitches the value of the replacement can’t really be judged. In either case Dravid should get a preference once he is ready.

Having said that I find it surprising how we all react differently to similar situations involving two different players: Saurav Ganguly faced a similar situation 3 years back when he was making those scores in the range of 30-35 against Sri Lanka and Pakistan. He was subsequently dropped again. In general the public and press opinion was “Ganguly’s career is over”, “He is history” and so on. There were a few who sympathized (I can humbly brag that I was one of them) but the overall tone was that there was no need to consider Ganguly ever again.

Now Dravid finds himself in a similar situation. But this time generally his failures are being played down. In general the critics are not bringing the issue to forefront. Even us, the supporters find ourselves ignoring it.

Why could this be? Is it because of the personalities of the players involved? Ganguly always looked arrogant while Dravid has the quiet hardworking type image which Indian people typically support. There is no difference in the stature: Dravid will easily be amongst India’s top 5 batsmen ever. His captaincy didn’t click much or he didn’t get enough time, we will never know that. Ganguly will be amongst India’s top 2-3 captains ever and certainly the most successful one so far. We will never know how good a batsman he might have turned out if he was never given the captaincy, but his last two years definitely made us think there was something more than what we saw. So in a way they are players of same stature. That’s why I found it very surprising. May be Ganguly’s failures as a captain and a batsman coincided with the overall season of everybody being out of form and somehow he was held responsible for it. In Dravid’s case right from last year others like Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman are playing well so his failures are not costing the team that much. I think it’s just the personality that attracts a different reaction.

Premier test rivarly

admin — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:34:51 +0000

What a rivalry! If we count since the start of 2000 (just after the time when Australia had started their first streak of 16 wins in a row), Australia has lost only 12 matches, 6 of them are against India! If we don’t count the dead rubber games the lost games are 7 (which is an unbelievable record). Of those five are against India (Kolkata, Chennai in 2001, Adelaide in 2003, Perth earlier this year and now in Mohali). The loss at Mumbai in 2004 was after they had already won the series. The two other real losses of Australia were in the Ashes 2005 against England.

In Australia in the same duration, they have lost only 3 games, two of which were lost when the series was still open - both were against India. The third one was the Sydney dead rubber against England in 2003.

Compare this to 14 wins against 4 losses in Ashes for Australia, only two of which were when the series was still open, and it’s easier to decide which contest is the premier one in test cricket in this decade. And for those who still like to bring up the McGrath-Warne factor from time to time, India won the 2001 home series against Australia by beating them in the matches when these two played. England’s wins at Birmingham and Nottingham were when McGrath didn’t play. We won’t count Mumbai (2004), Leeds (2001) and Sydney (2003) in this, the series were already decided by then.

Dada to retire after the Australia series

admin — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:54:42 +0000

Saurav Ganguly announced today that he will retire after the Australia series. Whether it was a deal with the selectors or not doesn’t matter. It is necessary that the seniors - or all major players - need to get an opportunity to go like this. I think he had proved all he wanted to prove over the last year or so, playing well against South Africa, England, Pakistan and Australia. He was dropped, he felt he had more cricket left in him, he came back and he was successful. Job done, now he could leave whenever he wanted.

So overall the right decision. Moreover although it does start the phase where the seniors will go one by one, in some way for at least a couple of series it takes the pressure off the other four. This is because one has already announced his retirement and the process has started. The press and the public won’t be looking for another for some time, unless the Aussie series is a disaster batting-wise. But considering what happened in Australia that is less likely to happen.

It’s time to look for some great innings of Dada as the batsman or bowler and also some great captaincy moments. I will try to gather those and put here soon. I hope he adds some more to the first list in this upcoming series!