Cricket: From the Far End

Inzamam, although playing better than he has played all his career, has been finding all funny ways to get out recently. Thanks to some of the links available on YouTube and Google, here are some of those.

Originally famous for getting run-out, in a classical fashion and occasionally giving a classical reaction to that, he was the player run out by Jonty Rhodes’ horizontal dive that became famous in World Cup 1992. Looking back Jonty must be thinking he need not have bothered to put that extra effort.

Some time back against England in the home series, Inzy, got just out of the crease while playing a shot and then moved away from the throw to avoid getting hit, as the bowler threw at the stumps. The throw then went and hit the stumps and he was given out. In the next series he was out playing such a ball thrown by a fielder.

In the home ODI series against India, he played a ball to Suresh Raina and was trying to get back to crease when Raina threw the ball to that end. Still out of his crease by a distance, Inzy tried to play that ball. Indian players appealed and he was given out. He openly said after the match that “I got out earlier when I didn’t hit the ball, now I am out when I hit it, I just don’t understand it” or something like that.

And now this incident in the recent test against England. In this case, the umpire must have said “when I said over the wicket, I meant the bowler”. Check this out too. 

It’s another Sri Lanka tour to begin the season - for the third consecutive year. How much hope can we have from this series? The last two tournaments in last two years there were disastrous for India. In fact India hasn’t won a tournament there since the Independence cup in 1998. In 2002 the final was tied between India and Sri Lanka. But in 2004 and 2005 India lost the finals.

This time it looks even tougher - Sri Lanka is waiting for a revenge from their 1-6 loss last year in India. They will be waiting with slow wickets on which India failed to get even 200 in 50 overs in 2004. Sri Lanka is on a roll, just having beaten England 5-0 in ODIs in England and also South Africa 2-0 in tests at home. The last time India played on slow wickets against slow bowlers -in the West Indies- no batsman looked comfortable. So unless Tendulkar can infuse some new confidence they will need some different effort to play well against Sri Lanka. Tendulkar wasn’t there the last year, but when we was there in 2004 he was playing far more defensively and could never push the run rate.

So there seems to be something about the dominance their slow bowlers have had over Indian batsmen. In the last couple of years India hasn’t been able to beat Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka except a narrow win in 2004. It will be interesting to see whether Tendulkar, Pathan and Dhoni can repeat their home performance last year again, now in Sri Lanka. This will also give another opportunity to the team to play on slow wickets before the next world cup.

The first game for India is on Aug 16th, here is the schedule from cricinfo.