Cricket: From the Far End

Dilip Vengsarkar is the new chairman of selection committee. He takes it over from Kiran More. Vengsarkar says he will end the zonal bias in the selection. From his interview with Times of India, one could think that some seniors like Ganguly, Laxman and Kumble do have some chance of making it back to the ODI team again.

Ganguly gets another chance to show form. He plays in one of the three teams playing the Challenger trophy - the domestic ODI tournament meant for selection of the team for the season. Whether he has really been offered a chance or he is there to fill the remaining slots (like those additional characters in monster movies who are there just to be eaten by the T-Rex/Anaconda etc), will be seen only if he gets some good scores. I personally believe he, along with Laxman and Kumble has a role to play in West Indies next March. With the selection panel changed, all of them must be hopeful.

So for India, the Challenger is the preparation for the preparation for the World Cup. 

Brian Lara says if he had been recalled just like Tendulkar was he would not have come back to bat. Yeah right. Considering what he had done in an ODI earlier in West Indies, he would not have walked after having been given out in the first place. He would have probably stayed there arguing with the umpire. In any case, Sachin doesn’t need lessons about on-field (or even off-field) behavior from anybody.

The DLF cup at Kuala Lumpur has started. In the first game of the series, in response to Australia’s 279 West Indies were going well till 172-1 with just over four runs required per over. Then they self-distructed to 201 all out. Here is the cricinfo scorecard.

Now India plays West Indies. This match will be interesting to see because Tendulkar will finally get to play a full game after waiting forever in Sri Lanka. This is India’s chance to respond after the 1-4 loss in West Indies earlier.

But the most interesting contest will be on Saturday when Tendulkar will face McGrath after more than three years - after the World cup final. They have played against each other very rarely in the last five years. The only other occasion was the ODI series in India in 2001 where Tendulkar used to go after McGrath - resulting into first spell numbers for McGrath like 4-0-25-0, 6-0-30-0 and 6-0-40-0. In their World Cup 2003 league game Tendulkar started going after McGrath taking 14 runs in one of his over, but had to calm down after wickets fell on the other side. In the final game, McGrath took him out in the first over. After that India played Australia a lot of times but McGrath wasn’t there. So their duel on Saturday will be interesting.