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.
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