The Fourth Umpire

India grades v South Africa

2015-02-22T11:47:00.000-08:00

India managed to throw a lot of pre-World Cup predictor bets off by not only beating, but totally bossing South Africa in their second World Cup match. Does this make India a genuine contender? Given how long a way there is still to go, and given the format of this World Cup, it's still too early to say, but it's fair to say that India are going to be a threat, especially if they bat first. Let's look at two key points from the match, followed by India player grades.

Almost perfect bowling and fielding performance by India

If you thought the bowling performance against Pakistan was good, this one was even better. The bowlers bowled to their plans, hardly gave any loose balls away and the fielders threw themselves all over the place to back the bowlers up. What was most pleasing was that while you expect the likes of Kohli, Raina and Rahane to make an impact while fielding, Mohit Sharma and Umesh Yadav affected run outs with powerful and accurate throws from the boundary. Mohit, in particular, is turning out to be a revelation. Ishant Sharma and Bhuvaneshwar Kumar must be starting to get a bit nervous about their places in the ODI team.

Batting performance nearly a replica of the Pakistan match

Early wicket - check. One of the top 3 going on to score a century - check. One partnership to restore the innings between Dhawan and Kohli and then another to keep the momentum going with the no. 4 batsman having a real impact - check. Lower middle order not clicking and the innings ending with a whimper - check. India need to keep this formula going but need to figure out a way for the lower order to contribute more. It may be time for Dhoni and maybe even Jadeja to come up the order in one of the remaining group matches to get some time in the middle ahead of the knockouts.

Player ratings out of 10 (0-10; 10=best)

Rohit Sharma (3) - Cricket can be a cruel game. The in-form batsman coming in to the World Cup and he's now got out cheaply twice. While Rohit may have slipped slightly and AB de Villiers was absolutely outstanding, it's these kinds of margins that international cricketers have to straddle all the time. Rohit really needs a big innings to get back into rhythm. Given how weak the middle and lower order has been, India would dearly love their top 4 to get into form.

Shikhar Dhawan (9.5) - Nearly a complete batting performance. He seemed to carry the form from the Pakistan match into this one and really made it count. This was a lesson in ODI innings building. He rotated the strike well, accelerated when he needed to with excellent cricketing shots and did not get overly frustrated when India had a quiet over or two in the middle of the innings. Made South Africa pay for the dropped catch and was a deserved Man of the Match. Two shots off Morkel really stood out - the pull for four after being troubled by a short ball and the casual flick for six over long leg off the same bowler when he walked across his stumps. Also took a couple of important catches and put in a solid fielding effort.

Virat Kohli (8) - Was key in rebuilding the innings calmly after the loss of an early wicket. Kohli played perfect foil to Dhawan and did not take any undue risks when he realized that Dhawan was middling it. He's been in trouble trying to pull away shortish deliveries from legspinners on the faster pitches in Australia in both matches thus far. He'd do well to make an adjustment and account for the extra zip and overspin. Another mature batsman from India's batting lynchpin.

Ajinkya Rahane (9) - Rahane dispelled all doubts about his middle order credentials in the Indian ODI team with this performance. He did not take time to get going when he came in, looked fluent from the off, rotated the strike and also found the odd boundary to take the pressure off Dhawan. His straight drive off Morkel was stunning, so was his straight six off Steyn just before he got out. He needs to bat at 4 since he's shown how dangerous he can be without resorting to mindless slogging. He is quietly turning into India's best batsman and fielder in ODIs.

Suresh Raina (5) - Cricket can be such a great leveler. After a standout performance against Pakistan, Raina played into the hands of the South Africans here. I suspect Morkel had sent him a letter (by snail mail, no less) a year ago telling him exactly how he would be bowling at him during this World Cup match. And instead of trying to control his pull shots and get Rahane on strike, Raina proceeded to not only walk into the trap, but stay for a cup of tea and a chat. However, he was electric on the field and that gives him an extra point. Did miss a run out of Amla after doing all the hard work, however.

MS Dhoni (6) - Another average batting performance followed up by a flawless captaincy display. He briefly threatened with the bat before falling to Morkel. He desperately needs some time in the middle - something he should be able to arrange against the UAE. However, his attacking captaincy has been a real revelation. Even after the first powerplay, he kept 6 fielders in the circle against AB and Faf and that pressure forced Faf to take some risks for his boundaries. He saved Ashwin for the left handers in South Africa's middle order and used Umesh Yadav in short, sharp bursts. Almost perfect to a T.

Ravindra Jadeja (4) - At this point, I doubt that even his grandmother refers to him as allrounder anymore. He may end up keeping his place in the team for this World Cup simply because there are no other options. His bowling was against steady without being threatening, but he did bowl a good over at AB that may have led to the pressure that caused his run out. India need way more from their no. 7 with the bat, however.

R Ashwin (8.5) - Another fantastic spin bowling performance from Ashwin. He started off with a few short deliveries that Faf took advantage off, but really came into his own when given the chance to bowl at the left handers in South Africa's middle order. Once he settled into a rhythm, he was really hard to milk for singles and ended up getting rid of the dangerous Duminy. He seems to be bowling slower and enjoying the extra bounce on the Aussie pitches.

Mohammed Shami (9.5) - Easily the best he's bowled in an India shirt in the last two matches. Shami showed that he has what it takes to lead India's attack in this ODI. Delivered an early wicket again and it's hard to think of one poor delivery that Shami bowled throughout his spell. He keeps growing in confidence with every match and that's an excellent sign for India.

Umesh Yadav (6.5) - 6-0-34-0 may not look special, but this was a much improved bowling performance from the one against Pakistan. Started off being too straight to Amla, but adjusted well and bowled in good channels. He was also pretty unlucky as three top edges that may have gone straight up on another day ended up going for boundaries behind the keeper. He made the batsman take risks to score boundaries against him and if he keeps bowling like this, the wickets are bound to come. Great throw from the deep to run out the dangerous Miller.

Mohit Sharma (9) - Mohit Sharma may end up being India's surprise package of this World Cup. He is clearly enjoying the little bit of nip that the pitches in Australia afford him. He did not bowl a single bad delivery last night and focused on keeping things really simple. He bowled a really well directed bouncer to get rid of the dangerous Amla and got Faf's wicket with good, sharp, wicket-to-wicket bowling. His throw to get rid of AB de Villiers was one of those key moments on which close matches turn.

Do you agree with the ratings? Do you have any thoughts on the match in general? Please let me know in the comments.

India grades v Pakistan

2015-02-15T19:12:00.001-08:00

India have started their ODI World Cup defense with a mostly convincing victory over Pakistan. For a large number of Indian fans, it doesn't matter what India end up achieving in the competition after this. For someone who has watched all six World Cup matches against Pakistan, here are a few thoughts on the match followed by points for the Indian team.

Pakistan's weakest bowling attack in a World Cup?

Pakistan have traditionally boasted high quality bowling attacks with names such as Imran Khan, Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram, Shoaib Akhtar, Mustaq Ahmed ... the list goes on. Although they did really well to come back towards the end of the innings, the bowling attack did not inspire a great amount of fear. Although Yasir Shah bowled relatively well, Pakistan were really affected by Saeed Ajmal's absence as India managed to score at 6 runs an over in the middle overs without taking any undue risks. In general, both teams had a bunch of newcomers. India were without Sachin, Yuvraj, Harbhajan and Zaheer - all veterans of India-Pakistan clashes over the years and there was a distinct lack of personalities on both sides, which made it a distinctly mellower affair than years gone by.

India do to Pakistan what other teams have been doing to India for years

You wouldn't associate the Indian team with hostile fast bowling, neither would you associate Dhoni with attacking captaincy in seamer-friendly conditions. Both of these stereotypes were shattered as Shami and Umesh Yadav ran in and bowled fast and aggressive spells. While Yadav was wayward and did not inspire confidence despite getting a couple of important wickets in the middle overs, Shami was outstanding. The most pleasing wicket for an Indian fan was that of Younis Khan, who has been a thorn in India's side over the years on unresponsive pitches in Asia. He looked all of his 37 years trying to get out of the way of a sharp Shami bouncer, only managing to glove it awkwardly to Dhoni. There were a few other bouncers that the Indian seamers let fly and Shami and Yadav bowled consistently in the 140's. More of the same, please!

Player ratings out of 10 (0-10; 10=best)

Rohit Sharma (5) - After starting off relatively well, Rohit played a terrible shot to get out. He's been the man in form for India so far and fans expected him to take responsibility, but he has the tendency to play reckless shots in the first 10 overs. It looks great when it comes off, but Rohit really needs to try and play percentage cricket and give himself the best chance of batting the full 50 overs.

Shikhar Dhawan (8) - One of the most pleasing aspects of India's win was that Dhawan looked fluent from the off and hit some pleasing drives and pulls en route to a fluent half century that was also part of a very important partnership with Kohli. He got run out after a mix up with Kohli and while it was Kohli's hesitation that led to the run out, a slight nit pick would be that had Dhawan switched the bat over to his right hand before turning around and putting in the dive, it may have just saved him. World Cups get decided on little things like these.

Virat Kohli (9) - Something about the big stage brings out the best in Kohli. Started the 2011 World Cup with a century against Bangladesh and kicked off this version with another. The best feature of his batting was the risk free way in which he was able to bat in the middle overs. Also took a fantastic catch to get rid of Shahid Afridi during a time when a few blows may have started to cause some flutters in the Indian camp. Got out at a tired shot and triggered a collapse that saw India lose 5 wickets for 20-something runs in the last 5 overs.

Suresh Raina (9.5) - Almost a perfect performance from a player who was under some pressure before the match began. Accelerated beautifully during the later half of India's innings and was electric in the field. Picked up a couple of crucial catches at first slip. Raina needs to do well if India are to go far in this World Cup. Man of the Match for me.

MS Dhoni (6) - Appeared scratchy while batting and could not give the innings the boost it needed. Apart from one sweetly struck six off Sohail, he seemed to struggle for timing and looked to hit the ball too hard. He may need to come up the order against one of the minnows to give himself some time in the middle. On the field, his wicketkeeping was sound and his captaincy was aggressive and un-Dhoni like.

Ravindra Jadeja (5) - Looks extremely unconvincing as a lower order hitter. He was all at sea against Wahab's pace and nearly got himself run out a couple of times before getting cleaned up. He was steady with the ball without looking particularly threatening and managed to hold on to an important catch at point.

Ajinkya Rahane (4) - He came in to bat in a thankless situation and the grade is a bit harsh, but such is life. Opened his WC campaign with a golden duck but was part of a good all-round ground fielding display.

R Ashwin (8) - Dhoni threw the ball to him when the partnership between Shahzad and Haris was starting to look dangerous and he looked the most likely to take a wicket. Bowled three maidens in his 8 overs and took out Haris at just the right time for India. Tried a bit too much against Misbah and ended up getting pinged around.

Mohammed Shami (9) - Started off with fantastic control and came back well in his later spells. His wicket of Younis was crucial and he ended up getting the wickets of Misbah and Afridi as well. India need him to bowl with this kind of intensity throughout the tournament.

Umesh Yadav (5.5) - A highly inconsistent bowling performance. Although he bowled with good pace and bounce, a leg side gift was never too far away. He may be better off used in short, sharp spells the like of which got him the wickets of Shahzad and Shoaib Maqsood. Because he is naturally capable of generating good pace, he should focus on bowling in the middle overs and not try anything too clever.

Mohit Sharma (8) - He came on as first change and managed to keep things tight after Yadav sprayed it around. He was able to hold his own against the big hitters in the Pakistani line up and bowled good lengths and excellent slower deliveries. He needs to put in more honest spells like these through the course of India's campaign.

Do you agree with the ratings? Do you have any thoughts on the match in general? Please let me know in the comments.

What ails the IPL

2014-06-08T16:50:00.003-07:00

“Now that the IPL is over, I have no idea what I’m going to do after getting back from work every day. It was the one thing that used to keep the entire family interested - I love it, my wife preferred it to saans-bahu melodramas, even my six year old son would rather watch the IPL than his cartoons. I suppose it’s back to the soaps for my wife and back to cartoons for my son; what am I supposed to do with myself?” One of my friends who still lives in Mumbai told me this just after the last IPL. I may have paraphrased this slightly, and it’s not verbatim, but this captures the sentiments that I’ve heard from a few others who live in India.

Regardless of whether you think IPL should be the only form of cricket that’s acceptable in this day and age, or whether you are firmly in the camp that believes in wearing yellow and orange ties to cricket games and consider T20 to be a form of hit-and-giggle cricket that’s only enjoyed by imbeciles, the fact remains that the IPL is here to stay. Personally, I’m somewhere in between. Although the quality of fielding and umpiring can be atrocious at times, there is some high quality cricket in between the circus and the condensed format makes drama almost impossible to avoid. However, as I semi-passively followed the seventh version of the IPL unfold, I couldn’t help get the feeling that despite its widespread appeal, there are a few flies in the ointment, as it were, that the league needs to work on. There is one really important element that the league needs to get right in order to ensure the worldwide appeal and longevity of the league that it took it’s name from - the English Premier League.

Let’s start off trying to define a seemingly straightforward concept: What's loyalty in a sporting context? For the average English or Spanish soccer fan, that used to be an easy one to answer. It usually meant that your father or grandfather grew up supporting the Local Club and you ended up following weekend matches at their knee and the choice of which team to support was not so much a choice as it was a responsibility that was handed down to you, like a worn jersey. It used to mean buying season tickets, clocking up countless miles through rain and sleet to hostile away games and sticking by your team through thick and thin. The widespread reach of sport via television and the internet has meant a wider fan base and these days, a Manchester United cafe is just as likely to sprout in Kuala Lumpur as in Manchester (or London, as the old joke about plastic Manchester United "fans" goes).

Cricket has no history of club based competition, for the most part. T20 started this trend and the IPL has been the torch bearer in truly internationalizing the appeal of the franchise model to a point where every cricket playing nation hopes to emulate its successes. However, due to the fact that there is no precedent, it is doubly important that the league thinks long and hard about building that elusive, hard-to-define element among its fan base - loyalty. You would imagine loyalty to be developed by three major factors - where you grew up, where your team plays and where your favorite cricketer plays. The trouble is that the IPL makes it hard to support a team based on any of these counts.

I personally have been confused by this since the advent of the IPL. I grew up in Mumbai (Bombay, as I still like to call it), have supported the Indian cricket team since I can remember. I’ve grown up worshipping Sachin Tendulkar, I’ve been a huge fan of Anil Kumble and I think Sourav Ganguly has been the best captain India ever had. Which team do I support then? Mumbai Ranji cricketers have been spread out across the teams, I can’t physically go to games because I literally live on the other side of the globe and I admire cricketers in every team and can’t see myself wishing for Rahane or Raina to fail when Malinga is bowling at them. Could someone help me out here?

I understand that I’m not really the target demographic. The folks who the clever IPL marketers want to turn into season-ticket buying, face painting, jersey wearing loyalists are the kids who grow up in this T20 world and feel the kind of emotion about their IPL team that Priety Zinta feels towards Kings XI Punjab. And currently, there are two real problems that need to be addressed to make this a possibility.

Firstly, the IPL organizers need to sit down and figure out a sustainable model for player transfers. The auction-based approach worked fine for the first season of the tournament, since the league needed to bootstrap, but the fact that almost entire teams are thrown away and new ones built in place every three years makes my head spin sometimes. Consider Robin Uthappa’s journey. He started off playing for the Mumbai Indians, got traded to Bangalore where he played for two seasons before moving to the newly formed Pune Warriors. After the Warriors were liquidated, he ended up moving to KKR where he recently won his first IPL title. Four teams in the span of seven years. Of course, his transfer from Mumbai to Bangalore was the result of an old-fashioned trade and the fact that his employers ceased to exist was beyond his control, but I wouldn’t be surprised if poor Robbie gets slightly confused upon bumping into someone on a cricket field about whether to give him a high five or a stinky eye. Why not allow teams to trade in order to re-balance the team without having to go through a complete overhaul every three years is totally beyond me.

Chennai, in particular, have showed the benefits that could be reaped from sticking to a core to help build a team dynamic (of course, winning a lot tends to help too). It’s natural that a string of losses brings out everyone’s inner Roman Abramovich but a total reset is nothing more than an escape valve and you still need good players and team management to get great results. Don’t believe me? Ask the Delhi Daredevils about their 2014 season.

The other big issue is that the Indian Premier League tends to move quite often to play in places such as South Africa and the Emirates. Somehow, the fact that Chennai did not play a single “home” game at the Chinnaswamy stadium is an utter travesty. I find it hard to imagine the Milan clubs not playing at the San Siro, or the Boston Red Sox playing anywhere other than the legendary Fenway Park. Like the municipal officials who get surprised every year when the monsoons arrive at roughly the same time, the IPL officials were probably too busy counting the moolah to factor in the Indian elections. Here’s a news flash: They happen every five years.

One of the stands at Barcelona’s famous Camp Nou display their famous slogan: ‘Mes Que Un Club’, or ‘More Than A Club’. Although a fairly large part of this logo is politically motivated, this slogan represents what the club seeks to be - more than just the beautiful football that’s played on a weekly basis but an institution, a tradition and a sporting dynasty of sorts. That’s the kind of commitment that’s required for from the IPL clubs and the overall league. It’s not the cheerleaders and the strategic timeouts or the Bollywood groupies, but an aspiration to be more than a league that’ll ensure its long term health. And my friend won’t have to worry about what to watch on television when he gets back home from work for a six-week period every year for a long time to come.

The Sachin Years

2013-11-16T11:14:00.000-08:00

Writing about Sachin is a thankless task at most times. It’s a bit like writing about the Beatles. It’s really hard to come up with things that haven’t been chewed, ruminated and digested by legions of cricket fans all over the globe. The awkward teen doing a TV interview with Tom Alter with insanely high waist-ed trousers, the practise sessions that were motivated by a 1 rupee coin placed on top of a stump by “Achrekar sir”, the vada pavs and the friendship with Vinod Kambli, the rise of Sachin the marketing commodity which coincided perfectly with Manmohan Singh (the Financial Minister avatar) opening up the Indian markets in 1991 and many, many more stories. Because we all have our own private Sachin, I’m going to walk down memory lane and pick my favorite Sachin moments over the years.

The Wonder Years (1989-1992): This was the period when he arrived into our collective consciousness, as a shy 16-year old prodigy. I mean here was a sporting equivalent of Doogie Howser, except that he wasn't fictional. This period was characterized by curiosity, awe and avuncular affection in equal parts. Hordes of middle-aged Indian aunties were seen gushing over this precocious teenager as he walked out to an intense media glare to face the most intimidating fast bowlers from all over: Wasim, Waqar, McDermott, Merv Hughes (“This little prick is going to score more runs than you, AB”), Hadlee … the list goes on. I clearly remember my late grandmother (who could generally not be too bothered what what 22 men dressed in whites did) once come out and watch Sachin, just for the sake of seeing him. “Ha Sachin ka?” Is that Sachin?

After his trial by fire on the Pakistan tour, his near miss at a first test hundred in Napier, he smacked a century at the SCG the same time that a blonde leg-spinner was starting out in international cricket. He even one-upped himself in Perth, cracking a 114 when the rest of the Indian batsmen didn’t know whether they were coming or going, a century Ian Chappell still rates as one of Sachin’s best.

However, it was the ODI World Cup in 1992 (where India were also-rans) that he took on the mantle of being the team’s fulcrum for the first time. Where teams looked at him as a young international freak before, they started to build plans that involved getting him out early. My favorite moment was his stroke filled batting in scoring a half century against Pakistan. This World Cup was what really started my love affair with cricket and Sachin was an integral part of it. It was around this time that the Wonder Years were coming to an end, and his career entered the next phase.

The Lone Ranger (1992-1996): This was a period of great tragedy, or great romance depending on which way you look at it. India had some handy batsmen and bowlers on subcontinent pitches. And there were a couple of good performances here and there (the 1993 Hero Cup win, 3-0 sweeps of England and Sri Lanka at home), India were always a team relying on brilliant individual performances from him to carry them through. This was the period where all the Sachin stereotypes have been built on. There was a commercial on TV at the time that had someone say, “Sachin hai na?” Is Sachin still batting? It captured the mood perfectly. India only had a chance if Sachin was around. Kids who grew up watching cricket in the 2000’s when Sachin had an able support cast will never quite get the desperation of this period.

The lowest low of this time came during the 1996 World Cup semi final against Sri Lanka at the Eden Gardens. It was probably one of the most painful moments as an Indian cricket fan but it captures what supporting India was like at the time more than anything else. After Sachin had been sublime to get India to the brink of a World Cup final, Azhar made the absolutely horrendous call of giving Sri Lanka first use of a newly laid pitch. Chasing just over 250, Sachin made the pitch look like it had no demons in it while he was around. Once he got out for 65, 98/2 became 120/8 and a literal riot ensued. I locked myself up in the bathroom and cried. There were pictures of Vinod Kambli, his childhood friend and teammate, walking off the field of play, crying inconsolably. That pretty much sums up this period for me.

The Golden Years (1996-2005): This Golden Age of Indian cricket actually had more to do with the support cast rather than Sachin himself. As Indian fans, we should thank the likes of Ganguly, Dravid, Sehwag and to a lesser extent Laxman and Yuvraj for taking the pressure off Sachin and allowing himself to express himself without having to be an Atlas every single game. I really do think that without the emergence of these batsmen, Sachin would’ve been broken and would not have lasted in international cricket as long as he did.

There were some disappointments during this time, make no mistake about that. The second innings 136 he made against Pakistan on a difficult pitch against a great bowling attack in Chennai is still, in my mind, his best innings that almost was a throwback to the pre-Ganguly/Dravid era, and the 2003 World Cup final against Australia will continue to rankle. However, this time had some astonishing good displays of batsmanship that were not about Sachin alone - like Dravid and Ganguly’s plundering of Sri Lanka in England in the 1999 World Cup. Inasmuch as Sachin would’ve loved to be part of the fun, I’m sure he enjoyed watching that match and felt some sort of release. There was also the legendary 2001 series against Australia that will be remembered for the Laxman/Dravid partnership, or the Pakistan series for the Sehwag triple.

Sachin provided some masterclasses of his own during this time too, including the 241* against Australia at Sydney which almost spoilt Steve Waugh’s farewell series and his belligerent 98 against Pakistan at the Centurion in the 2003 World Cup. However, the highlight of this period will always be his duels with Shane Warne. Warne dismissed Sachin for 4 in Chennai to elicit a ruthless response from the Master. His 155* in the second innings of the same match in Chennai was probably one of his most complete innings. It only got better in Sharjah when his twin centuries to hand India the trophy were innings of a genius at the top of his craft. One particular moment that lingers on was Warne going around the wicket to pitch it into the rough against him. Warne is animated in his field placings, has an intense look in his eye. Sachin steps out and hammers the first ball over long on’s head. Camera back on Warne who is seen swatting a fly away with a sinking feeling in his gut.

The Second Wind (2005-2013): After going through a lull in the 2005-2007 phase where there were mutterings about whether this would force him to draw the curtain on his long and storied career, his second wind officially started when he scored a couple of sublime 150’s against Australia in the series that will always be remembered for monkey-gate. He ended a hundred drought (by his standards anyway) by smashing a century and followed it up with a 91 to help India seal what would be the last triangular series to feature on the Australian summer calendar. As was his wont, he saved his best for Australia and the 214 he scored against them at Bangalore in an oddly arranged 2-test series in 2010 was as close as he came to perfection during his later years. It’s fitting that his 146 against Dale Steyn’s South Africa at Cape Town will remain his final test century. By then, he was probably not the great player he used to be (still a very, very good one) but used all his cricketing wisdom and experience to hang around and fight his way to what could’ve been a series winning hundred against South Africa.

He also had a couple of fantastic ODI performances during this time. Special mention must go to his 160 against NZ in Hamilton where he showed utter and complete mastery of the format and his 175 against Australia in a losing cause. This period also featured his ODI double century and the 2011 World Cup win. You got the sense that not winning a World Cup always hounded him and that night in Mumbai went a long way to exorcising the ghosts from Eden Gardens ‘96 and Wanderers ‘03.

The lasting memory of Sachin from this phase will always be the heartfelt words of Virat Kohli (“He has carried the nation on his shoulders for 20+ years”) and Yuvraj Singh (“We did it for Sachin”) and the grace Dhoni displayed in letting Sachin-mania take center stage in Mumbai after India had won him the trophy he had craved more than any other in the course of his career.

So how will Sachin be remembered? As the most complete cricketer of his generation. As one of the best role models a young kid could ask for. He has transcended an invisible line to become what I would call a super-sportsman where it’s impossible to mention a sport without thinking of him. It’s like what Pele and Maradona are to football, Federer is to tennis and Schumaker is to F1. He is an ambassador for the sport and cricket is lucky to have an ambassador like him. During his farewell test series characterized by fawning aristocrats tripping over each other, his calm and grace brought sanity to what could have otherwise been an unbearable, over-the-top affair.

So, thank you Sachin. We have taken you for granted for the last 24 years and we now wish you the best of luck to enjoy the next chapter of your life with your family, out of what has been a continuous reality show of an existence. Thanks for the entertainment, thanks for the memories. You were a large part of our childhood growing up and have brought us a lot of happiness over the years, so thank you for that.

So this is what the end of an era feels like. I feel all grown up ...

The tale of two tests

2012-11-27T21:20:00.002-08:00

The first couple of matches of the India-England series might remind shrewd observers of elections in R Ashwin's home state of Tamil Nadu. The resemblance is striking. To people who have not been observing Tamil Nadu politics since the beginning of time, I'll explain. Not that I'm an expert but the general principle is fairly straightforward - the AIADMK wins by an absolute landslide margin and as soon as the government finishes it's 5-year term, the opposition party, the DMK, win by an equally mind-boggling majority. Curious onlookers find this behavior extremely perplexing. Future historians might point to the first two test matches of the ongoing India-England series in a similar way: a 9-wicket loss for the visiting team followed by an equally crushing 10-wicket victory. The jury is still out.

The first morning of the first test match was an interesting sight. Started off being a typical slow, low Indian wicket that Sehwag and co have practically grown up on. A fired up Anderson really put his back behind the first ball and it got up to Sehwag's knees. Barely. Anderson looked broken. Cook might have looked up to the dressing room to see if he could sneak Panesar on to the field and hope that no one would notice. The distance between Lords and the Sardar Patel ground in Ahmedabad is over 4500 miles. At that point, it must have seemed even farther. Finn might have been forgiven for uttering a slight prayer of thanks for his injury. If Freddie Flintoff was watching, he might have thought of his new career as a pugilist as less soul-crushing. I think you get the point by now.

Pujara reaffirmed his status as one of the best young players to have come out of India off late. Sure, his truer tests will come when he eventually tours on bouncier pitches but he's been up to whatever challenge he's faced thus far. His current average of 71.10 places him firmly between Tendulkar and Bradman (leaning slightly on the Tendulkar side of course, but let's not hold that against him). To quote a Ravi Shastri cliche, he definitely "puts a price tag on his wicket" and at least in the first test, the price was too high for the English attack. When Swann finally got him stumped in the first innings of the second test, his wicket was already worth about 380 runs at that point. He had to wait an eternity to break into the team despite scoring mountains of runs in domestic cricket. When you score a triple century and Ravindra Jadeja shows up and scores a triple on the same pitch, your triple does lose it's sheen a little bit. Most people would've been disheartened but not Pujara. He scored another triple, a few doubles along the way and big hundreds on his off days. Now that he's finally here, he'll make sure he makes it count. Here's hoping the other big scorer in domestic cricket, Ajinkya Rahane, gets his chance soon.

You can't write a piece of England in any form of cricket without mention of Pietersen. Whether he's acting clueless against spin to lose his middle stump and then goes one step further in the second innings to get bowled behind his legs to a left arm spinner when the ball barely pitches in line with leg stump, it is either extremely entertaining or mighty infuriating, depending on what side you are on. But after he scored a masterful 186 in the second test, almost toying with the attack on a more difficult pitch, you wondered if it was all part of his Grand Plan of luring the Indian spin attack into a false sense of complacency, getting them to play an extra spinner and then pulling off the ultimate hustle. And of course, there can be no mention of the England batting without mentioning their captain courageous Alistar Cook, who joins a long illustrious list of left-handed opening batsmen including the likes of Saeed Anwar, Hayden, Jayasuriya and Gary Kirsten who have been near impossible to dislodge and like villains in a movie who do their job splendidly, you end up hating them despite knowing that it isn't anything personal.

While Hayden and Sanath would be the kind of villains who would tie you to a rusty iron pillar and badger you with a blunt instrument to get information out of you, Cook is more in the Gary Kirsten mould of baddies. They believe in the long, elaborate forms of torture. Cook is the sort of Bond villain who wears an impeccable tuxedo and does not believe in crude violence. He is more likely to torture you by making you watch The Matrix Revolutions one hundred times in a row. He has been an utter nightmare to bowl to so far. He has managed to dead-bat his way through spin, pace, Harbhajan and anything else India have thrown at him. Honorable mention must also go to Matt Prior. For these two, I have developed a mixture of fear, loathing and eventually grudging respect. I do believe that India's spinners, especially Ashwin, should bowl a lot fuller at Cook and do away with the absolutely senseless strategy of bowling short and keeping a deep point. He has scored a couple of hundreds already - that's a hint that whatever the master plan is, it isn't working.

At the mention of spinners, it's heartening that Ojha has probably been the pick of the bowlers so far across both tests. Swann hasn't been far behind, but that was expected of him. Ojha would've been more threatening in the second test had here been more pressure from the other end - something that Ashwin failed to create. Messrs Dhoni and Fletcher really need to work out their plans else the series could slip away from them faster than you can say 'Mudhsuden Singh Panesar'. What can you say about that guy? That he took to the Wankhede pitch like a fish would take to water is an understatement. He took to it like a particularly showboating dolphin would take to a water-themed amusement park. The ball left his fingers at the perfect pace, had the perfect dip and bounce and spin and it left the so-called great players of spin clueless. After watching him bowl this well in a country where Shane Warne and Murali have been made to look ordinary, you wonder whether Monty was actually part of a lab experiment by England who have been working on a perfect weapon for the last 30 years with a view to unleashing him on an unsuspecting India in the Mumbai test. You may think I'm smoking something but YouTube his wickets from Wankhede and it won't sound like crazy talk anymore.

So where does this leave us for the rest of the series? Firstly, Dhoni needs to learn his lesson and stop hiding behind the pitch excuse every single time. The bottom line is this: regardless of what kind of pitch you play on, you need to bowl and bat well. Also, displaying any sort of competence with the bat and gloves by the Indian captain would be immensely helpful. England still look shaky against spin barring Cook, Prior and the Wankhede Pietersen (I believe the KP on show in the first test was a different person). If India get their tactics right and bowl the right lengths to England, they should still go ahead and win the series. Gambhir has shown promise in the second test and hopefully Pujara can carry his form through the remaining tests. Kohli is bound to produce at least one good innings, but Yuvraj still leaves me unconvinced. There is a giant Sachin Tendulkar sized hole in the middle order at the moment that Sachin Tendulkar seems unable to fill. How he does in the next couple of matches might force him to evaluate his future.

I'm going to stick my neck out and predict an Indian series win - 3-1 is possible but 2-1 is more likely. However, something that India would do well to observe is the grit that England have shown in the first 2 tests. They have shown more fight than India showed in all 4 tests of the England series. Only Pujara has been able to grind out steady, if unspectacular, runs when the going has been tough. India only need to look at Cook and learn some lessons that will help them, not just in this series, but in many series to come.

Notes from India-NZ

2012-09-09T09:18:00.000-07:00

India’s first assignment in whites after getting washed in the same colour in the previous two series that they played couldn't have come at a better place, or against better opposition. After being bullied and outmuscled by two taller and stronger kids in their own backyard, there is nothing quite so refreshing as the sight of a scrawny kid at least a foot shorter than you challenging you to a fight in your backyard with one hand in a cast. India dealt with New Zealand the way they were expected to, which was refreshing. Before the series began, MS Dhoni’s team might have had some misgivings playing a team that had given them a fair amount of trouble the last time they visited and the Indians had to rely on a couple of centuries from none other than Harbhajan Singh to bail them out of a few pickles they found themselves in.

The series continued the way their last one in India had ended – with fairly comprehensive wins for India with R Ashwin continuing to do no wrong. With Ojha providing admirable foil, he ripped through kiwi batsmen who were about as clueless when it came to playing spin as the English teams of the 1990’s. They were so far outplayed in the first test that they had to be content in taking positives about putting India under some pressure in the second. Although their bowlers tried their best and the relatively inexperienced Boult and Bracewell looked really good in patches, the batsmen had generally dug themselves into a hole deep enough that an army of sherpas couldn’t have dug them out in time.

Ashwin is similar to Kumble in some ways – he is tall, relies on bounce for a lot of his wickets, does the same jump and clap celebration that Jumbo trademarked and amazingly enough, displays the same dive-over-the-ball technique that Kumble also made his own (Ganguly and Siddhu may contest that claim, but this is not an argument that can be ended very quickly). Fielding aside, however, he seems to be a great package at number 8. Finally, we may have stumbled upon a lower order batsman the sight of who does not have boundary fielders placing orders for cucumber sandwiches in anticipation of an early snack and shower. He promised to fill the Anil Kumble shaped hole that Harbhajan could not fill. It may be too early, but he has shown potential. Let’s not count his struggles in Australia and England against him since it took even the great Kumble a few years to come up with a good plan while bowling overseas. In any event, India will rely on the faster men to do more damage overseas and it while we have some distance to go before solving the fast-bowling puzzle, Umesh Yadav again showed encouraging signs. Baby steps, as they say.

Talking about human sized holes, there was a Laxman-sized hole that had formed just before the series began in addition to the already large Dravid-sized one in the ceiling. That was the one area which had everyone fairly nervous. Kohli had already calmed a few nerves with his exceptional batting against Australia en route to claiming one middle order spot. Pujara rose to the challenge and displayed the necessary technique and temperament to indicate that he may be the long term replacement for Dravid at #3. Gambhir and Sehwag were a touch too flamboyant and while they might get away with it in Indian conditions, it makes the role of the #3 critical, especially outside the subcontinent and that’s what makes Pujara an extremely vital cog because he is the link between the top order and the stroke-filled middle order.

The Great Indian Middle Order is already a think in the past and you can possible see a giant ‘Work in progress’ sign around it at the moment. As long as Sachin occupies the #4 spot, Sehwag will continue to open. I personally think it’s time for Sachin to make way so Sehwag can take up the middle order spot he’s wanted for a while. Although there have been clandestine whispers in certain circles about mentioning the R-word in relation to Sachin, there have been others in the media who have likened such talk to nothing short of treason. While there is no taking away the great man’s genius, it’s better for India in the long term to build a team with an eye on the future. Discussions about his age and his technique are irrelevant – he is gifted enough that he will continue to be an above average international batsman – but he isn’t as flawless as he once was and he’d be the first to admit it. Irrespective of the Sachin issue, it’s time the selectors decided once and for all that Raina is probably not going to cut it as a test player. He is extremely valuable in the shorter formats and it would be worthwhile for him to focus on making himself the best player he can be in those formats and letting someone else more technically equipped to test match batting take a turn.

While there are still some questions unanswered and sterner tests await, this series was definitely a step in the right direction. Hopefully, the series against England will help answer a few more of those questions. That series is especially significant considering the walloping that India took there last summer. With the Pietersen saga unfolding in the British isles at the moment, this is a good opportunity for India to seek another R-word that the media is sure to bring up at some point. Hint: Quentin Tarantino thinks it’s best served cold. Personally, I prefer it a la mode. I’m licking my lips already.

The Pakistan Question

2012-07-24T08:29:00.001-07:00

As the Indian cricket team resumes business in relatively familiar conditions against ever-so-familiar opposition in a fairly meaningless bi-lateral one-day series, the real question to ponder is not a cricketing one. It isn’t about India’s wafer-thin bowling reserves or about finding viable middle-order replacements once Sachin decides to ride off into the sunset. The mind can’t help overlook the current Sri Lankan jaunt, the home test series against the Kiwis or even the impending T20 World cup.

I, for one, find it hard to stop thinking about the decision to revive cricketing ties against Pakistan towards the end of the year. It is extraordinary that I, for once, find myself on the same side of any issue as Sunil Gavaskar, who recently spoke against the decision to host Pakistan when the probe into the 26/11 terror attacks drags on. Any mention of the India-Pakistan series makes the mind wander back to that ghastly evening when a group of militants opened fire on Mumbai. It was the act of extreme cowardice by a few individuals so brainwashed by hatred that it’s hard to think of them as human beings. No matter how much they try to deny it, all links point back to the higher echelons of power in Islamabad.

Every few months, the guiltless face of one Kasab keeps doing the rounds on social media as a constant reminder of the incompetence of India’s judiciary system. The television and press in India are always happy to play the instigators, doling out one senseless story after another in a bid to milk the unholy cow to its full extent. However, the fact of the matter remains that we are closing in on four years of the incident and are nowhere close to getting to the bottom of the matter. The cricket romantic in me yearns to see Sehwag take strike against Umar Gul, but to play a game of cricket while the investigation continues seems insensitive not only to the people who lost dear ones during that dark day, but to the entire nation as a whole.

Those in favor of the cricket talk about a separation of cricket and politics – certainly a noble ideal and one that’s worth striving for, but impractical in the real world. In that sort of world, we’d have a clear divide between the metaphorical Church and State and civilians would be kept out of battles between nations. However, we do not live in that world and it would be nothing but extreme naïveté to believe otherwise. The minute those terrorists crossed the Rubicon into a decidedly civilian world and committed those atrocities, those lines have been blurred forever.

I too have read Rahul Bhattacharya’s heartwarming memoirs from India’s 2003 tour to Pakistan and would very much like to see real peace in the truest sense of the term prevail between the embattled nations in my lifetime, and there are enough people on both sides of the border who share this sentiment. However, a pattern has emerged over the last few decades where an incident sparks fury, resentment and continued hostilities until both sides, in an act of selective amnesia dawdle into an uncomfortable peace, only for this entire cycle to repeat itself. You thought it was going to be different this time. The last incident provoked so much strong emotion all over the world that there was genuine hope that something real would be done about it but as the fourth anniversary of the tragedy beckons, we find ourselves back at square one.

I certainly don’t have the Silver Bullet solution to this problem (and the solution must not involve bullets of any sort), but the act of falling back into the familiar pattern of peace-war-peace hardly seems ideal. The first step towards solving any problem, small or big, is the acceptance that one exists. Resuming cricket or cultural ties of any sort would be turning a blind eye to the problem and pretending that it will go away on its own. Refusing the Pakistan cricket board in its current state of debt and turmoil would serve not only as a firm political stance, but also as a form of economic sanction. However, Indian cricket officials have time and again shown themselves to be greedy, short-sighted and opportunistic and expecting any action that would deny them a chance to fill up their coffers (and their pockets) would be delusional.

I’ll try and end this on a happier note. This could be the defining season for Virat Kohli who seems determined to carve out a path for himself in Indian cricket. Here’s also wishing Yuvraj Singh a happy and speedy way back to playing the sport he loves. May the season begin!

The IPL 5 so far ...

2012-05-10T10:09:00.001-07:00

As a quick disclaimer, I haven't really been watching a lot of the IPL on TV - mostly due to it showing at around the time when I have to dust myself off and start the Slow Long Walk to work. However, I've been following the matches when I can and watching as much as I can. Here are some random musings so far:

Wotstheirname v Wotstheirface: So really, how many of us can be true to our conscience and say that we know exactly who has been playing who and who features in that team? No really. One day, you see Robin Uthappa keeping wickets for Bangalore and the next day you see him in Pune. And if memory serves me right, he has also played for Mumbai Indians before eventually being traded to Bangalore in the first place. All this in the space of 4 seasons. I wouldn't blame the players for not knowing whether to give a fellow IPL-player an exaggerated high-five (there are rumors the players have High-Five Camps before the tournament starts because that's all they have time for) or whether to sledge him until he gets all red in the face. If quizzed about it, Dhoni will probably give you a "Well, of course, it's part of the modern day cricketer's life" straight-bat reply. The rigors they have to go through!

The Mumbai Indians mess: The Mumbai Indians seem to have it all - the richest man in India financing them, Indian cricket's poster boy playing for them and on paper, they may seem to have a team that should be a shoo-in for a playoff spot at the very least. However, they are a case study in mismanagement. In as good a player as Sachin Tendulkar may be, it's fair to say that where leadership skills are concerned, he really isn't in the Sun Tzu class. The first few seasons of the IPL were littered with such master-strokes as picking only 3 international players, persisting with R Sathish and playing him as a specialist fielder, and completely under-utilizing Dwayne Bravo's talent. However, they have one-upped themselves this year by picking a replacement captain who is even worse! The Sardar from Jalandar may be many things, but a captain and leader of men he certainly isn't and that explains MI's floundering captain despite their aforementioned strength on paper. On a side-note, a part of me wishes Sanath Jayasuriya was still around to open the batting with Sachin Tendulkar. That way, MI would've had 2 politicians opening the batting for them. How many cricket teams can boast of that?

A man called Sourav: You can't keep that man away from the spotlight. But this is the kind of spotlight you don't really want. Everyone has had that one moment of panic when you are up on stage for a school play or some such endeavor to have this sneaking suspicion that your pants have split right at the seam. I imagine that's the kind of feeling Ganguly goes through every time he goes out to bat these days. After his heroics in the game against Delhi where he got a couple of key wickets, including KP, and ran faster than he bowled, in celebration, he was brought down to earth in the game against MI where his team messed up a chase of 121, where he himself struggled to a 24 ball 16. But his Waterloo came against the Rajasthan Royals when facing up to Shaun Tait. It's like putting a fiesty, but old poodle in a cage match against a pitbull. There can only be one victor there. After struggling along and barely being able to put bat on ball for the first few overs, his misery finally ended off a lame pull shot that was gleefully accepted at square leg. Between that and the defeat at his old den at the Eden gardens, the clamor for him to be consigned to non-playing duties has grown louder. Luckily, a word exists for a role like that - it's called a coach. I can only hope someone tells Ganguly and unless he finally gets the message, the proud shirt-twirling-at-the-Lords-balcony memory of him might be replaced by a caricature of himself.

Rahul and I: Might be the name of Rahane's experience at the IPL 5. In between the swipes and slogs and cheerleaders' pelvic thrusts and the other ugliness you come to expect with the IPL, there is the pleasing sight of Dravid and Rahane opening the batting for the Royals. It may be the best thing to come out of this year's tournament. Rahane may not be able to hold on to the orange cap, but anyone with any feeling for the game must be happy to see him score some runs. With Dravid and Rahane batting and Morne Morkel bowling, you might be lulled for a second into believing that there is a Test match in progress, but then shortly afterwards the camera pans to someone in a garish uniform fielding while having a chat with the commentators and you realize this is the IPL, after all. But showing that T20 batting isn't just about ugly slogs is something those two have managed to do all season long. Their team may not have the big budget players to drag them all the way, but I find a part of me cheering for Rajasthan this season.

The Others: Meanwhile, Deccan Chargers have been strengthening their reputation as reliable losers. After a freak second season when they managed to surprise everyone, including themselves, by winning the whole thing, they are back to where they are the most comfortable - the bottom of the table. Despite several strategy and personnel changes, they have failed to realize that breeding an army of right-arm-medium trundlers will only get you so far even if you have a Dale Steyn in your squad. Especially if you drop 3 catches for every one you hold. Delhi are back to the top of the table despite being robbed by Bangalore of all of their best players. Bangalore (who should really be called the New Delhi) are riding atop Gayle's broad shoulders, much as they did for most of the previous campaign. Gambhir has been doing his best Dada impression to lead KKR to the top of the table, while Punjab have had a predictably underwhelming campaign since no one has done a Valthaty this year (including Valthaty himself). Which leaves us with ... CSK. The winners of last year's IPL have found life to be a bit tougher this time around without Hayden, Hussey or Raina blazing away at the top of the order as they are used to. They are managing one middling performance after another despite being the most stable team across the 5 tournaments in terms of their players as well as their yellower-than-yellow kits.

Despite it being shoved down our throats, despite the number of matches getting unbearably high, despite the viewership numbers and the quality of domestic Indian talent taking a dip, the one thing that's pretty clear is that it's hard to ignore the IPL much like it's hard to ignore someone screaming into your ear from 2 feet away. That's money talking (or screaming) for you.

The Camp Nou - a tourist's experience

2012-04-15T13:33:00.000-07:00

As you browse through the tourist guidebooks of “must-see” things in Barcelona, apart from the Gaudi works and the Olympic village and the Las Ramblas and the flamenco shows, they mention this museum that’s the most visited in the city. No, I’m not talking about the Pablo Picasso museum although that attracts a fair share of visitors too. I’m talking about the museum at the football club of Barcelona – FCB. Now given that I really enjoy watching the team play and try to follow pretty much every game, such a sort of thing really makes you wince a little bit, but I guess the marketing types need to make a living after all. From the famous Mes que un club motto to the merchandise at the many FCB stores littered all across Barcelona (including the airport, of course), they have taken the football club and made it into a sellable commodity. Pretty much every other kid in the city wears a Messi jersey.

Getting tickets is a far from simple matter because the club works on a complicated system wherein members need to release tickets for them to be available. We managed to get fairly decent seats to watch Barca take on Athletic Bilbao in a La Liga match. Although Bilbao may not be doing too well in the league this season, they made a lot of people sit up and take notice with their annihilation of United in a Europa cup tie. I was fairly confident that Barca would see them off easily at home, especially since they had played a Europa match against Shalke only 2 nights back, but then you never know. Barcelona had also drawn 2-2 away at the San Mames earlier in the season so this was no sure-shot. Oh well, that’s what makes it all fun.

As we walked through the Gothic quarter on the morning of the match, we saw a bunch of Bilbao supporters standing around a bar singing something in Basque (I guess it must’ve been the team song) pointing in the direction of a few local kids decked up in their Barca kits. The needle! The city was getting ready for the match.

After overcoming some linguistic barriers, we were able to pick up our tickets at the pick-up center near Plaza Catalunya and figured out the best way to get to the stadium was to take so-and-so train in so-and-so direction. So we step on to the train in our Barca gear and as expected – the train is mostly full of people heading to the game. It’s funny how supporters of a team are not very different in that regard, irrespective of the sport or the country. Whether you take the line 3 to Les Corts or the Churchgate local to watch a cricket match at the Wankhede, or you take the 4 to the Bronx to watch the Yankees play, the general atmosphere is pretty much the same. You have your supporters wearing imitation T-shirts, some looking fairly sillier than they do on a regular workday, all chatting about in good humor and anticipation of getting a favorable result. It’s something non sport fans will never get. The energy. The anticipation. We did notice a few stares in our direction – not sure if it was because seeing a couple of Indians heading over to the game is unusual or they were patronizing “oh these tourists” looks, but we did notice a few. Spain is similar to India in that sense – people will stare at you quite openly. More on that later.

As we went closer to the Camp Nou, there was the usual throng of supporters patiently waiting outside the gates hoping to catch a glimpse of the team bus and maybe get a picture of the back of Messi’s head or Cesc’s elbow. We headed over to the hot-dog stands outside and I helped myself to a can of Estrella – fairly unremarkable beer, but any trip to a sporting mecca is incomplete without a taste of the local hooch. We headed inside to catch our first glimpse of the imposing stadium that is the Camp Nou. You expect a stadium that can hold almost 100,000 people to be fairly huge but of course, you can’t really taste the atmosphere until you stand there and hear the said 100,000. I checked later that approximately 85,000 people showed up that night, which proves that an empty seat here and an empty seat there can really add up.

As the players came out and started to warm up, I looked behind to see a bunch of Japanese tourists (at least I assumed them to be Japanese) taking in the action as well and I felt myself turn fairly patronizing myself about how they were here just for the tourist experience. That’s where the stares on the train came back to me. They were propagating a stereotype for me, just as I was for those on the train. That was my one big epiphany of the night. Oh well, back to the pitch. The teams were still going through their pre-game drills prompting a bunch of camera flashes going off around the stadium in the midst of the usual cheering and whistling (I had to tell my wife that the whistles are a form of jeering in Spain – very different from the appreciative whistles they let fly from the cheap seats in India).

And then it began. Kick-off was preceded by an 85,000+ strong rendition of the Barca club anthem and the unfurling of the flag. As the match kicked off, Barcelona settled into their rhythmic passing game. Now at this point, it’s worth mentioning that the crowd could stay perfectly silent during the game when something potentially significant was unfolding and that’s a sure sign of a knowledgeable public. Cesc and Xavi hadn’t started so Thiago and Iniesta were playing in the midfield along with Busquets and Messi was leading the line with Tello and Alexis in tow. The midfield tiki-taka was just as mind boggling to watch live as it always is on TV. There were the usual patient buildups, the give and goes and some amazing runs from Messi. The ball did hit the back of the net fairly early, but the whistle had blown and that tempered the Camp Nou that was ready to erupt.

Overall, it was the kind of performance that is starting to be taken for granted from this Barcelona side. Iniesta displayed some fantastic ball-control and along with Messi was running the Athletic defense ragged. There were some marauding runs forward by Pique and some excellent fire-fighting by Mascherano who is starting to look more and more like a center-back with every passing match. Alves spent a lot of his time in the attacking half of the pitch, as is his wont, and even Adriano went forward more than Abidal generally would’ve and it all made for some attacking football. Thiago was fairly disappointing through the game because his first touches were often too heavy and I remembered him giving the ball away cheaply on more than one occasion. After a period of domination in the first half, the first goal duly arrived from a precise Messi pass and with some excellent finishing from Iniesta. We went into the half-time break feeling fairly confident that we won’t be witness to a rare home loss. It was more of the same in the second half and Tello, who had been fairly anonymous up to that point, sped into the box and won a penalty for a shove by the highly rated Javi Martinez. Messi tucked away the penalty without a fuss and around this point, any lingering anxieties went away. Pique had to make a clearance off the line but by-and-large the defense was untroubled by Bilbao’s attack.

Xavi came on towards the end of the second half for Iniesta and that prompted huge cheers from the crowd, but the loudest cheers of all were reserved for their adopted son, Messi. Watching the crowd dote on Messi reminds you a bit of the Wankhede crowd’s unconditional love for Sachin. It’s like a grandparent looking on their prodigal grandson who, in their eyes, can do no wrong. The place erupted as it had threatened to all night when Messi scored the goal. 2-0. Game over.

In the end, it wasn’t the most exciting match ever, but it felt great to be part of the experience. It’s hard to not take a bit of a philosophical angle on the whole thing and realize that behind what we are able to watch, there are thousands and thousands of hours of training that we didn’t. And to understand that it’s this whole Catalan sub-culture that manifests itself on the pitch every time Barca step on. Critics point to the high horse that the club and its followers sit on, but the reasons for the unabashed display of Catalan nationalism that goes hand-in-hand with the club have their roots in the Civil war and are deep enough that anyone who has not lived there can’t even begin to understand. It’s something that I don’t even pretend to do. Maybe the locals don’t object to putting the club’s museum on the list of Barcelona to-do’s. One can only guess. Not knowing Spanish - leave alone Catalan - leaves me culturally poorer and in a position where I will only always be merely scratching the surface. All that aside, I was fortunate enough to watch what may be the best football team of all time. Visca Barca!

It's tough at the top

2012-02-05T17:28:00.000-08:00

To all students of Indian cricket, we start of with a multiple choice quiz:

Q: During the last two away-series against in non-subcontinental conditions, as the test team was obliterated 8-0 by an Anglo-Australian combo, what do you think was the biggest factor?
a. Lack of support for Zaheer Khan in Australia.
b. Lack of Zaheer Khan for support in England.
c. The famous Indian Middle Order playing as though they were featuring in a retirement benefit, despite quashing all talk of retirement.
d. The IPL (which is also responsible for world hunger and global warming).

To the curious onlooker and pedant alike, any of those might seem to be attractive options. However, I would like to propose an extra option to add to the following that, after extensive analysis (read 20 mins of fiddling with Cricinfo's statsguru, complaining about how terrible the interface is and then stumbling upon the stat), there is a 5th choice that I would like to add to this list - and that might end up being the correct answer. And I don't mean an 'All of the above' option, which is always right.

Let's look at some stats, shall we? Let's consider the period between Jan 1, 2003 and Dec 31, 2010, i.e. from that golden summer in Australia when India started being competitive abroad up until before the horror show last year. As the criteria, let's look at the first wicket partnerships for India everywhere but Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh. This is what shows up:

From 2003-2010 inclusive, India used 8 openers and over the course of 48 innings, they scored 2231 runs at an average of 48.50. Compare that to last year and the difference could not be more stark. 5 openers have managed a mere 382 runs in 24 innings over the last year, with a paltry average of 15.91. Because tables and statistics can get prohibitive to read and spit too much unnecessary data anyway, let's try and analyze what all of this means.

It means that between 2003 and 2010, every time India played outside the subcontinent, they could be expected to score about 48 runs without losing a wicket. This number dropped to 16 during the last year. To compare with the numbers before 2002, when india were routinely trashed abroad and whitewashes never resulted in analyses of this nature, India still did better than last year. Twice as well, as a matter of fact. Between 1932 and 2002, India's first wicket put on an approximately 29 runs for the first wicket (29.33 to be exact, for those who like that sort of thing).

Now I'll go about arguing why this stat is more significant than any other reason. While the Indian bowling attack was not penetrating in either England or Australia, the fact remains that they never really had a lot of runs to play with. Yes, a team needs 20 wickets to win test matches, but if the batsmen are not going to put on runs on the scoreboard, there is never any pressure on the opposition batsmen. A case in point is the Perth test during the last Indian tour of Australia. The attack was mostly makeshift, but the batsmen stuck it out and made the Aussie bowlers work hard to get them out. As a result, the bowlers were able to generate sufficient pressure to make the batting wilt.

As for the great middle order, they have always done well only when they've had a reasonable platform. The same middle order (plus Ganguly) could not prevent India from losing 3-0 to Australia in 1999. Traditionally, India have had a problem with good, solid test openers with the notable exception of a certain Sunil Gavaskar. It isn't overstating it that the success that the middle order had outside the subcontinent had a lot to do with the starts that Virender Sehwag provided. Gambhir has mostly been a failure in England and Australia and Sehwag's stand-and-deliver technique is being found out in seaming conditions now that his reflexes aren't as good as they were a few years back.

To be able to compete outside the subcontinent, India do need a new, improved and solid middle order (including Sehwag, maybe), a competent seam attack and a half-decent spinner. However, before everything else, what the team need are a good, old-fashioned opening pair that will try and stick around for the first hour and shield the middle order from the new ball. And possibly even score some runs in the process. That is the first and foremost thing that needs to happen if the period between 2003 and 2010 is going to be remembered as anything but a slight aberration.

Or, we can go about blaming the IPL.

The ballad of Vinay Kumar

2012-02-01T21:15:00.000-08:00

The Indian team went down under
with what was their best chance
for Sachin to dominate a young attack
and Laxman to rekindly his Aussie-romance.
Vinay Kumar was the extra seamer
who no one thought would play a Test.

The team started off well in Melbourne,
but could not deliver the killer blow.
Then after a pounding from pup,
they headed to Perth down two-O.
They sized up the pitch at Perth and said,
"Let's play Vinay Kumar in this Test."

On a juicy first-day pitch
the Indian batting collapsed in a heap.
Warner had already got a start when
Vinay arrived at the bowling crease.
And thus began the story
of Vinay Kumar playing his first Test.

In the first over of his debut
he met the flashing blade of Warner,
who duly deposited a good length ball
to the WACA's furthest corner.
No, this was not the IPL,
Vinay Kumar was playing a Test.

He tried to rely on swing and seam
while bowling steadily at 120,
but to the Aussies it was canon fodder
and he disappeared for plenty.
Was it a wise decision, after all
to play Vinay Kumar in this Test?

On a frentic second morning
he picked up a wicket,
As a shortish ball was chopped to gully
and he had the scalp of Mr. Cricket.
Was there a redemption story in the making
for Vinay Kumar in his first Test?

Although there was a hint of a fight
the Aussies won their third in a row.
And 11 runs and an expensive wicket
were all Vinay had to show.
It did not make a difference
playing Vinay Kumar in this Test.

He was dropped for the last match
as the Indians lost again.
And you couldn't help but feel
that he would never get another game.
And thus ended the sad story,
of Vinay Kumar and his lone Test.

The batsmen could not bat
and the bowlers could not bowl.
The fielders had butter fingers
and Dhoni lost control.
Yet, the lowest point of the tour
was that Vinay Kumar played a Test.

The People's Sachin

2011-12-04T20:30:00.000-08:00

‘The People’s Princess’ initially started off as a radio play drawing parallels between two royal weddings and divorces – those between George IV and Caroline of Brunswick and then more recently, Prince Charles and Diana. The play itself focused on the nature of the divorce, the media’s role in each saga and the effect it had on the perception of the monarchy from the point of view of the British working class. The biggest impact the show had, however, was to firmly associate the People’s princess tag with Diana to such an extent that it continues to follow her until today, many years after her tragic death.

This can happen with some public figures – in some cases a result of clever PR used to ingratiate them with the masses, and in other cases via a series of (sometimes unfortunate) events, a bit of the extraordinary and sometimes with a slice of luck – they become icons. Throw over a billion people with a penchant for the romantic, sometimes bordering on the insane, and this icon hood can turn into quite an uneasy crown to wear. Of course, Sachin Tendulkar has worn it now for over two decades. Most recently, Greg Chappel, who had a rather uneasy relationship with Sachin and a majority of the Indian team, spoke about the regret he feels about not being able to have understood his pressures better at the time. These pressures have been spoken of ad infinitum, without much thought into what it means for him, or the fans.

Much like any public company, cricket loving Indian fans feel a sense of ownership towards Sachin. They haven’t invested any money into a share of him of course; what they have invested is their time and emotional energies. Speaking as one such “shareholder” myself, it is safe to say that we all have our personal memories of Sachin, much as we would of our favorite birthday present, or the best dinner we’ve ever had. We’ve all been guilty of crossing that thin line between admiration and possessiveness, albeit unknowingly. The Sachin that we see belongs as much to himself and those who know him as he does to us. Those pulled sixes off Kasprowicz, that other pulled six off Caddick, his lonely walk back after holing out off Saqlain in that test match in Chennai – we all think our treasure trove of Sachin goodies is different and better than anyone else’s. Everyone has a Sachin. Everyone. My Sachin may not be the same as Your Sachin. We are all like those blind men trying to feel their way around the elephant and taking away our own versions.

Cricket has always been the only sport that has had its hand on India’s pulse, but all of the cricketing stars before the 80’s have been reduced to anecdotes, sepia-tinted photographs and the occasional sound byte in the newspapers. It was television that brought them into every living room like never before, and the 90’s ushered in the opening of the markets and freedom from the post colonial hangover that led to a nation wanting poster boys. A young prodigy named Sachin fulfilled that void perfectly. His entire career has been played in front of a television camera – right from the time an awkward looking Sachin in ill fitting trousers was interviewed by Tom Alter at Shivaji Park up until the time when he was lifted on Yusuf Pathan’s broad shoulders and paraded around the Wankhede in front of 33,000 adoring supporters in the flesh and millions of others watching on their TV sets. We all know of every action he makes – the little nod of the head before he goes out to bat, the way he adjusts his crotch before taking guard, and the neat little right-wrist-over-left flick-off-the-pads as the ball rolls down to the square leg boundary before the bowler has finished his follow through. It’s like a reality-show that’s been on air for over 20 years. And it still draws as many eyeballs as the latest YouTube sensation.

It’s almost that everything that has happened before this has been prologue. The wait for that 100^th 100 is palpable. You can sense it in the air every time he walks out to bat. The monkey on his back is real. And it is only getting bigger and slightly more comfortable on his back the longer it takes for it to come. The media have played the Jekyll & Hyde role perfectly here – goading the frenzied fans to demand it on one hand, and chastising them for being unreasonable on the other. And yet, it comes back to the obsessive possessive Sachin disorder, if you could call it that. They want it for themselves, as much as they want it for him.

It hasn’t been done before and judging by the crowds in attendance at test matches these days, coupled with the mad lust for T20, it is unlikely that this record will ever be broken. The Man Himself has come out and spoken about how this milestone is just a number, but even he must know deep within that the only way to stop the madness is by getting one hundred runs in an innings. The fascination for milestones and numbers is too deep rooted in the Indian psyche and the masses are not going to collectively transform overnight. The way the drama is being played out right now, it is almost akin to a blood-thirsty mod willing a Roman Gladiator to plant the dagger into a poor victim’s gut and get it over with. They can’t wait for it anymore.

It is likely that when the time actually comes – surely, it is only a question of when– those that are present to witness it live will tell their grandchildren stories of how they watched him score his hundredth in the flesh with more enthusiasm than Sachin himself is likely to tell his grandkids about how he scored it. And once it’s done, maybe the monkey will be off his back. But then that’s what we thought when a World Cup sized monkey got off his back. I fear there will be some sort of burden that Sachin will have to bear until the day he hangs up his boots. He is, after all, the People’s Sachin.

Post honeymoon post mortem

2011-09-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

If, by any chance, you had yourself cryogenically frozen on or around that fateful night of April 2nd when the Indian cricket team won the 2011 Cricket World Cup and have only recently risen from your extended period of hibernation, you are in for a bit of a rude shock. It's fine if you believe in the theory that all good organizations go through cycles - The Roman empire was a shining example of that - but even the Roman empire took a few hundred years to fall. Had they followed Team India's model, history would have degenerated into a B-grade sci-fi flick where an army of giant termites attack and start gnawing at the foundations of the capital within a few minutes of their most golden period.

Of course, it's not like the players or the fans were given much of an opportunity to take in the victory. If some rumors are to be believed, N Srinivasan - the current Godfather of Indian cricket - ordered the entire squad to be doused with a bucket of ice water barely hours after they had started celebrating, and got them all changed out of their India kits to their respective IPL PJ's. My source is prone to exaggeration and this sounds a bit far fetched, but I have been wrong to doubt these kind of news before. But then with the kind of money on offer at the IPL, I doubt there was a lot of grumbling. Gambhir even started pushing and shoving everyone who was not part of KKR to get into the spirit of things.

However, the way these things work is that something is bound to give. For the irrelevant tour of the West Indies (who the ICC insist are still a Test-playing nation), as well as the tour of England, India went through more injuries and replacements than Elizabeth Taylor went through husbands during a busy year. By the time the ODI series comes to an end (and it cannot end soon enough), I doubt there will be anyone left in India who could salvage even a single positive out of it. For years, we have pondered in silent dread over what would happen if and when:

1. Zaheer breaks down for the 7th time. (Or is it the 8th?)

2. Sehwag and Sachin are both decommissioned.

3. The Indian population realizes that Laxman and Harbhajan Singh and two of the most overrated cricketers to be playing for the country and that Dhoni can not turn water into wine.

#1 is probably the most scary of the lot. Our over-dependence on Zaheer has to be addressed before any other issue. The South African tour and World Cup should have made the administrators wrap him up in cotton wool between important series. Ishant showed signs of being back to his best, but that was against a sub-standard West Indian lineup and any feel-good factor from that tour must have definitely eroded by now. That we had to depend upon Praveen Kumar, who in his early 20's, labors to the crease as if at gunpoint, and proceeds to bowl in the early 120's, was a throwback to the 1990's when Srinath broke down and we had Venkatesh Prasad leading the attack for us. To us Indian fans, those memories are akin to survivors' World War memories. We had all got down on our knees and prayed that we don't have to see such a day again. And yet those dark days have returned. As if that is not enough, we now have to endure R Vinay Kumar, in all his mediocrity, wearing an India shirt and bowling some extremely friendly length balls that even the most English of English batsmen would not have any trouble with. And all this while we have that rarest of beasts, Varun Aaron - who is said to be capable of bowling in the 140's - warming the bench. What kind of message is this to the kids watching?

I say issue #2 is not as worrying as #1, but that is only relative. In the shorter formats, we can still get by without either of these players performing and we would still end up being competitive. However, there is no doubt in my mind that in test cricket, we need at least 1 if not both of these guys to deliver, otherwise our batting ends up looking a touch too feeble, especially in Australia/England/South Africa. With absolutely no disrespect to Dravid, I have to say that his innings are the types that make our margins of defeat slightly more respectable. But at this point, only Sehwag has the capacity to turn an entire test match around on his own. The BCCI did try and offer the band air solution of rushing a visibly unfit and slightly deaf Sehwag to England only for the move to fall flat on it's face.

#3 is something that certain people still believe is news fabricated by aliens who want to take over the world. Describing Laxman's batting is some kind of national sport where his flowing drives have been compared to everything from floral meadows to Deepika Padukone's hips. Also, saying you don't like Laxman is almost like admitting you are gay in India - it's a ticket to becoming a social pariah. And yet, when you realize that this guy has been playing for India for over 15 years without ever asserting the kind of authority you would expect after all this time, it's fairly obvious that he is in the team on the basis of a few admittedly outstanding innings. Harbhajan, on the other hand, is not afforded the same affections in the media and yet continues to represent the country at every given opportunity. In every recent interview, he has stressed how "the ball has been coming out of the hand really well." and how this is the best he's ever bowled. If he is to be believed, there must be some sort of inverse relation between how well he's bowling and how many wickets he's taking. My advice to him would be: Please bowl the crappiest you've ever bowled and pick up bucketfuls of wickets. I really hope the selectors take this opportunity to give the likes of Kohli/Sharma and Ashwin test berths to build for the future. And it would also be a good time for Dhoni to take a long hard look at himself and try and go back to figuring out why he was selected into the team in the first place.

After the great high came the IPL. After this lowest of lows, comes the Champions League. Let us hope that the only way from here is up.

The Gods must be crazy

2011-03-28T00:30:00.000-07:00

The cricketing Gods (I'm not referring to India's obsession with Sachin Tendulkar here) have just completely lost it. I think this is their way of getting back at cricket's administrators for ... well, a lot of reasons that we shall not get into here. But they are being just incredibly cruel! An India-Pakistan semi-final followed by a possible India-Sri Lanka final? (Ok, I know there could be 3 other possible outcomes but the one mentioned makes the following analogy perfect). That would be the equivalent of watching a show that features ghosts of John Lennon and George Harrison performing with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr only to realize that it was only a cover for the real performers of the night - The Jonas Brothers featuring Justin Beiber!!! The mouth watering nature of the contest and the anticipation almost ensures that the other semi-final between Sri Lanka and - drum roll - New Zealand as well as the final will be almost completely eclipsed.

Before we move on to the semi-finalists thought, it's worth mentioning a thing or two about the quarter finals. West Indies were steamrolled by Pakistan in a now-familiar fashion. Chris Gayle looked sufficiently disappointed but it is hard to tell whether that was because his team lost, or because he lost an opportunity to impress some IPL team-owner with a quick cameo in Indian conditions. Pakistan's spinners applied the squeeze and the Windies obliged by shrinking their bottoms so they could fit snugly in their grasp. England showed that not much has changed since 1996 by duly getting blasted out of the quarter-finals against the same opposition. Despite a century by Ricky Ponting, Australia scored almost exactly a 100 runs less than they did the last time the two teams met in a World Cup knockout. 260 was never going to be enough (regardless of what Ravi Shastri said) against the Indian batting lineup. They chased down the total relatively comfortably, except for the time when Gambhir seemed in a hurry to get back to the dressing room to either rush to the toilet, or get out of some really ill-fitting underwear. Which brings us to the other game. There is no way to describe the game in normal cricketing terms. Which is why I'll try another approach.

The South African team reminds you of the deer from the deer-in-the-headlights line. Imagine a fast, graceful dear that is generally regarded as amongst the best in it's class. It can seemingly outrun anyone and anything in sight. But there is a slight problem. The minute it sees headlights, something comes over it. The headlights needn't even be directly heading for it. It rushes towards the headlights in the nick of time to leave the truck no chance of getting out of the way. Now thinking of the New Zealand cricket team a truck is a bit like calling the Gieco lizard Godzilla, but I shall let it pass. On the day, both teams did exactly what was expected of them. New Zealand punched above their weight in the manner that has given them the title of honorary underdogs in any competition they enter, and the South Africans did more than just the regular choking. They unburied the grave after pretty much sealing New Zealand in, pulled them out of the coffin without them having to resort to any Uma Thurmanesque moves, handed them a particularly thick rope and lassoed their own heads in, while smiling benignly the entire way. That is the only way in which I can describe that quarter final. We all know that pressure can do funny things to people, but South Africa have officially taken the art of choking to hitherto unforseen highs (or lows - you can never be totally sure in these matters).

The first semi final seems to be an open and shut case given just how the Sri Lankan spinners strangled the NZ run-chase when the two teams met in Mumbai during the league phase of the tournament. Again, Sri Lanka might end up making a complete mockery of the form-book by pulling off a South Africa, but imagining New Zealand in the final is a bit like visualizing Arjuna Ranatunga in a bikini. Just plain wrong and extremely disturbing. Before anyone tries to dwell on that image and causes serious damage to themselves, its time to talk about the final of all semi-finals: The India-Pakistan game.

There is no point repeating cliches here that have already been digested by cricket fans the World over. Even Siddhu in his infinitesimal wisdom understands that this is a big game. What is not very well known is that given the obsession for the sport in the two countries, arrangements have been started to take the players of the losing team (and their families) to some remote location on the moon, where cricket is not the number 1 sport. The throwable-stones business (boxes of 25, 50 or 100) as well as the flammable-effigy business might also receive a shot in the arm in one of the two countries. Point being that the team that is the best likely to handle pressure on the day will win this match.

Sachin will be a talking point regardless of the opposition and rightly so. That Pakistan need him out of the way early is a given. However, Sehwag's ability to not carry any kind of baggage from 1947, or the previous delivery will stand him in good stead. Also, if he is able to get past the initial barrage from Shoaib Akhtar (hard to imagine him not playing) and Umar Gul, he will be a very good weapon against the Pakistani spinners who have been untested against really strong players of spin in the opposition so far. Yuvraj has been in great form but isn't the best players of spin around and that makes the likes of Gambhir extremely important to the middle. Let's hope he finds the right pair of underwear and takes a strong enough laxative before the match this time round. All the talk has centered on this being a match of the Pakistani bowlers against the Indian batsmen, but the Pak bowling attack is a far cry from the time when Wasim and Waqar opened the bowling. Also, despite the Indian bowling not looking great either, Zaheer is the obvious danger-man and Ashwin opening the bowling has given the attack a new dimension. Harbhajan Singh generally raises his game against Pakistan and their batsmen will need to find a way to attack him in the middle overs because Younis and Misbah have a tendency to really slow things down. You think Pakistan are missing someone like Anwar in the top order and someone like Inzy in the middle-order. If the Indian batting can negate the threat of Umar Gul and the batting power-play and manage to get a good score, its going to be hard for Pakistan to match India run-for-run.

So after 42 inconsequential matches and 4 matches of the sudden-death variety, it's down to the last three games. These are the kind of games that professional cricketers dream about their entire lives. You could either rip your trousers while fielding at fine-leg and end up embarrassing yourselves in front of millions (the kind of embarrassment only Kamran Akmal is impervious to), or you could make yourself the toast of the nation. Along with huge dollops of butter. One thing is for sure though: after the India-Pakistan game, the final is bound to end up being the mother of all anti-climaxes. Miss that semi-final at your own peril!

Can the real World Cup please stand up?

2011-03-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

After the 1992 World Cup, I had read an article by Rajdeep Sardesai where he imagined what the 2092 World Cup might look like. It included a final between the USA and UAE played at some exotic South American location, if memory serves me right. Sounds great, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like it is going to happen. The reason being that cricket administrators, journalists, and other what not's seem to believe that the way to "spread the game" in non-cricket playing nations is not some TLC - wherein you build the system at the grassroots and carefully monitor the progress of the team until they are ready to face the big boys. Instead, they think the correct approach is to let the Associate nations play in a World Cup despite being absolutely outclassed by regular cricket-playing nations and then ignored for 4 years until it's time to play the next World Cup. It's like asking an amateur wrestler to build their bones (or in this case, break them) by fighting against the heavyweight champion so they can "learn". Somehow, it doesn't quite sound right. Although it isn't as bad as getting your bones broken (except for Sultan Zarawani who had his skull rearranged by an Allan Donald bouncer), consistently getting trashed must have some kind of an effect. Possibly even on Canada.

Questions have been asked over and over about the format of this World Cup. What a lot of people don't quite know is that this was never intended to be a World Cup. It was always supposed to be a knockout tournament following on the heels of the 2000 ICC knockout that New Zealand won (which proves that it really was open). There was a debate in the ivory towers in Dubai about what the tournament must be named. They decided not to call it the knockout because that was supposed to be a secret. One of the names considered was "Who can win 3 in a row?" but it was quickly withdrawn when a few people confused it with a B-grade reality show and the ICC got applications from a group of circus jugglers, some boy bands and a troupe of bhangra dancers. It was thus decided that the best way to keep this secret was to call it the World Cup. To make it appear like the World Cup. To even play a bunch of games like any other World Cup. Except that they sneakily got in a format that had a quarter-final in it.

And now, considering that everyone who anyone expected to be here is here, it's now time for the tournament to start in earnest. At this point, it really is a question of who can win 3 in a row. Let's try and review and analyse the matchups:

QF1: West Indies v Pakistan: Everyone is obsessing about the possibility of an India-Pakistan game when both teams are still a match away. Pakistan have to fell the West Indies, which admittedly is a relatively easier task than the one facing India - beat Australia. Makes you think back to 1987 when nothing was in the way of an epic finale (except for Australia and England, of course). What happened? Both host nations were ousted only for an England-Australia final at the Eden gardens which Australia went on to win for their first ever World Cup title. West Indies have been beaten and bruised so far in this cup, but the point is that they are still in it. Both teams will know that it will take one inspired innings by Gayle and probably a good lively burst from the rapid Roach. Pakistan have been well, Pakistan. Afridi has been at his fiesty best as a bowler and a brainless chump with the bat and the same team that have beaten Australia to end their 34-match winning streak almost suffered embarrassment at the hands of Canada! They will be the first to admit that their batsmen have been solid at best, and Kamran Akmal has provided comedians all over the cricket-playing world with at least a year of material. All said, the West Indies suffer from a real lack of belief and it is hard to see Pakistan not being in the semi-finals.

QF2: India v Australia: Tim Nielsen, who probably has won a lifetime contract as Australian coach (along with Ricky Ponting as captain) has already started the verbal jousting by claiming that all the pressure is on India and billing this contest as a mini-final. He's not totally wrong, of course. Except that it's a quarter-final and whichever team they end up facing will be happy that these teams will be mentally and emotionally drained by the time this match is through. India's top order have done exceptionally well, of course, and Sachin Tendulkar needs no reminder as to how important this match is. However, the middle-order has suffered a nervous breakdown in the tournament so far the minute the words power and play have been uttered in the same sentence. This is just as likely to be a battle between the Australian pace unit and the Indian top order, as between the Indian spinners and the Aussie middle-order (Ponting v Harbhajan, anyone?). The winners of that battle might well decide this contest, but it's just too close to pick a winner here.

QF3: England v Sri Lanka: One reason that Sri Lanka would be relieved with the Indian win over WI the other night is that they get to play at home. And we all know how good they are in Sri Lanka. They might be a bit wary of England though since England are not the same England who Jayasuriya and Kalu obliterated in the last QF the two played against each other in 1996. England have shown distinct Pakistani traits in the first part of this World Cup by winning and losing (and tie-ing) when everyone least expected to. Their main falling though has been Anderson's absolute lack of form. Also, after the match against India, their batsmen (apart from Trott) have not been getting a lot of runs and it was only because the West Indies showed their mastery of the Collapse that England have actually gotten this far. Although Sri Lanka have been accused of being overly dependent on their top-order (and fairly so), they are in pretty good form and England don't seem to possess the kind of bowlers to trouble them. Also, it's hard to see the England batsmen put one past M&M, which makes picking this one rather easy: Sri Lanka all the way.

QF4: South Africa v New Zealand: I'm going to stick my neck out here and say this: easy win for South Africa. Not only do South Africa look like a well-oiled machine, New Zealand have looked seriously out of their depth. But for some awful bowling at the death and Kamran Akmal proving why he is the butt of all jokes these days, despite Ijaz and Salman both being at-large in Pakistan, NZ might have not been able to put together a single win over a test-playing nation in the tournament so far. They were blown away by Australia and Sri Lanka and despite having McCullum and Taylor in the team, they just don't seem to have the necessary consistency to pose a serious threat. Also, South Africa seemingly have most bases covered except for possibly a power-hitter in the lower middle order, in the Klusener mould. It still seems likely that this one will be the kind of one-sided affair which might make people wonder whether the knockouts have even started.

But we know that they have. You read it here. May the real World Cup begin!

The hieroglyphic DRS and the powerplay trojan horse

2011-03-13T13:11:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I last posted anything on this due to a variety of reasons (travelling and what not), but I'm pretty sure my 3 regular readers (all of which are close family and friends) will manage to go about their business without being too disappointed. And there have been way too many mismatches for the odd bright spot to balance out what has otherwise been a tepid tournament so far. The fact remains that the best 8 teams in the world play only 12 of the 42 matches in the league stages. Most of the games between the big teams so far have been pretty exciting, which makes me look forward to the leaner and meaner 10-team event of 2015 with hope. I'm also prone to agree with an Indian website that suggested that the ICC has hired England to make the weaker teams look good. England are the type of hunter that took on a particularly ferocious lion and slayed it, came out of hand-to-hand combat with a grizzly bear with it's pride intact but then took a rather bad beating from an adolescent cub and a domesticated zebra. I'll save the debate of how the weaker cricket nations can be helped to a future point. Also, all the matches have been analyzed to death so I won't repeat that here. There are a couple of very interesting things to have come out of this world cup so far: the UDRS and the batting powerplay.

Now a lot of people realize that the Duckworth-Lewis is something that most people who aren't mathematicians won't understand all too well. Most people think of that as Forrest Gump's mama's proverbial box of chocolates: you open it and just accept whatever is inside it. The UDRS, however, is a completely different animal. On the surface, it's motive is simple enough: To eliminate as many errors from cricket as possible. However, keeping things simple is something the ICC (and lawyers) have traditionally struggled with (along with many other things including but not limited to getting things right and showing common sense). I'm pretty confident in their ability to bungling things up to an extent that they can probably make eating a bowl of cereal seem inhumanly difficult. Something I just haven't been able to grapple with is this whole system of appeals and 2.5 meter distances.

Now consider this alternative: The umpire makes a decision. In the time that the bowler walks back to his mark, the captain adjusts the field so the short third-man is 3 inches more to his right than before, the batsman adjusts his crotch and the camera-man focuses on his newly found true love in the stands, the third umpire does what he is presumably there for - takes a look at the decision and either upholds it (in which case no one notices), or overrules it (which would, admittedly, make everyone take notice). Now I'm pretty sure Darryl Harper would find ways to get even that wrong - he is the type of person I would not trust with using a coffee machine without being a serious threat to himself and those around him - but all in all, it would result in reducing the number of absolute howlers. Apart from making the whole system easier to understand than the Theory of Relativity. And let's face it - cricket is inherently a stop and start sport. And complaining about the few extra few seconds that this could potentially add is like complaining about a few extra drops in the ocean.

Secondly, the batting powerplay has thrown up an extremely interesting conundrum to all capains: when to take it? It is like a harmless looking Trojan horse that could end up housing an army of lethal soldiers who attack when you least expect it. Something that by conventional wisdom is an ally to the batting side has been anything but, on an average. Like Robin Jackman said on commentary during the India-SA match, it doesn't matter when you take it, you have to bat well in it. Batsmen who take it start acting like 16-year olds who are under immense pressure of "being cool" from their peers and end up sucking at the wrong end of their cigar resulting in long, fitful coughing while also burning their tongues and looking extremely foolish and positively uncool in the process. Maybe the trick is to not try and be cool, to not try and whack the cover off every ball, to not try and feel the pressure of hitting in the air all the time, but pressure can make you do funny things. I have a feeling it is decidedly easier for armchair critics like me to sit around and talk about it than actually using a batting PP well. But I may be wrong. The trick really is to keep a realistic target and not try and score 70 runs off every batting PP. Kamran Akmal, after all, cannot be the keeper in every match.

This also brings up another point: the temerity of modern-day captains. If the great explorers of the past were anything like any of the captains seen so far during the tournament, we would have thought the world is still flat, the English would have eaten their food without spices and ... well, you get the point. Zero sense of adventure. Why, after all, does it need a batting power-play for them to bring the field in and make the batsmen take some risks?Also, one boundary followed by three dot-balls is definitely better TV than four ambled singles in a row while the batsman, bowler and fielders are on auto-pilot.

So as things proceed towards the knockouts, the only thing to see really is whether Bangladesh are able to sneak in at the expense of England, and what the actual matchups are going to be like. Now this might be a bit of an oversimplification, but I get the feeling that the team that ends up conquering the batting powerplay might be the one that has the best chance of winning the trophy.

Why the US dept. of Homeland Security is investigating Ravi Shastri

2011-02-21T10:55:00.000-08:00

The first 3 days of the World cup so far (as well as the opening ceremony) have been largely predictable affairs, except for the New Zealand vs. Kenya game where New Zealand caused a major upset by skittling the 2003 semi-finalists for a meager total and then going on to polish the runs off in less than 10 overs themselves. For a side that has lost more games than it has played this year, to have such a confidence boosting victory in the first round means a lot. A slightly sterner test awaits for them in their next game against Australia. By a simple process of extrapolation, it can be argued that if Hamish Benett bowls his full quota of 10 overs, he will end up with 8-32 in that match, which makes a New Zealand victory almost a certainty. Surely, these one-sided ODI's have to end!

India and Sri Lanka both did what was expected of them by obliterating the minnows. India went so far as to try and help Bangladesh by playing Sreesanth, but even that could not stop them from scoring an 80+ run victory against the home side. Bangladesh seem to have a sure game-plan though. They are quickly taking all the pre-tournament pressure off themselves and trying to settle once again into the role of minnows before hustling their way towards a World Cup victory. If I read their strategy right, expect a 100+ run drubbing against either Ireland or the Netherlands before they pick their game up and end up winning the tournament unbeaten from that point and then winning the next 3 world cups without dropping a single game. There might still be some debate about the legitimacy of a "You just dropped the World Cup son" comment by Imrul Keyes when either Kapugedara or Angelo Matthews drops a catch at square leg while trying to celebrate (this is the part where the crystal ball gets a bit fuzzy) and Keyes then goes on to score a match winning century in the Quarter Final. It can thus be said that their World Cup campaign is off to the perfect start. From the time they put India in, only for Sehwag to blitz his way to a 175, the result was never in doubt. The gregarious Sreesanth did what he does best by providing the home side with some moments of cheer in his 5-over spell, but the writing was on the wall by then. It is interesting to note that India have never lost a World Cup when one of their batsmen has scored a 175 against a minnow nation so that must be a good sign for the tournament hosts.

Canada, of course, have no real ambition. They are only in it to click some pictures of Bangladesh and India for their flickr accounts and argue with fellow countryman Bryan Adams about what flavor of maple syrup goes better with a Kottu-roti. There are certain rumors that Canada have been specifically hired by Haroon Lorgat to lose games by such huge margins that no one argues about not including minnows in the 2015 World Cup anymore. Minor upsets like NZ victories over Kenya will be forgotten if Canada continue to play as per plan. Sri Lanka once again proved that on flat pitches and against bad opposition, there are no better looters. They hold a record for the highest ODI and T20 scores against minnows and I have already put a vast fortune of $1 on them beating that record during this World Cup.

And finally, who can forget the opening ceremony? It captured the local flavor and the general theme of the tournament perfectly. But you had to read between the lines, of course. The boring speeches by the politicians and the overly long cultural shows represented the games including minnows during this World Cup that no one really cares about. Sonu Nigam and a local Bangladeshi woman dressed in a saree over someone like a Beyonce or Rihanna (say) represented how the ICC know exactly what the viewers don't want to see but will make no effort to do anything about it nonetheless. A performance by the 112 year-old Bryan Adams (despite being the best recorded performance by a person his age) went out to show just how the ODI format can still continue to entertain despite fears that is largely irrelevant. And a recording of the the largely un-inspiring World Cup theme song played 3 times in loop was a true representation of the lukewarm nature of a majority of the pre-quater games as well as the fact that its 3 times longer than it should be. It was all very cleverly done, it must be said. And then there was Ravi Shastri.

While his constant mumblings of "tracer bullet" have put him on the radar of the US governments Department of Homeland security (who make it a business to make everything their business) for a while now, his accent at the World Cup opening ceremony put him firmly on the country's blacklist. Language experts analyzing his accent found traces of Egyptian, Iranian, Syrian and Cuban dialects in there somewhere without being able to trace his roots 100%. His dogs bouncer and beamer are now under a 24-hr watch and the US are showing a lot of restraint by not trying to bring democracy to his living room. How this sub-plot emerges might just be the most exciting bit about the World Cup before the Quarter finals start.

The World Cup is upon us!

2011-02-17T21:00:00.000-08:00

And lo and behold! The World cup is here already. After 8 years! The ICC has announced after much deliberation that the 2007 World Cup did not happen. So Australia are still looking for their third consecutive title, India are yet to lose to Bangladesh in a World Cup game and Bob Woolmer is still alive. Ok none of that is true. But this time we can get it right. As long as Australia don't win again, India don't lose again to Bangladesh and Bob Woolmer does not die again, the tournament will be considered more successful than the last. Given that one of those three outcomes is extremely unlikely (Australia winning, of course), we can be sure this tournament will be a bit less of a drag than the last one.

For those with the ability to pretend that the first month of the World Cup is of any consequence, it is a time of great excitement! Two groups of 7 each. Of which, there are 4 who have only recently figured out the difference between the meat and the handle of the bat. And of the rest, 8 will go through to the knockout phase. 8 among the 9 test playing nations and Zimbabwe. And just in case the teams don't get warmed up enough playing 6 league games before the knockouts start, there was an extra week of warm-up games. Considering that people with about the same IQ as those who approve of 7-match ODI bilateral series design the format for the World Cups, it really isn't that surprising.

Having said all of this though, there is something about the India-Bangladesh curtain raiser that warrants special mention. No one needs any reminding of the circumstances in which India were kicked out of the WC last time round. If Bangladesh could have been considered a banana peel, India slipped on it quite spectacularly. In general, people who slip on banana peels are generally embarrassed. India took the art of banana slipping to unknown levels. By running as fast as they could (knowing that the banana peel had been put there for them), they did a somersault and landed with inch-perfect precision on the peel. And then slipped on it again while trying to get up and ripped their trousers in the process. All in all, it was a rather forgettable episode.

If Bangladesh were at banana-peel levels of slippability then, they have attained the status of a newly waxed floor by now. Slightly harder to avoid. You have to wear the right kind of shoes and what not. They recently proved that in home conditions, an ODI victory against a fellow test nation isn't the cricket equivalent of a Haley's comet viewing anymore. They trashed fellow basement dwellers New Zealand 4-0 (and it wasn't 5-0 only because one of the matches was washed out). Certainly a team not to be taken lightly anymore.

When asked about the challenge of facing Bangladesh, the newly anointed 'Obama of cricket' was quick to resort to the "Well of course, we will not be complacent" kind of reply that made for rather boring reading. Which is why the same question was then asked to Sehwag. If Dhoni offered a dour dead-bat, Sehwag closed his eyes, left his crease and swung wildly at it, as is his wont. He explained that he was looking forward to this "revenge" match. What a guy! Coming from the same person who had gone on to call them an "ordinary" opposition not-so-long ago, it was a typical Sehwagism, for the lack of a better term. The episode was doubly great to follow because this was the same guy who had started the procession 4 years ago by chopping a Mortaza delivery on to his stumps, resulting in a boom on the market for Sehwag-shaped flammable effigies. But now the time for talking is well and truly over as the action shifts to Mirpur for the opening game.

The one key player whose services Bangladesh are likely to miss is that very Mortaza who had played a key part in that victory 4 years ago. Although Bangladesh have some honest seamers playing for them, they are definitely going to miss the nip with which he operated, not just in the match against India but through the rest of the tournament as well. Although their army of left-arm spinners will prove effective against teams not renowned for playing spin well (and will undoubtedly be a source of many nightmares for Kevin Pietersen), to win the World Cup, they will need to get past the subcontinental teams and that is where they might face an issue. Their bowling attack is eerily similar to India's 1970's test attack when Gavaskar and Solkar were used to take the shine off the new ball just so the real bowlers could start bowling. Having said that, after the warm-up games, India's current pace attack have not quite distinguished themselves either. However, with Zaheer Khan back and due to some more variety in the bowling attack, India are definitely the better bowling team.

Where batting is concerned, India are the outright winners on paper but as we have seen in the past, that can count for very little. However, due to the sheer firepower at India's disposal, this could prove to be a lineup that's a bit too strong for Bangladesh to overcome. What is good to see is stability at the top of the order and the sheer brutality of Yusuf Pathan in the middle. He might be troubled by the really quick bouncer, but Bangladesh don't have anyone to test him and spinners stand as much of a chance against him as a bunch of sausages in a doghouse.

It is very hard to imagine anything other than a comfortable Indian victory in this one. Of course, all of India want their team to not only beat Bangladesh but also make every team member run 20 rounds of the ground and do 50 push-ups for good measure. As Sehwag rightly said, this is a "revenge" match. There could have been no better game to signal the beginning of the World Cup!

A tale of two ballgames

2011-02-07T20:00:00.000-08:00

Now I haven’t watched a cricket game live for a very, very long time. I did, however, watch as many cricket matches live growing up as I could whenever the BCCI deigned to give Bombay a game or two by taking cricket away from the big centers like Guwahati. And let me tell you this - the atmosphere at an India A vs. India B game was as sensational as it could be when the marquee players at this tournament consisted of such elite names as Gagan Khoda and Ajit Agarkar. I'm not going to complain about why the IPL was not around when I was in college and had all the time in the world and actually was in-situ, so to speak. Instead, I'll just reflect on the kind of excitement that games like those generated and even Khoda would agree that watching Sachin take on Kumble or Warne is slightly better than watching him pummel Kanitkar to all parts. So I can only imagine the kind of noise levels at the ground when this spectacle is in progress.

Contrast that to baseball. I was led into believing that baseball was a distant cousin of cricket and now that I live in the US or A, I might as well give it a chance. Which I did. And guess what - it is a distant cousin. But it's the kind of distant cousin that everyone tends to have (unless you are that distant cousin). You know, the type that grew up in a remote village where a toaster is still considered the greatest technological achievement of our times. Yes, that person. While most American sports are alive due to the marketing aspect associated with sports, baseball thrives on it more than any other. Watching a live game of baseball is about as exciting as watching the grass grow and the average American viewer relies on overpriced beer to get them through. I went to that Mecca of baseball watching - the Fenway Park to watch the Boston Red Sox take on the NY Yankees! Now that has to be a great game, correct? Unfortunately not. It's just not cricket. My memory of the game is alternating trips to the hotdog/beer stand and the restroom (the perfect cause-effect relationship). And watching other pink American males do the same without anyone really caring about what was going on in the game. The odd dog barked. And this wasn't some kind of Khoda-Agarkar contest. Jeter was leading the Yankees lineup, A-Rod was present, and Josh Beckett was pitching for the Sox. However, the average interest in the game was probably as high as it would be during the 4th day of a high scoring draw between a Vidarbha v. Tripura plate league playoff. And the end result? 1-0. I don't remember who won. And I did not remember the run being scored. I might have been watching - or maybe I was taking one of my aforementioned trips.

Moral of the story? All of those 7 people reading this post (if it's my lucky day), if you live in India - and you are geographically located anywhere close to a cricket venue, the next time a match comes along, please do watch it. Take you mother with you. Call you neighbor and ask them to bring their dog along. Maybe even your distant cousin. Because before you know it, you might be stuck watching a Yankess-Sox game at the Fenway with alternating trips to the beer stand and the rest room. So make the most of it while you can.

Seven

2010-11-06T09:56:00.000-07:00

With the World Cup 2011 just around the corner, the largest concern for all Indian supporters is that dodgy number 7 slot. At the moment, we can probably be more sure about Afridi captaining Pakistan provided he doesn’t bite something off, doesn’t retire, doesn’t get banned and doesn’t go about making news in British tabloids. All in all, as long as these extremely unlikely scenarios does not occur, its infinitely harder to predict who will be batting at that vital spot for India. Let’s look at some of the contenders:

Ravindra Jadeja: It is extremely hard to write this, but going by the selectors’ thinking process (assuming they do think), this guy is the incumbent and most likely to take the field when India open their World Cup campaign against Bangladesh (to every Indian supporter who watched cricket in 2007, that is a slightly scary proposition – playing Bangladesh, i.e.). Not that there is anything bad about the young man. Nothing personal. We won’t hold against him the fact that he got greedy after playing a couple of seasons of the IPL and tried to sign a deal with the Mumbai Indians for extra money. Thank God Lalit Modi and the BCCI were around to show him that money is not the most important thing in life. Young men like him need guidance from people with higher moral fiber at times. As it stands, there are only two little flaws with his game: can’t bat, can’t bowl. In other words, he is perfect captaincy material for Pakistan (remember Shoaib Malik?) in case Afridi does any of the things mentioned above. I suppose he can be called an all-rounder if you like since he does not really have a stronger suit. One can only hope that if given the chance, he can prove nearly 1 billion people wrong. Yes, going with him would be more a case of hope rather than conviction.

Virat Kohli: There is this other school of thought that goes: don’t try and imagine an allrounder where there isn’t one. Play a batsman at no. 7 instead. At the moment, Kohli is certainly in front of that particular queue. He does have the tendency to act like an immature brat from time to time who makes mothers all over India point to the screen and tell their children: “No matter what happens, don’t ever do that.” But if you were to overlook that, he does seem like a good bet. He can consolidate if needed, can hit the big shots when required, and can even roll the arm over (though he should only be required if Yuvraj, Sehwag, Raina and Sachin throw down donkey drops and get walloped.) Plus he is an excellent fielder and can hurl abuse with equal vigor after taking a dolly, a steepler or after diving 7 feet to pull off a blinder. Now every time I write something good about Kohli, a really cute puppy dies somewhere. With that in mind, I shall skip over to the next section.

Rohit Sharma: Picked out of the absolute unknown, this man started off batting at no. 7 for India during that famous inaugural T20 World Cup in South Africa and did it all – shored up the order when the top order had suffered from one of their occasional brain farts, landed the big hit when required and fielded like his life depended on it (remember the one handed pick up and throw from cover to run out Justin Kemp?). Everyone notices the lazy elegance with which he plays his strokes and the extra bit of time that he seems to have to play them. Then the same kid goes on to assist Sachin in a chase in Australia with a 60-odd during the finals of the last VB series and we all think this kid is destined to be the next big thing in Indian cricket. But then, he goes down the L Sivaramakrishnan path. No, he does not start annoying television viewers the world over with terrible captain-obvious commentary in a ridiculous accent – he takes the train of underachievement. My theory is that a look-alike ate Rohit Sharma and now pretends to be him. This imposter should definitely not be playing for India. If somehow the real RS manages to plan an escape and return to the fold, he should definitely play in place of Kohli. To save some puppies from dying, amongst other things.

Irfan Pathan: It’s hard to think about trains of underachievement without thinking of Irfan Pathan. No one who watched him bowl those yorkers to Steve Waugh and Adam Gilchrist will be able to forget them in a hurry. He went on to take a test hat-trick against Pakistan and also score a Test century apart from a few useful ODI innings at number 3. He had the potential to be India’s next allrounder – the real deal. Not the Manoj Prabhaka/Ajit Agarkar/Sanjay Bangar kind of allrounder. That really was where the problem started. Instead of encouraging him to be a bowler who could bat a bit, people expected him to bat at no. 3 & no. 7, bowl swing as well as spin, field at 3 positions at the same time, fix the team bus when it broke down and also find a cure for cancer. It isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Only Daniel Vettori can do all of that and even he’s been finding it hard these days trying to cure cancer and beat Bangladesh at the same time. Back to IKP, his bowling these days is about as hostile as babe the pig. Unless he can open the bowling for India, he probably won’t make the cut. Given that he hasn’t been able to re-discover his bowling mojo in the last few seasons, it is highly unlikely that he will be able to pull out a rabbit in time for the World Cup.

R Ashwin: This guy is one of the dark horses in the race for the no. 7 spot (and I don’t say just that because he is from South India – that would be wrong). At first glance, he seems absolutely out of place on a cricket field. He has a studious kind of face and at times he doesn’t seem to know what to do with his rather long arms and legs (a bit like Monty Panesar). His fielding has the same entertaining village cricket quality that Navjot Singh Siddhu is better known for. Where this guy impresses is with his attitude and his willingness to improve. He is capable of bowling classical offspin with a high-arm action and also has the Saqlain-style pause for the camera before delivery that every offspinner from the subcontinent seems to have these days. Dhoni has trusted him with bowling inside the powerplay in T20 (mainly because Chennai’s owners did not have any money left for fast bowlers after paying for Dhoni himself), but that has proven to be a masterstroke. He has been bowling the carom ball off late and is said to be working on a delivery that pitches behind the stumps and spins back to bowl the batsman from between the wicket-keeper’s legs. He is a more than useful batsman, but might be a bit high at no. 7. Also, given that Bhajji seems to be the first choice in one-dayers, playing two offspinners might not be the best idea. But then Ashwin should not lose hope. If Jadeja can play, anyone can.

Yusuf Pathan: Yusuf Pathan reminds you of the South Indian movie superstar who has temples made in his name in his hometown, but gets relegated to playing small time parts as the Hero’s younger brother or the scrupulous cop who dies during the third scene when acting in a Bollywood movie. He has made a habit of terrorizing spinners, but the minute even Vinay Kumar starts bowling bouncers at him, his tail gets deeply wedged between his legs and he ends up doing his best Debang Gandhi impression in terms of strokelessness combined with a general sense of fatalism. Not like his spin bowling inspires a lot of confidence either – due to this, he needs to force a place on the strength of his batting alone. Considering that he has had enough chances that he has not managed to grab, very unlikely that he will be bullying spinners into submission at this world cup.

Honorable mentions: Robin Uthappa, KKD Karthik, Saurabh Tiwary. They all have a legitimate claim at the spot for one reason or another, but are too low in the pecking order to have a realistic shot.

Not a lot left to be said really. It’s time to wait and watch.

The three generations of cricket

2010-10-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

It is a balmy Sunday afternoon at the park and I see a seven-year old batting with a bat that is at least two sizes too big for him. His middle-aged father is keeping wickets. His really, really old grandfather is the umpire. While one of his siblings runs in to bowl, I begin to muse about the game of cricket in general ...

To think of Test cricket means thinking of a grand old man of over a hundred stroking his W.G. Grace-like beard and overseeing proceedings on a village green between breaks for tea and scones and the customary end-of-the-day pint. You would think Test cricket would be a philosopher or a painter - one of those who believe in simple living and high thinking. They might be judged themselves, yet they never judge. They do what they do because they love it and there is nothing more to it. They have the ability to produce an opus that is both sublime, but almost never appreciated in it's time. Society grants them many of the highest honors but there are many that question the benefits of their existence. Just like any centenarian, there are questions being asked about how long Test cricket is going to survive. Some think it is immortal whereas there are others who are more pragmatic and propose medications in the form of Test cricket championships. Test cricket, however, has lasted through two World Wars and will probably continue to stand tall and proud on the basis of it's sheer quality alone.

One day cricket used to be the wild-child of the 70's. It was once part of a golden generation that saw the moon being tamed while the Beatles and The Rolling Stones were playing in the background. White flannels gave way to colorful and wacky clothing and even wackier hairdos. There were those that resisted it's coming, yet it captured the imagination of many. ODI cricket is, in many ways, similar to the white-collar middle-class that emerged as a result of the last three decades. They wanted results. They did not have all day (or 5 days, as it were) for that result to emerge either. ODI cricket was the form of expression that this middle class identified with more than Test cricket. Lofted cover drives as early as the 5th over were not met with scorn as before. The bits-and-pieces, street smart jack-of-all-trades had a place in this format. In many ways, this is the form of cricket that made cricket more accessible to the public. ThatWorld Cup semi-final between Australia and South Africa in 1999 was one of it's greatest moments. It started to dwindle later. It tried many forms of plastic surgery including field restrictions, power plays, free hits and the now forgotten super-sub. Yet it was undeniable that this form of the game had now reached middle-age and with it, the inevitable mid-life crisis. There are now those that are more concerned about this format of the game more than it's older and wiser predecessor and not without reason. Without any context, meaning and relevance, ODI is just meandering along and unless something drastic is done to stem this tide, it could very well suffer a cardiac arrest.

Amid footage of a bunch of players who call themselves the Chennai Super Kings (and probably will not do so ever again) winning the Champions League, it is hard to believe that T20 - that precocious man-child of cricket is but, a mere seven years old. If ODI cricket was a product of it's generation, T20 is even more so. What twitter is to blogging, T20 cricket is to ODI cricket. In many ways, T20 cricket resembles the investment banker. They are in the profession to make money and they are not apologetic about the fact. They are immaculately dressed and are generally seen typing at the speed of a million words a minute on their blackberries. They are feared and hated in equal measure. And during a recession, the masses rub their collective palms in glee and come out on the street, blaming it all on them. Yet, they have their uses - it is they who help raise vast sums of capital that are the lifeblood of all businesses. Like investment bankers, T20's are highly misunderstood. T20 cricket is thought of as being synonymous to the IPL, which is a shame. The IPL suffered because Lalit Modi defined it as an image of himself: crass, in-your-face and generally unlikeable. However, in the larger schemes of things, T20 has attracted a new type of audience - one with a shorter attention span and a certain insensitivity to some of the game's delicacies. However, cricket must find a place for them because it can ill-afford to shun away a paying customer. Also, just like Usain Bolt is not unfairly compared to a champion marathoner, so too, specialist T20 cricketers should not be compared to their other counterparts and each skill set should be celebrated for what it is.

Like everything else, cricket too has evolved and it is now an ecosystem in itself. It needs to find some common ground for it's three generations to co-exist. But there is hope yet. The seven year-old sees a juice half volley on leg-stump and manages to bring the heavy bat down in time. He does not bother to keep the ball along the ground. His father really enjoys the shot. His grandfather exclaims at the sheer impetuousness of the shot off the very first ball he's faced. Then he smiles benignly and signals a boundary. On the young man's face, there is sheer, unadulterated joy. Yes, cricket will surely find a way ...