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Wisden names four Cricketers of the Year

2011-04-08T10:58:00.000+06:00

ESPNcricinfo staff
April 8, 2011

The 2011 edition of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack will feature only four Cricketers of the Year, instead of the usual five, after the editor, Scyld Berry, chose to break with ancient tradition to reflect a year in which allegations of corruption during Pakistan's tour of England left a stain on the sport's reputation.
The truncated list will feature in the Almanack's 148th edition, which is officially unveiled on Wednesday. The tradition, which dates back to 1889, is the oldest individual honour in cricket, and though the format has occasionally varied, with six great bowlers being chosen for the original award, Wisden has chosen five names in every year since 1926, barring a hiatus during the Second World War.
That, however, has changed for this year, after one of the chosen Five Cricketers became embroiled in the spot-fixing furore which broke during the Lord's Test between England and Pakistan last August. Following an investigation by The News of the World, the ICC charged Pakistan's opening bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir with bowling deliberate no-balls, with their captain, Salman Butt, also implicated in the scandal.
Asif is currently serving a seven-year ban, with two suspended, Amir a straight five years and Butt 10 years, with half suspended after being found guilty by an independent tribunal. The three players are also facing criminal charges in the UK, with their trial set to get underway on May 20 at Southwark Crown Court.
Though Wisden chose not to name the omitted player, it was the performance of Amir - then 18 - which really captured the public imagination during Pakistan's tour. Bowling at genuine pace with deadly late swing from a left-arm line, he claimed 19 wickets at 18.36 in four Tests against England, and a further 11 in the two-match series against Australia, including seven in the second Test at Headingley, when Australia were bowled out for 88 on the first morning.
"If [the player in question] were exonerated, then it would be possible to reconsider the position," explained Berry. "That's why I didn't pick anyone else instead. But as things stand, we don't feel we can choose him. It's all very sad."
The other four nominees include the first players from Bangladesh and Ireland to receive the award. Tamim Iqbal struck memorable hundreds at both Lord's and Old Trafford during Bangladesh's Test tour in May and June 2010, having already shown himself to be a world-class player at home against England two months earlier, while Eoin Morgan's innovative strokeplay helped propel England to the World Twenty20 in the Caribbean, as well as secure home ODI series wins over Australia and Pakistan.
The other two players are Jonathan Trott, who announced himself as England's most reliable run-scorer, with 1,325 Test runs in the calendar year, including scores of 226 and 184 in consecutive Lord's Tests, and Chris Read, who captained Nottinghamshire to a thrilling County Championship victory, which was sealed on the final day of the season with a surging victory over Lancashire at Old Trafford.
Alastair Cook, who was eligible for selection, missed out on the honour because excellence in (or influence on) the previous English summer are the major criteria for the Cricketer of the Year accolade. Though Cook recorded an outstanding tally of 766 runs in the recent Ashes series, his returns in the 2010 summer were poor. He has, however, been honoured by appearing on the cover of the Almanack, pictured celebrating his century in the Sydney Test.
Buy the 2011 Wisden Cricketers' Almanack

Bhajji Takes On Afridi - World Cup-Indiaecho.com

2011-04-07T09:50:00.000+06:00

Mahela Jayawardene and Sri Lanka selectors resign

2011-04-07T09:31:00.000+06:00

Sri Lanka vice-captain Mahela Jayawardene and the country's four selectors have resigned following the World Cup final defeat by India.

They follow Kumar Sangakkara, who quit as one-day and Twenty20 captain on Tuesday, but remains as Test captain.

Ex-captain Jayawardene said the time was right to "move on".

The selectors, headed by former national skipper Aravinda de Silva, handed their resignations to Sri Lanka's sports minister on Wednesday.

The quartet's term was due to end at the end of the month but De Silva, alongside Ranjith Fernando, Amal Silva and Azwer Ali chose to leave early in the wake of the six-wicket defeat by India in Mumbai on Saturday.

Continue reading the main story

I think it's time to move on, give the reins to someone younger in the team

Former Sri Lanka vice-captain Mahela Jayawardene

"While, like everyone else associated with Sri Lanka Cricket we are also enormously disappointed at our not being able to annex the coveted World Cup, which was lost to India in a highly competitive final, we are very happy that we have been able to meet most of our objectives in a short space of time," the selectors wrote in an open letter to sports minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage.

"In view of the fact that some major cricketing decisions have to be taken for the future of Sri Lanka cricket due to important assignments in the coming months, we would like to offer to step down immediately from the jobs of national selectors."

Former captain Jayawardene stepped down as skipper in March 2009 following Sri Lanka's tour of Pakistan, which was abandoned when the tourists' team bus was attacked by gunmen in Lahore on 3 March.

The 33-year-old became only the sixth player in World Cup history to score a hundred in the final, but was the first player to hit three figures and finish on the losing side.

"I think it's time to move on, give the reins to someone younger in the team," said elegant right-handed batsman Jayawardene, who has scored 9,527 runs in 116 Tests and 9,423 in 341 one-day internationals in an illustrious career.

Sangakkara said his decision to resign as captain was made prior to the start of the World Cup to make way for a younger leader.

However, the left-hander will remain as interim Test captain for their tour of England, which begins in May and lasts until July.

All-rounders Angelo Mathews and Tillakaratne Dilshan are among the leading contenders to replace Sangakkara.

Indians not as large-hearted as Pakistanis: Afridi's shocking remarks

2011-04-05T07:23:00.000+06:00

Afridi: Why Pakistan Hates India?

2011-04-05T07:21:00.000+06:00

Sammy seeks revenge against India

2011-04-05T06:48:00.000+06:00

West Indies skipper Darren Sammy is hoping they and India win their respective quarterfinals and meet in the semifinal at Mohali where the two-time world champions can have their revenge for Sunday's defeat.
"It would be a sweet revenge to beat India at home," Sammy said after losing the final league game of the World Cup.

West Indies had gone in with a time-tested plan to bounce out India's batsmen and it worked against Sachin Tendulkar and Gautam Gambhir.
Sammy said it was a pre-planned pace attack. "We had some success early on, but I was the culprit who dropped Yuvraj Singh," he said.
Referring to Tendulkar's decision to walk after being given not out, a poker-faced Sammy's succinct reaction elicited laughter.
"It was brilliant", Sammy said. He then added: "It was a measure of the man. He's a gentleman. He has 17,000 runs. He could afford to walk."
West Indies may have reached the knockouts but have beaten only the weaker teams of Group B - Bangladesh, Netherlands and Ireland, who managed to stretch them in defeat.
Worse, they've had batting collapses aplenty: 6-44 against South Africa, 4-8 against Ireland, 4-3 against England and an astonishing 8-34 against India.
Sammy admitted this was a concern. "It's good this has happened in the league games and not in the knockouts," he said. "Else we would have already gone home. We will have to come up with better shots. We were 150-2 and let the game slip."
Also, they've not beaten a major ODI team since June 2008 when they beat India at home. But Sammy remained optimistic.
"Pakistan have not had a bad game so far so we will bring our A-game and it will be smooth sailing for us," he said in a light-hearted manner.

India's turn to dominate world cricket?

2011-04-05T06:37:00.000+06:00

Like British politics, world cricket has seen two formidable and dominant dynasties take shape in the last 30 years.
The West Indies, in an uncompromising fashion that may have impressed Margaret Thatcher, were peerless in the 1980s, with their fearsome fast bowlers and that most awe-inspiring batsman, Viv Richards.
When the Windies then spiralled into decline, Tony Blair entered Downing Street at a time when Australia had already taken hold of the sceptre of power that made them the pre-eminent side.
But with the third of Ricky Ponting's three Ashes defeats still fresh in the memory, and two changes of Prime Minister since Blair, a watershed moment has arrived.
I'll leave the politics out of this blog from now on, and instead concentrate on India, whose coronation as World Cup winners on Saturday could put them on course to establish themselves as the next great superpower in world cricket.
India's win was achieved in spite of several factors that could have made their task a tough one in the ICC's flagship event.
This was a tournament in which favourites (generally South Africa in recent editions) had not enjoyed a good record. But this time India started as favourites and found a way to win. Furthermore, no previous team had won a final on home soil. Shrugging off that weight of expectation was all the harder for India, whose fans are both notoriously passionate and notoriously fickle.
Mahendra Dhoni's Zen-like serenity, and ability to inure himself to external factors, helped him rise to the challenge with some accomplished captaincy. Dhoni also ended a run of poor form by delivering the coup de grace with the bat against Sri Lanka on Saturday.
His legacy is secured a generation after Kapil Dev, who led an underdog Indian side to glory in 1983, wrote the first chapter in the modern history of Indian cricket.
In Dhoni's case, the journey can go to even bigger and better places and for the next 12 months the onus will be on protecting the number one Test status they earned over the winter.
So how do India's finest players prepare for the important tours of West Indies, England and Australia that lie in wait for them later this year (plus a home series in November against West Indies?) Oh yes. The Indian Premier League starts on Friday. That's right, this Friday... and goes on until 28 May.
With two new franchises, Pune and Kochi, and 74 matches squeezed into less than two months, players will have to suffer a stressful regime of practice-match-hotel-flight (repeat ad nauseam) week-in, week-out.
Remember: in the IPL, the performance of India-qualified players is key. Seven players in each starting side have to be Indians, and there will be no instances of the national board pulling players out to give them a break (as happens in county cricket).
Seven days after the IPL final, India play a Twenty20 international in Trinidad followed by five one-day internationals and three Tests, finishing on 10 July.
Time for a rest after that? Oh no. It's straight on to the tour of England and a warm-up against Somerset starting on 15 July. Quite what shape any of these players will be in come the Lord's Test match on 21 July is anyone's guess.
One way round would be to rest a number of key players for the tour to West Indies. But that could be a dangerous tactic on pitches that have become lifeless, and under new captain Darren Sammy the Windies are showing glimmers of potential.

Either way, Andrew Strauss's England will start that Test at Lord's with a huge in-built advantage on a ground where they are unbeaten in their last 10 Tests.
I mention all this because the single biggest threat to India's bid for world cricket domination is not the quality of their opponents but the daft scheduling.
Administrators everywhere are good at talking a good game when it comes to easing the physical and mental burden on players. But when it comes to agreeing deals with rival boards and broadcasters, the dollar signs tend to loom larger than the latest alarming bulletins from the physio.
Another negative for India is the age of some of their top players. Sachin Tendulkar (37) is playing some of the best cricket of his life in his fourth decade as an international cricketer.
But even the finest wines have a quantifiable shelf-life, and before very long he will have to be replaced. More holes in the batting will open up when Rahul Dravid (38) and VVS Laxman (36) also make way.
There are some very fine young batsmen in India. The 21-year-old Saurabh Tiwary is an extremely exciting player while Cheteshwar Pujara, who has played three Tests, comes with all the right credentials and appears to have a long career in front of him.
Virat Kohli, an important if unspectacular performer in the World Cup, also looks like he could play some fine innings in Test cricket.
At 32, Zaheer Khan is significantly younger than Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman. But he is a fast bowler and the sad truth is that they age faster than batsmen.
Zaheer is also demonstrably the best seamer in both the Test and one-day sides and will require careful management in the years to come. Ishant Sharma looks the best of the rest, while too many others (notably Irfan Pathan and RP Singh, plus Sreesanth, to an extent) have seen highly promising careers fizzle out alarmingly.

The list of other young fast bowlers coming through is a thin one, but that's hardly surprising. The Indian nursery is effectively the IPL. And if you're a young bowler trying to rise to the surface then having to bowl at the most aggressive batsmen in the world in 20-overs-a-side cricket is far from ideal.
Scoff all you like at the County Championship. But when England were forced to adopt Plan B in the Ashes and produce Tim Bresnan and Chris Tremlett halfway through the series, they acquitted themselves very well indeed.
If fast bowling is a concern for India, spin bowling is not, or should not be. Harbhajan Singh (30) has many miles left on his clock, and other spinners like Pragyan Ojha, Piyush Chawla and Ravichandran Ashwin all look pretty useful.
With their enormous resources, both financial and in terms of raw numbers of players, and the belief the World Cup win should give them, India have a fighting chance of doing something similar to Clive Lloyd's West Indians and Steve Waugh's Aussies.
But they must do so at a time of innumerable, compressed tours, and amid the distractions of the IPL - plus the imminent retirement of some superstar players. It will take something very special indeed for Dhoni's India to become a benchmark for long-term cricketing excellence.

2011-03-08T02:52:00.000+06:00

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2011-03-08T02:50:00.000+06:00

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Beautiful Bangladesh-From RED dot _HD & HQ

2011-03-01T21:15:00.000+06:00

Paly For the game

2011-02-27T14:01:00.000+06:00