(Mint-Fresh)Cricket Stories of the Day

Once every few months, I get up early - like real early, when the sun's just come over the horizon, and the world is still a blushing pink. Today was that day - and as it happens every single time that I do this bizzare act of early rising, I was confused. Now what? I managed to convince myself that i was out of cigarettes, and so I went down to fetch a pack. Also got along a copy of today's Times of India (i am otherwise a Hindustan Times reader) and HT's new business daily, Mint.

More than Mint, it was TOI which i found to be refreshing.

& since this is a cricket blog, let me get that connect by doing a round-up of today's top cricket stories in the TOI, the minty fresh ones. Here i go, with my first cuppa tea of the morning:

- Rankin's sole-to-sole session with Garner! Big Bird helps tallest cricketer in World Cup find shoes that fit.

- Little man Ponting is actually close to 6 feet tall (he is 5'10). Blame Hayden for that wrong perception.

- West Indies lost because of poor fitness: Lloyd. In another section, it was also mentioned that the Windies are not completely out of the World Cup yet. There is a theoretical possibility of Lara's men making it to the semi-finals.

- Fleming sympathises with South Africa. SA has a poor net run rate, and Fleming understands captain Smith's problem - it's a bit too late in the day to improve on the run rate front, so better go for outright victories.

- BCCI ok with Sachin, Yuvi reply. Did they have an option? What would Pawar have done if Sachin had given him a reply a la Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct - "What will you do? Charge me for smoking?"

- Tendulkar, Zaheer Booed: Go back, fans tell players in Ahmedabad, upon their arrival to take part in the Twenty20 tournament.

- Jayawardene feels Aussie middle order is suspect. The rest of the world too, Mr. Jayawardene. The problem is to get the top order out early, so that the middle matters.

- Langer flays Aussie over Sledging. "I don't believe in it. It is something that has disturbed me over the years, particulary when Glenn Mc Grath and Ram Naresh Sarwan were involved".

- Toxicology result 'encouraging'. Woolmer was poisoned before he was strangled. Investigating officer Mark Shield has enlightened us with three possibilities: Someone gives up easily / There could be a massive break-through / We are in for the long haul. Wow, Mr. Shields, we didn't know about these earlier.

And this one is from the business daily, Mint.

- The BCCI believes it has identified one reason for the game's slow rot in the country: the use of the wrong kind of balls. Proper white balls made by Kookaburra Sports Pty Ltd cost close to Rs.3500 per ball, and while the BCCI had been importing it for the important games, youngsters were still practising on the cheaper red cricket balls. Expensive indeed, as the BCCI has footed a bill of Rs.5.40 lacs for the Platypus balls which it has imported for the National Twenty-twenty championship. No Indian cricket manufacturer, including SG, makes the white balls. Let's see if the BCCI does indeed go ahead and get the expensive white balls for the domestic cricketers 'unimportant' matches. Think about it - the world's richest cricket body is yet to provide its players with good pitches and the right kind of balls. Any wonder, Sachin is being booed in Ahmedabad instead of being celebrated in Trinidad.

Letter From a Cricket Fan exiled in Kuala Lumpur...

Hi Readers,

It's a good idea sometimes to generate a good output to input ratio. And who else to look for help but your friends. There is this bunch of us cricket fans who passed out together from this b-school in Ahmedabad, India called MICA in the spring of 2001. Time and Work may have separated us geographically, but CRICKET has held us together. Sankalp Mehrotra, who is now in KL, Malaysia misses being a part of cricket-crazy India and has now begun this on-mail series of cricket-trivia which he calls 5 ouncers. Reproducing a part of the first mail from my cricket buddy...

With nothing much to do at work today and with the world cup around the corner, I would like to rekindle the spirit of a challenge amongst all the estimated prophets of the “Armchair cricketer’s forum”.

There will be five questions that I will post on a daily basis. Reply to all…I will post the correct answers the next day with the five new questions. Pls avoid any inclination to look up the web for answers.
There are no rewards, only some additional nuggets of information that we might pick up along the way.

All of you are welcome to post questions as and when you like. An animated discussion when all of us can sit together seems like a remote possibility, but we might as well not lose the passion for a game which some of us “love to watch and analyze”.

Q – What is the Fremantle doctor?

Q – Sachin and Azhar played one of the best counterattacking innings by the Indian team in second test of 1996-97 series in Cape Town. Sachin was out to a blinder plucked off thin air. Who took that catch?

Q – What is an MBE and what was the context in which it was famously used recently on in a match?

Q – Who invented the flipper?

Q – Who is the only current international player to have been timed out in a first class game? He got is ostensibly


P.S. - No disparaging remarks are allowed from those who know all the answers. Suggestions to improve, the tone, format or whatever else is welcome.
The group has been prepared basis TOM recall. Pardon is sought for any notable omissions.
Pls do keep this forum going guys!!

Best
Sankalp

****

If you love cricket trivia or cricket quizzes, do check out CRICKET QUIZ . Will keep adding my bouncers and Sankalp's ouncers there. Answers for the above can be checked at CRICKET QUIZ ANSWERS in a day. Happy quizzing.

Finding Players for the Indian Cricket Team for the World Cup 2007

In a few hours from now, the Indian and West Indies cricket teams will begin the first of the four match ODI series. With the Cricket World Cup just a couple of months away, both the coaches, Chappell and Benett King will have more than just the current series to worry about. While King & Lara would see the matches as good practise before the World Cup, Chappell and Dravid have bigger worries to worry about. With Indian cricket, especially the one-day team, in complete array, the Indo-Oz duo will be using these opportunities to sort out the team composition. February the 13th is the last date for submitting the final 15 team list for the World Cup and including tomorrow's game, they will have just 6 chances to get it right.

Sehwag is a notable omission from today's team, Pathan being the other. Yuvraj Singh is still to regain a sufficient level. Kumble has been rested. Chances are that each one of them would be on the all important March flight to the Caribbean - so 4 of the likely 15 will not be on show tomorrow. I'd also like to think that V.V.S Laxman should be there too, so you can actually make that 5. And this when we are just 23 days away from the ICC World Cup's team submission deadline.

Gambhir will be filling up Sehwag's slot - walking along with him will be ex-India captain Saurav Ganguly, back in favour after more than a year. The biggest enigma of Indian One-day Cricket, Suresh Raina is back - god knows why. So is the master of comebacks, Ajit Agarkar. I'm sure he has done enough now to wrest the crown from Mohinder Amarnath. Dinesh Karthick gets a much deserved place, though his biggest fans would know that even if he gets a nod for the 15, he may join the likes of Parthiv Patel who hold the dubious record for warming up the World Cup benches. Ramesh Pawar is also a part of the 12-member team announced yesterday. With Vengsarkar at the helm of things, and Mumbai back as the flavour of the season, he may get the nod over Harbhajan for tomorrow. It may be the right thing to do too.

Joginder Sharma, Robin Uthappa and Rudra Pratap Singh missed the cut for today's match - if the selectors are serious about them today, then they should each get a couple of matches. Of the others in the list of the 30 probables for the Cricket World Cup, Mohammad Kaif, Munaf Patel and Dinesh Mongia can also be expected to be given a look in. Unless the teams for each match are picked up from the World Cup point of view, I don't see how each one can be given a fair test. On the other hand, the Indian Cricket team's one-day confidence are at such a low that losing a series in India may be a fatal blow. Vengsarkar, Chappell and Dravid have more than a tough task at hand - for the sake of the blue billion, I hope they come out triumphs.

*****

That picture on the top right is from the Vidarbha Cricket Association Ground, Nagpur where the first match is going to be played. The Indian coach, Greg Chappell is carrying a board which conveys the morning's routine for the Indian cricket team.

Pre-breakfast: 1. Warm-up Game outside the square 2. The Problem to be solved 3. Batter/Bowler Specifics

Breakfast

After Breakfast: 1.Nets 2. The Colin Blands 3.Bobby Simpsons**

Meetings: Bowlers, Batters

**Colin Blands and Bobby Simpsons refer to fielding drills named after the Cricket legends.

of Crickets & Bees

News from the Cricket ground at Cuttack ( which is hosting a one-dayer against West Indies on 24th Jan)

One of the two priorities for the officials of the Orissa Cricket Association is to remove bees from the stadium!! The other one is more mundane - erecting up digital scoreboards before the cricket starts.

Source: Ashirbad Behera, Secretary - Orissa Cricket Association

Michael Bevan calls it a day

I was quite fond of Ajay Jadeja & Robin Singh and Mohammad Kaif & Yuvraj Singh. They would never drive the crowds crazy with their superlative strokes, they just didn't have the repertoire of a Sachin Tendulkar or Rickey Ponting. But they pulled off something else, something far more important, far more romantic - a victory for your team. They got teams over the line . Like while chasing 245, Sachin would depart at a crucial juncture ( after making a well-crafted hundred for which he would be later given the MOM) leaving the match on the tenterhooks. And from there, it would be my pair which would each make a smallish 20 or 30, paltry enough to not win them the MOM, but big enough for the team to cross the line - towards a win.

If Michael Bevan had been playing for Mumbai and not for NSW, for India and not for Australia, chances are, I would have easily dismissed the above four gentlemen. Michael gwyl Bevan was a master at the game of crossing the line - he was a winner.

Bevan never bothered about the boundaries if the situation didn't need him to. If the chase demanded an asking rate of 7, Bevan would get the 7th one by converting a single into a two. Greater (or lesser, depending on how you think) men would have prerered playing the odd dot ball coupled with a boundary. You don't need to be an ex- test cricketer to figure out what worked better. Bevan showed it time and again - and his contribution to the current run of Australia's ODI success has been truly underplayed and underrecognised.

After a glittering career consisting of 232 one-dayers, 6912 runs at a phenomenal average of 53.38 and 2 World Cup triumphs, Michael Bevan announced his retirement today in Hobart. My salutations to this great cricketer.

***

In case Indian cricket fans are wondering, the man-in-blue is indeed Michael Bevan, and not Yuvraj Singh!!

Cricket Quote of the (yester)Day

"We've won a game of cricket"
- England captain Michael Vaughan after their three wicket victory over New Zealand in the Tri-series ODI in Hobart yesterday, 16th January 2007.

****
Scores:
NZ: 205/9 in 50 overs ( Astle 45, Anderson 4/42)
Eng: 206/7 in 49.5 overs ( Flintoff 72, Bell 45)

India Team for the Cricket World Cup 2007

Cricket Australia has already announced the list of 30 probable for the World Cup which is now just 62 days and 5 hours away. India will follow suit in a couple of days - but the real questions will be answered only next month when the final team of 15 is announced. ( Feb 13th is the deadline) Meanwhile, India's tour of South Africa has come to a close and as we take stock of the future, I couldn't resist myself from picking a possible squad for the big show coming up in the Caribbean. So, here i go...

In batting order, this is my first XI:

1. Sachin Tendulkar
2. Saurav Ganguly
3. VVS Laxman
4. Yuvraj Singh
5. Rahul Dravid
6. M S Dhoni
7. Irfan Pathan
8. Harbhajan Singh
9. Anil Kumble
10. S. Sreesanth
11. Zaheer Khan

( the only real confusion i had was over the no.9 batter, whether Kumble or Sreesanth! Dravid's turnaround in One-day cricket happened when he started coming in at no.5, and that's where he should stay. Laxman would make for a good no.3, though it's a good idea to promote Pathan sometimes. But that should be a surprise weapon only and treated like one. Yes, i have chosen Pathan for his twin abilities - his inclusion provides the team with just the right balance, just what Dravid's did the last time round.)

12. Ajit Agarkar
13. Virender Sehwag ( only if he does something in between now and Feb 13th)
14. Ashish Nehra
15. Mohammad Kaif

It's the biggest stage in the world of cricket, and if performances in past World Cups are any indication, experience has mostly triumphed over rookiness. Among Indian players, Navjot Singh Siddhu is the only rookie i can remember who made his presence felt in a World Cup.

By this yardstick, Nehra and Kaif come in. Nehra was impressive recently, on a flat Kotla track in the capital, he took a fiver. He was one of India's stars in the previous World Cup and my vote goes for him over a very lazy Munaf Patel. ( Munaf should never be allowed to represent the country as he might be having a very bad influence on kids watching cricket - his running speed is just amazing.)

If Sehwag doesn't do anything of note by 13th February, Karthick could be a definite consideration. He was most impressive in the last test against the Proteas and the Indian selectors seem to prefer picking up an extra wicket-keeper. ( Parthiv Patel was in the team last time, though he never played a match)

****

Attempt a very interesting World Cup Cricket Quiz. Click here

Cricket's Time Out

Law 31. Timed Out

(a) Unless "Time" has been called, the incoming batsman must be in position to take guard or for his partner to be ready to receive the next ball within three minutes of the fall of the previous wicket. If this requirement is not met, the incoming batsman will be out, Timed out.

(b) In the event of protracted delay in which no batsman comes to the wicket, the umpires shall adopt the procedure of Law 21.3 (Umpires awarding a match). For the purpose of that Law the start of the action shall be taken as the expiry of the three minutes referred to above.
( source: The Laws of Cricket, Wisden Cricketers' Almanac 2006)
**********************************************************************************

At 10:43 am local time, today in the 3rd cricket test between India and South Africa, Wassim Jaffer got out. India had just lost its other opener just a while back. Tendulkar, the official no.4 was all padded up with nowhere to go - because of yet another Law of Cricket ( Law 2.5, fielder absent or leaving the field) Tendulkar was eligible to bat only at a point of time after 10:48 am. Together, all these were sufficient to create pandemonium in the Indian dressing room.

If Graeme Smith had been as much a stickler of the rules as Stephen Fleming had been a while back in Newzealand, we could have seen international cricket's first case of Timed Out today. India's next batsman, Suarav Ganguly, came into bat only at 10:49 am - 3 minutes after the legal deadline. The Indian manager had however sent a message earlier and convinced Graeme Smith not to press for a Timed Out dismissal. Thank you, Mr. Smith for keeping the spirit of cricket alive.

A couple of interesting questions do come to mind:

- Cricket's Law 31 is not very clear about who would have been given out. Would it have been Sachin, the official number 4 or VVS Laxman/Ganguly, the next eligible batsman?

- For the above I have assumed that the umpires go by the official player list, given in order by the team management before start of play. In the current test, India's opening pair changed - does the captain give out a new list at the beginning of the second innings? Else, the batsman to be given timed out may have already been out!!

- Why did Saurav Ganguly step in? Where was VVS Laxman? The official version is that he was under the shower - in their post match remarks on Star Sports, Messers Ravi Shastri and Sunil Gavaskar rubbished the official position. The experience duo (they a combined experience of more than a 1000 days of international cricket) was pretty sure that VVS Laxman was not under the shower at all, though very, very close to it. What shit is that!!

TAILs up: India aHEAD after day 1 at Capetown

Come to think of it - Rahuld Dravid could have as easily said HEADS, and the belter of a wicket that has been created for the India vs South Africa decider Test would have possibly resulted in day 1 ending with South Africa batting at 250/3. But at the all important toss, the Indian captain predicted correctly and when the coin completed its short U-journey back and came to rest on the Newlands surface, it was TAILS up for India. In both the previous Tests on this tour, the captains who has won the toss has gone on to win the match. And just like Dravid did today, both chose to bat first.

Come to think of it

- the most crucial event of the match may have actually happened before a

single ball is bowled!!

Come to think of it

- lots and lots of matches are actually decided not on day 4 or day 5, but on day 1.

Come to think of it

- Cricket is a funny game!! No wonder they keep saying it all the time.

If you are the kind who prefer statistical evidence to prose & poetry, you may check out this wonderful effort on the importance of the toss in cricket, by a Stephen Samuleson. Click here.

Half-Monty, Twelve & Thirteen

Punter Ponting had forecasted that it would be Symond's match.....

At 172/4, with Andrew Symonds's cricket bat in full swing, the Australian captain would have thought that he had put his dollars at the right place. And why not, Symonds was on 26 off just 30 balls. Poor Monty had already been clobbered for two huge 6's in a space of 3 balls, with Symonds also showing his defensive skills in the delivery in-between. It's funny then, how dramatically the script changed, and how wrong Punter was!

Well, it actually turned out to be Poor Monty's match!! That he had just finished his unluckiest overs was a factor the Australians forgot to factor in! Now, the Englishmen find the number 13 unlucky and Sikhs despise the dozen. Monty Panesar happens to be both - once through with his 12th and 13th overs, Monty struck, and struck big time. In the very next over, he dashed Punter's gargantuan hopes. In his next (15th), he struck again - Gilly gobbled up and Monty on fire. Four overs later, the new-kid-on-the-spin bamboozled the original master and before he hit the scare of the double dozen, Monty trapped Lee in his 23rd over to complete his Half-Monty. ( 5/92 )

Harmison and Hoggard decimated the remaining half of Australian cricket and from here, it's upto the English willows to deliver the goodies . 2-1 will be an ideal scoreline to enter the Boxing Day Test with....it's good fun jumpin' the gun sometimes na?

Playing Selector: India vs SA, 1st Test

What should the Indian team for the 1st test against South Africa look like? I know, going by the current state of our cricket there ain't much hope but none-the-less cricket lovers like nothing more than playing selector, so here i go.

I will take up the easy ones first - amongst the batting slots there's only one that should be a certainty on current form and record. Ironically enough, that's the last of the slots for the specialised batsmen - at no.6, Saurav Ganguly looks a certainty. Of course, master batsman Tendulkar too will make it to his two-down position on the sheer dint of his records and sheer class, though his current form looks more than a little wobbly. More than anything else, it's the twin failures that he has just collected at Potchefstroom that's worrying me. The two Vs will make it too - Sehwag & Laxman, at #1 & #5 respectively. Latest news suggest that Rahul Dravid will be fit by the time the first ball is bowled at Johannesburg, and in that case he is definitely in at No.3.

Among the batting positions, we are still left with one slot which we we will deal with later. Amongst the bowlers, Zaheer has already ensured his place in the team with his performances on the tour. Against the Rest of South Africa, VRV impressed with his bowling and wins a place in my team. Kumble finds a place too, and so does Harbhajan Singh. Spin has been India's strength, and history has shown that selecting a lone spinner has often hurt India in the past. On the second or third afternoon, when the fast bowlers begin to look insipid when a partnership lasts for more than a full session, the attack needs variety. The duo of Kumble and Harbhajan provide that much needed spice to the attack - unfortunately for Sreesanth, i can't offer him a seat in the starting XI.

That leaves us with 2 empty slots - the wicket-keeper's one is a sitter, so we can ignore that and move to the final one. Who should open the innings with Virender Sehwag? In all probability, the Indian cricket think-tank will persist with Jaffer but this is my blog and i have my liberties which i am going to make full use of. Jaffer was on display recently and looks terrible - there's no point going into a match with a sure-shot failure. Problem is, we don't have an option. In that case, let's not waste a slot completely. Induct Pathan, afterall he has been your best batsman so far. Let him open. He will probably not fare worse than Jaffer. Even if he does fail with the bat, he can provide you with a genuine 5th bowling option. What say?

My team:

Sehwag, Pathan, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman,

Dhoni,

Kumble, Harbhajan, Zaheer, VRV

Cheeky Cricket

40.2 Nel to Karthik, FOUR, that's a unique shot! good length delivery outside the off stump - Karthik shuffles across a long way, manages to gets inside the line and then he lofts it over the keeper - cheaky

That's an extract from George Benoy's ball-by-ball commentary at Cricinfo for yesterday's match between India & South Africa. What George meant was cheeky, (so it's just a typing error) and even Harsha Bhogle described the shot as cheeky. It was cheeky indeed, but the CHEEKINESS was nothing if you compare it to a historic shot that was played on this very day, exactly seventy-eight years ago.

On the 3rd of December 1928, in a match between the Hindus and Parsees (Bombay Quadrangular) a bowler was so taken aback by a shot that he appealed: Kumar Shree Duleepsinhji had just played the world's first reverse sweep!! In A Book of Cricket Days, Bakhtiar Dadabhoy captures the moment in the words of the non-striker L.P. Jai - "Without changing the grip of the bat, he tried to turn the wide ball backwards towards third man with his bat turned and facing the wicket-keeper". Cheeky!!

Ganguly is back, but why did he go?

Saurav Ganguly is back.
I would have been delighted even if the recall had not been a deserved one. But fortunately for Indian cricket, Dilip Vengsarkar is not my best buddy, and Ganguly’s inclusion in the test squad for South Africa was for authentic cricketing reasons only.

While I rejoice over his recall, what’s indeed sad is that India’s most successful captain was dropped from the Indian cricket team that easily, that too on very questionable grounds.( more on that later) For these, I don’t blame the selectors or the Indian cricket board, but the biggest menace of them all – the Indian public. I feel saddened to say this but my countrymen are largely a bunch of idiots, selfish, absolutely myopic and illogical. They were the ones who created an atmosphere where it began to be felt that Ganguly was past his prime, and the selectors threw away all logic out of the window when they took two wrong decisions, first to strip him of his captaincy, and then to drop him from the team itself.

Funnily enough, the world’s second highest century scorer in limited overs cricket was retained in the test squad and dropped from that part of the game where he was stronger. I am sure there would be hardly anyone who would argue with this part!

And then why was he dropped from the test team as well?
In the chronological order he scored 144, 2, 12, 37, 73, 16, 77, 45, 5, 9, 57, 40, 71, 88, 21, 12, 1, 1, 2, 101, 16, 5, 40, 39, 34 & 37 in his last 20 test matches. Before you begin to calculate the average, mode and medians just try to decide with a glance at the list. Chances are you will agree with me that a player doesn’t deserve to be dropped based on this series of scores. If you are still keen, let me tell you that the average works out to over 38. (The median is over 30, and the highest mode is 40!)

Want more statistics? Ganguly averages around 40 in his last six innings. If you think I am stretching the number to six to include that century in Zimbabwe, let’s drop it. Ganguly averages close to 40 even in his last 4 innings. Why I included six was for 2 reasons – these tests are spread across months and more than one series and venue. Further, if a player has been selected for a series or match and he has performed well, it’s quite stupid that you should then drop him for some past performances, which however, as I have illustrated is again not true. There was just one really lean patch where he fared badly – that stretch of 21,12,1,1,2 – this was against Pakistan at home. But he sprung back soon to score a century in Harare, and performed creditably against Pakistan in Pakistan. On pure batting reasons alone, statistically or otherwise, should he have been dropped?

Even if there was a dip, wasn’t there reason to be a little lenient on India’s most successful captain ever, someone who had got the team to believe in itself, someone who was winning series after series for India. A victory starved nation which was in the throes of the match-fixing scandal had been transformed beyond recognition by this man – look at the above series of scores again. That first one, the big 144 was probably the most important test century scored by an Indian cricketer in the last two decades. India were in Australia playing the first test of a new series at Brisbane. The technically sound duo of Tendulkar and Dravid had just been scalped by Jason Gillespie for a total of 1 runs. That’s when Ganguly stepped in and resurrected the team. If Ganguly had failed that day, what’s now a glorious chapter of India’s cricketing history may never have been.

As I write this, another silly poll on a another silly tv channel where lots of silly people participate says that 95% of my countrymen now think that Ganguly should be made captain as well. My advise to the selectors is simple – don’t listen to these idiots. Make him captain if you should, but for better reasons. Yeah, another one – come what may, don’t drop him further, not till the World Cup at least. It was Ganguly who made us so optimistic that we were not happy with a runners-up position at the previous World Cup. With him around, we may just have a chance again….

Cricket's Cup of Woes

The Ashes is round the corner, the world's biggest cricket show is just a few months away, my team is beginning their campaign in South Africa later today, yet I am not getting terribly excited about cricket. So much so that after the frenetic activity i displayed during the Champions Trophy, I haven't posted a single entry in the last 10 days. There's something definitely wrong with the world of cricket....

The two touring teams have begun their campaigns in identical fashion - while the Prime Minister's XI have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Englishmen, the Indians fared only marginally better in their tour opener against a Rest of South Africa team. Of the twenty-two batsmen on display from the two touring teams, as many as 13 failed to reach double digit scores including a duck each from Raina, Mongia and Anderson. These curtain-raisers don't bode too well for the cricket ahead and what makes matters worse is the injury lists - Marcus Trescothick, an important component of the vicotorious Ashes team ( 2005) with 431 runs in that cricket-at-its-very-best series is out of contention due to some stress related problems, Yuvraj Singh who tore his ligament playing kho-kho with his shoes on has added to India's already long list of batting woes, Sehwag is in discomfort, Flintoff is not in the pink of health and i am sure i am missing out on a couple of others.

Another Ashes drubbing looks not too far away for the Pommies and the Indians, who have always found South Africa in South Africa the toughest challenge ever look ready to be slaughtered again. In the tour opener, they found Steyn too tough to handle, wait till they face the likes of Ntini and Pollock on the bouncy Durban. Latest weather reports from Johannesburg (that's where the first ODI is happening later today) say that the sky is turning grey already, unless the clouds are a good nimbus, it might be a gray day ahead for India.

Neither Australia nor South Africa are the teams that they were 5 years back - one is good without being very good, the other very good but not unbeatable any more (i guess you know which adjective fits whom). That makes it only sadder for cricket - an erosion of their strength has been nullified by the alarming plummeting of quality elsewhere. India and England were the rising forces of cricket a couple of seasons back, one had bearded the lion in its den and the other had snatched the Ashes back after a long hiatus. It's mine and cricket's misfortune that their ascendancy has been reversed all too rapidly - we are back to a boring unipolar world !

Any wonder that I am disillusioned and disenchanted with cricket. Want more reasons? Throw a glance at the schedule for the coming World Cup - there are more mismatches than matches. Bermuda is a kind of shorts, a triangle, a nation, an unsolved mystery - that's all i knew about it till the ICC in all its wisdom told me that it's a cricket playing nation and they will be competing at the highest level very soon. Not to miss the others who will be joining the party - Scotland, Netherlands, Canada....is that some convoluted strategy to improve the status of the Bangladeshi and Kenyan cricket teams? I can't think of a better reason for converting cricket's showpiece tournament into a complete circus.

Cricket needs a miracle, and soon. Will you gentlemen join me in the prayer?

****

post script

while researching for the post, came across a site called www.injuryupdate.com !! further research might reveal that its board of directors include Shane Bond, Ashish Nehra, Marcus Trescothick, Sachin Tendulkar....

Dada defies ULFA dadagiri*, scores ton

As Saurav Ganguly & Avishek Jhunjunwala walked back to the pavillion at Guwahati's Nehru Stadium at the end of the 2nd day's play of the Deodhar Trophy encounter between East & North zones, the only thing on their minds must have been the huge score piled up by North in the first innings. In a little over an hour the situation changed dramatically, and by the time the players reached their hotel, cricket had taken a clear back seat.

Within minutes of each other, at about 1840 hrs local time, the Assam capital had been rocked by 3 bomb blasts leaving 15 dead, and at least 30 injured. Not surprisingly, a number of players fearing for their safety, called for the match to be abandoned. It was only after an assurance of safety from the Govt of Assam and reassurance from senior pros including Ganguly that the players relented.

Cricket resumed the next morning, and the few brave hearts who had made it to the ground were well rewarded - they got what they had asked for, and a little more. It was vintage Ganguly at his classical best. By modern cricket standards, it was a patient innings with the 100 coming off only the 191st ball, but it was an innings under pressure - both from a personal as well as a team point of view. Chasing a mammoth 504, East had lost two quick wickets the day before and Ganguly, who is out of the national team badly needed a big score for himself. And that's what he did - three 6's and a dozen 4's - and still undefeated at 118. The big question now is - can he continue with this form and make it back, to where he belongs ?

United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) is an insurgent group active in Assam for over 20 years now. They seek independence from India and are not averse to using violent means towards attaining their objective. Though they have not yet claimed responsibility for these blasts, intelligence sources say that ULFA is the most likely group behind the blasts.

* dadagiri - an indian slang for bullyism