(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.

India vs Sri Lanka / Cricket Selectors

Saurav Ganguly is back with a bang, and India plays cricket today in his backyard today at the famous Eden Gardens... a mouth-watering prospect for Ganguly fans like me.

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Latest media reports suggest that Irfan Pathan & Yuvraj Singh are unlikely to play today on account of a sore shoulder and a stiff back respectively. In an ideal world, neither should expect to be an automatic selection for the world cup..one was dropped from the team for acute lack of bowling form and has done nothing since then to merit a call for the world cup, the other has been out of the team due to injury for a long time now, and it's not always easy to make a swift comeback. ...and post this match, Vengsarkar & co. get just one more chance before they need to decide the final Indian 15 for cricket's mega show in the caribbean.

It'd be an interesting wait-n-watch this one. Starting from the 1987 Cricket World Cup ( don't remember much before that), I don't think the selectors would have ever had such a problem as far as World Cup selections are concerned. A core 12 would have always been beyond doubt - all that the selectors needed to rack their brains about was about the bench warmers, people like sanjay bangar and parthiv patel. This time it's going to be a tougher one though..let's see how the colonel performs.

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India vs Sri Lanka, Eden Gardens, Kolkata. Thursday, 8th February 2007

Match live on Neo-sports from 1:00 pm (including pre-match nonsense) and on Doordarshan from 2:30 pm IST

For live streaming audio on the internet, click here.

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.

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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.

Did India get it right at Capetown?

I didn't see the match yesterday, so this late comment - now based on today's cricket stories in the morning's Hindustan Times...

Neil Manthorp, the newspaper's cricket correspondent reports from Cape Town - Bennet Hewe has prepared a pitched that might have been easily imported from Delhi. " Bone-dry and short of grass, it offered the home side's seamers nothing........but even worse for Grame Smith's team were the scuffed and worn patches at either end that will deteriorate quickly as the match progresses - to the delight of Anil Kumble."

India are comfortably placed at 254/3, but still a few questions cannot be completely stifled:

- If the wicket was a belter, and so similar to Delhi's, was this the right time to demote Virender Sehwag? With all due respect to Jaffer and Karthick, who have both done a wonderful job, if Sehwag had succeeded the scoreline could have been well in excess of 300. High scoring rates is a major weapon with which the Aussies have slaughtered opposition relentlessly now - we will know about the impact of this slow batting rate once the Proteas start batting.

- If the wicket is so very likely to crack, shouldn't Harbhajan Singh have been picked up ahead of Munaf Patel? ( and not the fittest either )

In my previous post, we had discussed the importance of one pre-match element: the toss. This one, one which happens before the toss, might be almost as crucial - it's called team selection!!