Pakistan vs Sri Lanka | Schedule | One Days

1st ODI : 20th January, Karachi (Day Night Game)
2nd ODI: 21st January, Karachi (Day Night Game)
3rd ODI: 24th January, Lahore (Day Night Game)

Live Telecast of the Cricket Matches will start at 0700 hrs GMT for the Karachi matches and 0630 hrs for the Lahore Match. You can watch the cricket live on Ten Sports.

Live Cricket Streaming | India vs England ODI Series

Are you a cricket lover stuck in a place with no live telecast of the cricket on TV? If so, then you may be searching for information and links for watching Live Cricket Streaming Online on the internet, maybe for free! The India-England One-Day Series starts on 14th November 2008 with the 1st ODI match in Rajkot, hardly a few days after the fourth Test between India and Australia ends in Nagpur.

You can check this previous post to get more information and to get links for Live Cricket Streaming for the India vs England ODI Series 2008 . If you have useful info regarding free cricket sopcasts or webcasts, please share it with fellow cricket fans using the comments area of this blogspot.

India vs Australia: 1st One-day : Bangalore

A seven match ODI series between India and Australia begins today (29th September 2007) at the Chinnaswami Stadium in Bangalore.

India Team for the Bangalore One-Day:
Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain), Zaheer Khan, Sreesanth, R P Singh, Ramesh Powar, Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh, Irfan Pathan, Gautam Gambhir

Australia Team:
Adam Gilchrist (captain), Matthew Hayden, Brad Hogg, Brad Hodge, Haddin, Hopes, Andrew Symonds, Mitchell Johnson, Brett Lee, Michael Clark, Stuart Clark

(5 surnames in the Australia team start with the letter H. Is that a record?)

Starting with this India-Australia match, the new ICC rules for One-day Internationals come into effect:

- If a bowler bowls a front foot no-ball, the following delivery will be deemed a free hit and the batsman cannot be dismissed by the bowler from that delivery. He can only be run out. ( the T20 free hit rule has been imported into ODI cricket)
- Additional fielder during the 2nd and 3rd powerplays.

This i think is the really sensible one:
- Mandatory change of ball after the 35th over. Not a new ball, but a clean used one.

- Proportionate reduction in powerplay overs (of the 2 kinds) if the innings is shortened.

It will also be interesting to see if the T20 kind of cricket has any immediate effects on the original slam-bang cricket. Captains couldn't have ignored the fact that it is quite possible to score 170-200 runs in 20 overs. The traditional 'good average' of 6 at the end of the powerplay overs may be questioned sooner than later. I have a feeling 400s would be far more frequent than they have been in the past!!!

India vs Australia: Match Schedule and Timings

The Australian team has already arrived in India and barring for the lone Twenty20 match at the end of the tour, it will be Australia who will be playing as the World Champions in this primarily One-Day Tour. Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who will be leading India for the first time in a One-day series will know that 50 overs is a different ball game compared to the fare that was dished out recently in South Africa. Plus he will now need to handle 3 ex-captains in the team. Let's hope that Dhoni will be able to leave as strong a mark on this game as he did in the other.

Here's the full schedule of Australia's tour comprising 7 one-day internationals and 1 Twenty20 encounter.

Match	Date	Time	Venue
India vs Australia 1st ODI	29 September	2:30 pm IST (d/n)	Bangalore
2nd One-Day	2 October	9:00 am	Kochi
3rd ODI	5 October	9:00 am	Hyderabad
4th ODI	9 October	9:00 am	Chandigarh
5th ODI	11 October	9:00 am	Vadodara
6th ODI	14 October	9:00 am	Nagpur
7th One-dayer	17 October	2:30 pm (d/n)	Mumbai
Only Twenty20 India vs Australia	20 October	7:00 pm(d/n)	Mumbai

* The ODI at Mumbai is live from the Wankhede Stadium and the T20 match will be held at the Brabourne Stadium.

Uthappa puts India at 3-3

Ultimately two Uthappa boudaries proved to be more powerful than Mascarenha's five sixes, Boy! the young lad kept his cool even as wickets kept falling on the other side - and when he finally added some chutzpah to the cool, he got too hot for the English bowlers to control. Absolutely brilliant!

316 runs is a lot of runs; only a few days back Ravi Shastri had commented how the 15-20 runs scored beyond the 300 often become the most important in the final analysis. They almost did today until Uthappa joined the party at about the perfect time for Team India.

Of course, things would have never got that close without the strong foundation provided by the opening pair of Sachin Tendulkar-Saurav Ganguly. Today's was their 20th hundred run partnership - the 150 runs put up by the duo insured India against the quick loss of wickets which happened once Sachin fell. Both the veterans were batting at their best with Tendulkar especially being in sublime touch. The little master's suprising recent run of failures to get into the triple figure mark has only meant him touching another record - Sachin is now tied with Inzamam at 84 fifties, the highest in ODI cricket.

This victory will spark remarks about the usefulness of the 7th batsmen. Ganguly supporters will remind all and sundry how the 7-batsmen theory had been so succesfully employed by the former captain, and how he was proved right again today. While i'm not against 7 batsmen, it cannot be at the expense of a 5th bowler. Supporters of the 7-4 theory only need to look at the carnage that happened in the final over of the England innings. Had a regular 5th bowler been around, Uthappa's wonderful efforts may not have been required in the first place.

Reinventing the Power Plays

Rahul Dravid seems to be a nice sort of bloke - the kind of guy who won't trouble you or demand much. Now India's gentleman captain is very happy with the peanut of a modification to the powerplay fielding rules. The ICC has made an amendment to the rule allowing an extra fielder outside the 30 yard circle beyond the first 10 overs. Dravid rightly thinks that it will allow him and other captains to bring in a spinner within the powerplay overs and has welcomed the change - but it begs a question which my captain didn't ask. Is that all that can be done?

Even the ICC would agree, albeit grudgingly that the move to increase the powerplay duration from 15 to 20 overs has been a complete failure. The bowling captains have been very risk-averse, mostly choosing to go for the 2nd and 3rd powerplays in succession after the 1st and one can hardly blame them for it. In the few cases where an enterprising captain has taken the risk of postponing the decision, he has mostly ended up ruing the adventure. You might have seen Brian Lara who having deferred the final powerplay in the World Cup match against South Africa never got an apt opportunity to take it and ended up looking really silly when he was forced to take it in the 44th over. Fleming, arguably the best ODI captain of recent year did try experimenting but never really with much success. The fact is that the dice was loaded against any experimentation by the fielding captain.

But the batting captain? Did anyone think of that? Pass the buck to him and the situation changes dramatically. Imagine the batting captain's predicament! Should he let his rampaging openers continue unabated or wait for a cracker of an end? If he waits, he may lose the momentum. If he doesn't wait, he is letting the fielding captain - he is not hanging in suspense anymore and can rotate his bowlers freely. Noticed that? Suddenly the fielding captain is now forced to take decisions, to experiment. More decisions and more drama. Isn't that what the ICC wanted in the first place?