Plagued by the 20-20 war…

After a short break from India’s tour to Australia, I was looking forward to see some good test cricket action from the current set of series – ie. West Indies v/s Sri Lanka, England v/s New Zealand and India v/s South Africa. Unfortunately except for some good cricketing moments in New Zealand, the other series seem to be already disappointing.

Sri Lanka has just completed their first test victory in the West Indies. I should say that despite a lackluster West Indies batting (I wonder why Sarwan should be there in the team at all) and incomplete bowling attack, a win is a win. I particularly liked Srilanka’s upcoming batting heroes and veteran bowlers Vaas and Murali. But the pancake pitch again did not help the cause of test cricket.

After an exciting One day series display by NZ, England regrouped well and won the test series in New Zealand. Ryan Sidebottom and Tim Ambrose, the debutant, were exciting to watch. A test series that is ending up with good result-oriented matches is always a pleasure to watch and that way I liked this entire series. The highlight of the series also was Stephen Fleming’s last appearance for New Zealand. I will write him a little later, but definitely New Zealand’s test cricket will struggle without him as well as Shane Bond who retired to join the Indian Cricket League.

The test series between India and South Africa has started on a pathetic note in Chennai. Though the pitch build quality as well as the ground is good it’s still a flat batting track which will definitely help the flat-pitch-bullies on either side while RP Singh and Sreesanth will break their backs. Time and again, it’s frustrating not to see any action from BCCI in this regard. They seem to be fully concentrating on 20-20 premier league now.

The premier league is affecting the players’ approach to the game as well. Most of them look like preserving time and energy for the money making part of the game rather than being good to cricket. Though I am looking forward to see the 20-20 action as well, it’s almost sure that India’s (BCCI’s) approach to the business of cricket will soon land them in trouble.

God save test cricket!

A tribute to Gilly Da(n)da !

No other Australian cricketer – even the big Don, Allen Border or Shane Warne – has ever been more popular than Adam Gilchrist simply due to the way he played his cricket. While his entertainment on the field attracted fans all around the world, the human being that Gilchrist is, made him even well-liked among cricket lovers, especially in the sub-continent and other developing parts of the world.

The Gilchrist story cannot be merely depicted in terms of batting/keeping averages. As for wicket keeping techniques, I thought he was probably a little ordinary though exciting. adam gilchrist But at a time when the wicket keeper was a specialist position and nothing much was expected out of that role in terms of batting, Gilly walked into the team with a different agenda. 5570 test runs out of 96 matches at an average of 47.60, 17 centuries and strike rate of 82 is nothing short of extra-ordinary for a wicket keeper and No:7 batsman (Remember our own specialist batsman Sourav Ganguly averages only 42 with more than 100 tests under his belt)

Even more exhilarating is the way Gilly played his one-day cricket. A career strike rate of 97 at an average of 35.89 for an opener means that majority of the bowlers suffered (danda!) at his hands in the brutal display of explosive batting. It was comparable or even better than his contemporaries like Sanath Jayasuriya and Virender Sehwag in terms of converting the number of appearances into team’s win. And teaming up with an equally – but more technically equipped – explosive Mathew Hayden meant that it was an era that the world cricket will miss for a long long time.

It is sad that Gilly is going out on lower note with himself scoring not many runs in the last few matches. Even more hurting for the fans and Cricket Australia is the fact that Australia lost the last three matches he was part of and also the triangular CB Series. However, the unselfish (how many successful cricketers are not selfish these days?) way in which Gilly played his cricket will be remembered by world cricket for ever. And retiring at the right time instead of stretching his career for an year or two longer, makes him an even more special person.

The man who was Australian like in terms of aggression also played his cricket fair. Gilly is known for his sportsmanship on and off the ground. Who could forget the Gilchrist who walks out without waiting for the umpire’s decision when he feels that
he was out! And how many cricketers do that consistently through out their careers? Also, Gilchrist is known to be a friendly character even outside the field – not just with his compatriots but also with other gentlemen cricketers around the world. I read somewhere that Gilchrist consistently tried to get Anil Kumble’s home telephone number in Bangalore for almost 10 days – before being successful – to congratulate him on completing his 600 wickets in tests.

For what he has done to the world cricket, Gilly deserves a hall-of-fame entry for it is really hard for the cricket fraternity to get to see a similar personality in the near future!

Does Bangladesh deserve to play test matches?

I just finished watching the record breaking opening stand of 415 runs between Graem Smith and Neil McKenzie during the second test between Bangladesh and S.Africa. The record definitely was a boon to Graem Smith who didn’t have a very good run in the recent past. And for a mediocre test cricketer like Neil McKenzie, a double ton – and only third century in 44 matches – assisted by poor bowling & fielding, pancake flat pitch and fast outfield was more than winning the super lotto!

Bangladesh had their downs and some ups in the limited over cricket arena. Their ex-couch, Dave Whatmore, groomed a better fielding side comprising of a bunch of aggressive youngsters with some batting and bowling abilities, during his stint as the national coach. His success as a coach included Bangladesh handing an unexpected blow to the Indian team during their first round exit from last world cup. However, what even Mr. Whatmore could not do is to turn around their fortunes in the longer format of the game.

Since Bangladesh got into the test playing nations’ league in 2000, they have played 53 matches and managed to win only one against an ever weakening Zimbabwe side. Not winning is still acceptable for a budding test side, but not having no more than five draws out of 50 plus matches shows how weak this test side is. Other teams like Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe had put together a better show and steady improvement after they qualified to play test matches 15-20 years back. But Bangladesh doesn’t seem to get their act together at all despite having a couple of good bowlers and a good attacking batsman in the form of Mohammed Ashraful.

It is high time ICC looked into this matter and disqualified Bangladesh from playing test matches. Otherwise the Bangladesh board themself should step down from the league like the example set by Zimbabwe last year. The other option is to have two different test leagues. The first division league consisting of Australia, England, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, West Indies and a second division league having Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Kenya etc. As and when the quality of their cricket improves they can qualify to play the first division or premier league. If not, it will only help certain modern day batsmen to pile up records against weaker nations!

Under-19 ICC Worldcup round up

The ICC Under-19 World Cup pool matches have been just completed. The first round saw the dominance of sub-continent teams with all of them – Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh – leading the group tally, definitely reinstating the fact that kids pick the game early in this part of the world. Also, Bangladesh managed to register an upset win over England in a low scoring encounter.

The event so far has been built around very low-scoring matches. The reason could be the presence of a number of mediocre teams. The knockout round or super-league is where the game actually starts and we might get to see two or three close matches there.

I was trying to pick myself a favourite or well-balanced team but unfortunately I couldn’t pick any as yet. The Australian and South African sides were disappointing though they had a batsman or a bowler respectively in the top ranks. There are couple of performers in all teams, either in the bowling department or batting but no balanced composition. But as an overall package, the Indian team coached by Dave Whatmore looks promising. ICC under 19 world cup logoHowever, the Indian batsmen’s aggressive approach is more influenced by the Twenty 20 format and I doubt if any of them will make it to the national test squad in the coming years. There are three or four Yuvraj Singh like batsmen but sad not to find any Dravid or Laxman like personality yet. The Indian test team middle order soon will have to be satisfied with couple of one-day players when the big four retires. Hard-hitting opening batsman Kohli, Tanmay Srivastava, wicket keeper batsman Shreevats Goswami and captain Virat Kohli were impressive from batting point of view. The bowling department looked weaker and I didn’t find anybody particularly exciting including the left-arm spinner Iqbal Abdulla. So more or less its batting wins matches for India.

England seems to have a wonderful pair of opening pace bowlers. Steven Finn and James Harris pair looked like they will make it to their national squad soon. They also have a batsman with an excellent temperament in the form of Billie Godleman. So England is my second favourite team and also credits to them due to the presence of two or three test quality players. Though Srilanka and Pakistan dominated their groups, neither of the teams looked balanced. The much hyped Umar Akmal (brother of Pakistani wicket keeper batsman Kamran Akmal) was not that impressive and no Pakistani pacers were really impressive – at least nobody like Anwar Ali (I still wonder why he is not in the Pakistan national squad yet) from the last Under-19 world cup winning team. Also Srilanka might not get to see another Chaminda Vaas, Muralidharan or Kumar Sangakkara in the near future. West Indies however seems to have a good opening batsman, Adrian Bharat, who have impressed Brian Lara a few years back itself though we are yet to see him leading his team’s batting from the forefront in this event.

Looking forward to the knockout games where we may get to see some good matches when teams of similar bandwidth rub against each other.

IPL – An opportunity or threat?

The Indian Premier League (IPL), which was originally devised by the BCCI to counter the Indian Cricket League (ICL), seems to be getting bigger than anybody would have thought. Even before the event is kicked off, it has managed to attract so much of international attention and has really become a headache for cricket bodies across the world.

The cash rich BCCI has been really successful, so far, in selling the new idea not only to the potential players and officials but to large business houses, broadcasters and even bollywood celebrities. The 10 year broadcasting rights was given to Sony Entertainment Television for a whopping $1 billion (4000cr rupees!!!). There could be 1000s of crores of other income per year in the form of franchisees, endorsements etc. So in short, it’s pretty clear that BCCI is now running like a business rather than a governing body that stands for the interest of the game. And all this money is for cricket, cricket and more cricket.

More than the mismanaged money of a developing nation, there are other issues as well. Suddenly, a number of international players seem to be opting for early retirement in order to sign up with the IPL. The money that they are going to make for a two months’ summer holiday in India is much more than what they might get for an year’s central contract by their respective cricket controlling bodies. Since BCCI managed to convince ICC about this new Twenty 20 league, local bodies may not have much say. ICC wouldn’t have even dreamt of the revenue potential from IPL, in which case even they would have laid out profit sharing guidelines and other rules to restrict player pouching.

Even worse is the current situation that Cricket Australia is going through. A lot of Australian players – predominantly those who have signed up with IPL – seems to be opting out of the planned tour to Pakistan citing personal issues and safety concerns. In fact, the tour to Pakistan is clashing partly with the IPL summer schedule and this sounds more like a plan to make some quick money with IPL by skipping the Pak tour. BCCI is adding more fun to the whole drama by allowing Pakistan to play a few ODIs against India if tour by Australia is cancelled! All these sound so fishy and I feel that BCCI is growing bigger than the game and all other cricket playing nations and ICC put together. These developments are probably going to jeopardize the game sooner or later.

If IPL is really in the interest of the game, I think ICC should include the same in the overall international cricket agenda and also formulate plans to help other cricket boards who loose their players to IPL. The money required for the same has to be shared by IPL and BCCI. Also, it would be great if BCCI is redirecting part of their huge profits for the betterment of other sports or even to address some social and economical issues in India. That is when IPL becomes a real opportunity for all and cricket really becomes the religion of India!

The new pace brigade!

India’s bowling attack, at the moment, seems to be riding smoothly on the newly found vigor of a number of quality pace bowlers. In fact the trend started five to six years back with Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra taking over the baton from the able Srinath-Prasad duo. Since then India always had six or seven quality bowlers to pick the final pace bowling lineup from and the good thing is that the supply doesn’t ishant sharma seem to stop at all. While this is a very good sign, I strongly believe that the current system in India still do not have the infrastructure to produce and maintain match fit fast bowlers.

Historically India almost always trusted their spinners to drive the bowling department, both at home and abroad, for test matches as well as shorter version of the game. This had worked well when many great teams did not know how to play spin bowling and for sure we had some great masters of that art. Kapil Dev and co created history in the early 80s with the help of a bunch of medium pacer all-rounders but they were still not good enough to win test matches abroad. After that in the 90s we had a couple of quality pacers out of which Javagal Srinath stands out (best Indian pacer ever in my books, Kapil fans please excuse) in terms of consistency and quality. But even then the composition of the team was always around the spinners and we never won a good number of test matches abroad. The case is slightly different right now with the Indian team winning test matches in West Indies, England, South Africa and Australia in a span of two years – This time around the victory being set up by the young pacemen on the side and not completely by the much advertised batting order.

Unfortunately, in a country where batsmen are gods it is very difficult to get support for these new warriors – both from fans and the authorities. Indian fans still want flat wickets in India where their batters make merry in every single outing and the sponsors get the value for the money spent. It is really a pity that in a cricket crazy country, we still do not have a handful of bouncy (good consistent bounce, I mean) or fast wickets. Of course, there are exceptions like Mohali but we need a lot more good pitches to support our newly found skills. As a matter of fact, good pitches will only help us to spot and nurture good batting talent as well which will in turn help the overall team performance at the international level as well as domestic cricket.

Another commonly found issue with the selection process is that they keep trying the same bowling combination for a prolonged number of matches than desired. This overuse has a very bad impact on the fast bowlers’ fitness. Many of us still keep wondering whatever happend to L Balaji and Ashish Nehra who were once hailed as the key members of the Indian squad for the next ten years. The same issues seem to be proping up with Zaheer Khan, Munaf Patel (time and again), RP Singh and Sreesanth as well. It is high time the authorities thought about this issue and maintained a rotation policy for bowlers. If there is a pool of five or six fit bowlers one could rotate one at a time every two or three matches and keep all of them fit. The international cricket schedule is always pretty tight for India due to the huge number of one-dayers that they play and hence this kind of a set up has to be in place at the earliest.

The rotation policy should be further improved by the addition of good support staff. Fortunately, India now have a good fitness expert and an excellent bowling coach. The post of the bowling coach, in the past, was never a permanent one for India. But the authorities should realize the benefits of having a bowling coach (and a fielding one as well) and give longer terms for such important roles.

As I write this blog, I have been watching Ishant Sharma’s beautiful spell in the fourth one-dayer of the triangular series. Many Australian eyebrows have already raised on seeing and experiencing the lethal Indian pace attack and the good job done during the test series. The bowlers are keeping that momentum in the one dayers as well despite loosing RP Singh and Zaheer Khan due to injuries. I only hope that in the future youngsters like Ishant Sharma would not succumb to the pressure and fatigue created by tight schedules and lack of support system. Is BCCI listening?