Category Archives: India

Dravid gets another go at it!

Posted on 17 August 2009 by | 2 Comments

Rahul Dravid has been included in the Indian team that will be playing in Sri Lanka and later on in South Africa in the Champions Trophy. His performances at the IPL seem to have paid off and he gets another life in the one day arena. Rohit Sharma is the player at the receiving end, unfortunately, in my opinion. I personally think that Rohit Sharma deserves another chance to prove his talent. He is certainly a future player for India and should have been retained in the side in place of Yusuf Pathan. Yusuf Pathan is a highly overrated player whose magic seems to work okay in the T20 form but is highly suspect in the one day version. If Rohit’s place was going to be uncertain, I would have thought he should have played in the Emerging Players tournament in Australia. That way, it would have given him an opportunity to prove to the selectors that he is still a worthy investment.

While Amit Mishra and Abhishek Nayar can credit their performances in Australia recently for their inclusion in the side, Virat Kohli may consider himself unlucky. He was by far the best player in the tournament and could have possibly taken Dinesh Karthik’s place. Clearly, politics has come into play with respect to the Dinesh Karthik/Pragyan Ojha situation, one sacrificed for the other

The rest of the side seems well balanced with Tendulkar coming back at the top and Raina possibly playing at #5 now with Dravid coming in at #3. I would think the playing XI would look something like:

1. Sachin Tendulkar

2. Gautam Gambhir

3. Rahul Dravid

4. Yuvraj Singh

5. Suresh Raina

6. M. S. Dhoni

7. Abhishek Nayar/Yusuf Pathan

8. Harbhajan Singh

9. Praveen Kumar

10. Ashish Nehra

11. RP Singh/Ishant Sharma

Let the games begin, I say.

- Srikanth

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Posted in Dhoni, Harbhajan Singh, India, IPL

Curtains for Badrinath?

Posted on 25 January 2009 by | 5 Comments

Several months and a few dozen posts back, I had made a statement that Subramaniam Badrinath tends to fail in key national games. Someone challenged me to it and I was going to dig into stats and prove my point. I hope to be able to find the time to get around doing it but, for certain, his performance in the ongoing Duleep Trophy game against Central Zone will only improve my statistics. Is this curtains for him or is there still hope? With Rohit Sharma banging on the doors with strong performances in the Ranji finals and Dinesh Karthik not calling quits yet, does Badrinath even stand a chance? While only time will answer this question, my personal feeling is that his performance combined with age will soon place him in the Mohd. Kaif category.

The Duleep Trophy game has raised some interesting thoughts . Is Abhinav Mukund ready for big leagues? Is AS Yadav that terrible, even he has scored a half century? Is Balaji back in the reckoning and has Sreesanth done enough to earn a recall? I am quite impressed with Dinesh Karthik’s attitude, he seems much better placed than Parthiv Patel to qualify for the second wicket keeper spot at this time and his approach to batting provides him an opportunity the likes of Suresh Raina for a middle order spot in the one day side.

All action seems to bode well for an interesting year ahead.

- Srikanth

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Posted in Cricinfo, India, Ranji Trophy

Cricket news – Good, Bad and Ugly

Posted on 14 January 2009 by | Leave a comment

The cancelation of the tour to Pakistan may have benefited the domestic season more than any recent seasons that I can think of. The last two or three rounds of ranji games have seen all the top players involved actively. It is anticipated that all the Team India players will represent their respective zones in the Duleep Trophy. While the East Zone selectors seem to play stunt regarding MS Dhoni’s participation, they could have dealt it in a professional way and established contact with him way before he went on vacation. I am predicting that he will still lead the side and play. Whatever the outcome, the tournament has never been so exciting for a long time.

The Ranji trophy finals has been a drag so far. UP is trying to attempt a repeat performance from its semi-finals “win” and, as a result, has made the game extremely boring. I seriously think that they should consider changing the rules of the game atleast in the knock out stages, possibly using the Buchi Babu or Moin-Ud-Dowla rules of limiting the number of overs in the first and second innings. It was rather unfortunate to see TN exit in the semi-finals. While TN may not have had the bowling to restrict UP, they had more victories in the earlier stages of the tournament while UP sneaked through to the finals with only one outright victory if I am not mistaken.  It was good to see Rohit Sharma hit form in a crucial game, while Suresh Raina threw away an opportunity by stupidly running himself out.

There have been several positives from this season’s ranji games. Wasim Jaffer continues to be a possible candidate to the opening/one down slot because of his consistency and his success abroad. His 301 in the semi-finals was a beautiful innings. While A. Rahane was consistent through the season, I can see his “playing away from the body” technique as a limitation when playing international attacks. Abhinav Mukund, for me, has been the biggest story of the season. He scores and scores big. All we can hope  is that he continue playing the way he is now and success will come his way. I see him take over India’s opening slot within the next few years. I was disappointed, in general, with the bowling department. If Sunil Joshi continues to be a major force in the domestics, while good for him, it does not bode well for the future of Indian cricket. Apart from the current international bowling lineup, nothing much can be written about domestic talent. The re-emergence of L.  Balaji, is a postive sign however.

English cricket cannot be in a more laughable situation than what it is going through in the last few months. Geoff Boycott, in his column for the Daily Telegraph, states that “We are not the best cricket team but we are the best at making ourselves a laughing stock”. Absolutely true. In my opinion, it all began with the way the ECB handled the IPL/EPL/Stanford saga. The disaster in the carribean and the subsequent handling of the Pietersen/Moores controversy will seriously affect the chances that England may have had to make it a fight during the Ashes series.

- Srikanth

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Posted in Cricinfo, Dhoni, India, IPL, Ranji Trophy

Pronunciation Watch

Posted on 19 October 2008 by | 4 Comments

Winston Churchill, that master of oration and arrant pedant of the English language, deliberately persisted in pronouncing the word ’Nazis’ as it was spelt and not ‘Naatzis’ as it should have. This was, he declared, a reflection of his utter disdain and disrespect for that particular outfit. 

Now, far be it from me to suggest that the assortment of broadcasters and superannuated Aussie ex-players turned media pundit-s harbour any such sentiments to the holy (cash) cow of world cricket. Nevertheless, they have referred to Ha! bjaan, C-wag, Gam-beer, Soorav Gan-goolie (wink-wink), Lax-man, Raul, Zaa-here, Che-naai, Moom-baai, Poon-jab (wink-wink again) far too long.

One would think they would take their journalistic responsibilities a little more seriously. After all, audiences follow their lead.

If resources to learn from were hard to come by, it would perhaps be grudgingly acceptable. But no, they work with Gavaskar, Shastri, Dileep Premachandran and many more unnamed Indians in the Press Box.

Mangling of foreign names, however, is a proud Aussie tradition, right up there with bank-bashing, barbecues, beer and blinkered reportage. It is not one that will be jettisoned lightly.

Nevertheless, credit where it is due. Brendon Julian on Fox Sports is punctilious with Laxman Sivaramakrishnan’s name. The best the others can manage is Siva.

Soundar

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Posted in Australia, Cricket, Harbhajan Singh, India, Media and Commentary, Pronunciation, Sehwag

Wish list

Posted on 18 October 2008 by | 4 Comments

I started making a wish list before the series started, but never got around to posting it. Here is is no particular order -

  • Bowling team maintaining the over rate. The overs  bowled per day was quite appalling when India toured Australia last summer. There really is no excuse for poor over rates and fines/bans still haven’t done enough to fix this problem. The Indians are notorious for wasting time in the middle and the Aussies aren’t far behind when it comes to over rates. Take Day 1 of the second test for instance – the Aussies ended the day 5 overs short. Sure, there was some time wastage when Gambhir was hit on his helmet and fireworks stopping play (it will take me some time to get over this farce), but that can’t account for more than 2 overs (and I am being very generous here) and if play wasn’t extended by another half hour, we could have been well over 10 overs short for the day!
  • Good pitches for the series. That means no flat tracks (with no result in sight even after 5 days) or dust bowls (that yield a result in two days). It remains to be seen how the pitch holds up in Game 2 – so far, it has been quite flat with not much help to the bowlers, but the condition of the pitches change quite dramatically in India in just a day or two.
  • Result not decided by the toss: The pitch plays a huge role in this and is almost an extension of the previous point. If the toss is such a huge factor in the result of the game, we may as well just call the toss and then go home.
  • Play cricket and not the sledging game. I pay to watch the two teams play cricket and get entertained. I really don’t want to see a sledge fest.  Fortunately, we haven’t seen much of this in this series yet and I hope it stays that way. Unfortunately, the players are still baiting the opposition outside the field. Take Zaheer Khan for instance or Ricky Ponting. What’s up with the holier than thou attitude? - “We go about our cricket in different ways”. ‘Nuff said about that. I just want the players to let their batting or bowling to do the talking.
  • Better umpiring. I don’t want to be too critical of the umpires – it is a hard job and mistakes do occur. But they also tend to alter the direction of the game and that is just not right. I am frankly disappointed that the review system isn’t being used in this series. Oh, well! Hopefully, we don’t see too many bad decisions that alter the course of of this series.

-Mahesh-

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Posted in Australia, Cricket, India

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Australia have themselves to blame

Posted on 14 October 2008 by | 12 Comments

Australia could have well won this game. They didn’t and they only have themselves to blame. They didn’t play the aggressive, positive, fast paced cricket they were used to playing – instead they had a safety first, defensive approach and yet Ponting says –

We were the only ones in the game trying to take the game forward. We played aggressive cricket. I am not surprised by the way they played, the Indian team do play a lot of drawn games.

Let me point out a couple of things -

  • In the first innings, Australia scored 430 runs in 150 overs at the run rate of 2.86 and the majority of its runs were scored by the top order of Katich, Ponting and Hussey. Compare that to India where the lower order scored a good percentage of the runs and yet ended up with a run rate of 3.02. Ahem, but could you point out who played more aggressively, please?
  • In the second innings, the Australians wanted to make sure that they were in a position where they couldn’t lose the game and decided to bat out the overs scoring at a run rate of under 2.5 for over 50 overs of the game. Over fifty overs! And very rarely in their innings did the strike rate ever get to 50 or over. 

A safety first approach is fine, but saying that they were the only ones trying to take the game forward is a bit rich. In fact, a safety first approach is exactly what the Indians did too. Without a win in sight and on a fifth day pitch with variable bounce set with an unlikely target of 299 of around 80 overs, they decided to shut shop and play for a draw. And the Australians would have probably done the same too. The Australians never for once in the entire game reached an over all run rate of 3.75 and yet, they think the Indians should have gone for it on a fifth day pitch? Get real.

Ponting’s statement probably is a response to Zaheer Khan’s claims that this was the most defensive he has ever seen the Aussies play. This statement has a bit of truth in it, though. The Australians used to be the trend setters in scoring runs fast and forcing results. Playing slow is what other teams (including India) do. But in this game, they’ve gone back to the slow grinding run accumulation and defensive mode of play that was more reminiscent of the test cricket played by the Aussies before they started to dominate World cricket.

And for the most part on day 4, Australia played as if they didn’t really have a plan on what total to set and when to declare. This allowed India to keep its hopes alive for a draw or even a minor chance of victory. The dominant Aussie teams of the past wouldn’t have done that – it is no accident that the Australian team(s) of the past hold the record for consecutive successive wins.

-Mahesh-

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Posted in Australia, Cricket, India

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i3j3 on Twitter

Posted on 9 October 2008 by | Leave a comment

We are going to trial Twitter and you can follow i3j3 on http://www.twitter.com/i3j3

If you’ve never used Twitter before, then here is the 2 min elevator pitch for it -

Twitter is a micro-blogging service where you specify your thoughts or what you are doing in about 140 characters or less either via the web (www.twitter.com), using a Twitter client (such as Twhirl) or via SMS using your mobile phone.

People can follow your “tweets” (the 140 character blurb) and you can follow theirs. If someone wants to send you a reply (or address you directly) – they start the message with a  @ followed by your user id (For example – "@i3j3 I disagree – I don’t think Ganguly should retire or be dropped! Ever!!" It can almost be used like a group IM.

You can also use hashtags to discuss a specific topic.

Twitter will allow us to give opinions and updates on matches without having to wait till an end of the day blog. We feel it will complement this blog quite well.

You can also follow a ball by ball commentary of the current Australia vs India series at http://www.twitter.com/baggygreen, but unlike @baggygreen which is powered by a bot, the updates on i3j3 will be done by real people and will be more conversational :)

So, what are you waiting for? Get on to Twitter and start following i3j3.

-Mahesh-

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Posted in Australia, India

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Best Test series ever!

Posted on 8 October 2008 by | 1 Comment

Down memory lane…

To me, the best Test series India has ever played was against the same country touring India now.

You know the one I am talking about – the series in which Laxman and Dravid played that epic knock in Calcutta and Bhajji conjured up a hat trick. It was also the series that thrust Saurav Ganguly in to prominence as a leader. He may not have shone in that series with the bat, but he managed to rally the troops into a fighting come back. In a way it is fitting that he ends his career against the Aussies – hopefully this time, finishing up in style with the bat.

If you would like to re-live the moments of that tour, there is no better place to start than to visit the Tour archive at CricInfo -

“You just dropped the test, mate”

Steve Waugh has admitted that it was not an easy relationship with Ganguly in that series. 

Apparently, when Ganguly dropped a catch of Steve Waugh in that famous test in Calcutta, Steve Waugh, repeating his famous Word cup quip, is alleged to have said to Ganguly- “You just dropped the Test, mate”. As it happened, Bhajji soon took the wicket of Waugh and the rest, as they say – is history.

They were probably never best mates, but Ganguly did receive some high praise from Waugh in the end. When Ganguly toured Australia last Summer, Steve Waugh said – “You don’t have to like or dislike him. You have to respect him”.

Farewell the Prince

i3j3 will most likely have a post dedicated to Saurav Ganguly talking about the cricketing memories he will leave behind for us, but meanwhile CricInfo has a wonderful article tracking the time line of his rise and fall, including that famous series I just talked about –

-Mahesh-

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Posted in Australia, Cricket, India

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I am back

Posted on 29 August 2008 by | 4 Comments

I never actually left, but I haven’t blogged in i3j3 for a long time and thought I’d break the silence with a post today. So, what’s been happening in Indian cricket lately?

India won the ODI series in SL

After a horrid start to the series, India made a good comeback to beat SL in SL – a big achievement, really. They’ve never done this in the past and the credit should go solely to MS Dhoni. After the pathetic performance in the tests and the 1st ODI, I had (like many others) written this side off, and somehow they managed to pull through to win the series. Well done, guys.

The Champions Trophy got postponed

I am usually glued to the idiot box when the Champions Trophy is on, but that doesn’t mean I fully approve of this tournament. It is kind of like a World cup, but isn’t. It doesn’t have the importance or stature of the World Cup and International Cricket could well do without this tournament in its already packed schedule. ICC could get rid of tournaments like this and the Afro-Asia cup and nobody would miss them.

India not playing any tournaments during the Champions Trophy gap

What the …? This came as a surprise to me – I am really glad BCCI didn’t sign up for a quadrangular or triangular or some x-angular tournament to fill up the gap created by the postponement of the Champions Trophy. They apparently want to use the time to prepare for the upcoming Australian Test series. What the…?

Cramped Tour Itinerary for NZ tour announced

Yes. That sounds like the BCCI we have all come to know and love. For a very brief moment I thought BCCI was actually changing the way they think. Oh, well -  back to reality, now.

India are going to be playing 19 days of cricket in 33 days. The longest gap they get between any two matches will be 2 days. Yep, that’s right – 2 days. Unless, of course we finish the 5 day test matches in 3 days…Going by what happened in NZ in the previous series, we are sadly quite capable of doing that.

Indian selectors to be made paid positions

We have advocated this in this blog in the past, and I am very happy that the BCCI has decided the positions in the Selection committee are to be made paid positions. Ok, they are only recommendations made by the working committee at this stage, but I would expect this to be accepted soon. Now they will have more accountability and responsibility.

Next step – getting selectors from overseas. Oh wait, What am I am thinking? They first have to move away from the mentality of appointing one selector from each zone…

-Mahesh-

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Posted in BCCI, Cricket, ICC, India

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What I like about the current ODI team

Posted on 13 June 2008 by | 2 Comments

Opening pair

Granted, Tendulkar and Ganguly were one of the best, if not the best opening ODI pairs for India and even the World. But Sehwag and Gambhir are doing very well at the moment. I love everything about them – the right/left combination, their stroke play, Sehwag’s explosiveness, Gambhir’s maturity…

If they continue their current form, they are all set to become a formidable opening combination in World cricket.

 Batting depth

The batting depth hasn’t been really put to the test yet, but with Irfan Pathan and Praveen Kumar, both all rounders coming in at No. 8 and 9 respectively, it looks very strong. Chawla at No. 10 is no rabbit with the bat either.

The Bench

When you see good players warming the bench, you know there are even better players in the playing XI and that is a great thing.  With guys like Uthappa, RP Singh (although Ishant was rested for the Bangladesh game) and Gony sitting out, you know the team is doing well.

And guys like Ganguly, Tendulkar, Dravid, Sreesanth and Harbhajan Singh aren’t even the team (due to a variety of reasons).

All rounders galore

The team now has Praveen Kumar and Irfan Pathan who are what I would classify as bowling all rounders – people who can bat a bit and bowl their full quota of 10 overs. Then there are the batting all rounders – Sehwag, Yuvraj and Yusuf Pathan. Even Rohit Sharma and Raina can chip in with a few overs. And last but not the least, the captain – MS Dhoni who can bat and keep wickets. This is one of the main reasons, India has a good batting depth at the moment.

Flexible batting order

I think the current batting order is a fairly flexible one. Barring the opening pair, I think the rest can come in any order. There is always the argument that batting orders shouldn’t be messed around with, but it seems to work well in Twenty20 and I don’t see why it shouldn’t work here.

Age

Sehwag at 29 years is the oldest member of the team. Everyone else is 26 or under. In fact, six of them are 21 and under. This again bodes well for Team India. Isn’t it wonderful that although the team is young, it does not seem to lack experience.

-Mahesh-

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Posted in Cricket, India

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