Sri Lanka continue to abuse the ICC laws

Any talk of a moral high from Sri Lanka camp sounds hollow after what they constantly do to abuse the ICC rules. First with the action of Murali and now the "switch" of captaincy to avoid a one match ban over their temporary captain and best T20 batsman.

What is further amazing is the lad has guts to go down to a press conference and justify what he does -- abusing the rules / law and making fun of it, while ICC continues to be a foolish mute spectator. 

So what's next from Sri Lanka camp -- making the substitute fielder bat or bowl in the semi-final game ?

Why India failed to "MAKE IT LARGE" in World T20

So India has been kicked out of WT20 yet again, for 3rd time in row without making it to the semis. This time with a difference though.  Last 2 editions, India failed to win a single game in Super 8s and this time India won 2, yet it was kicked out. India won 4 out of 5 games and were out. West Indies had one outright win and one super over win, one game was washed out. They lost one game comprehensively and one on D/L. Yet they see themselves in semi-final. But that shall be case of sour grapes if we are to blame the ICC for the format of the tournament.  The rules and groupings of Super 8 was always known to India and when it came to crunch games, India failed to wrest the initiative.

A few reasons IMO for this failure:

Dhoni's jaded captaincy

Dhoni has now seemed to run out of ideas and his instinctive moves seem to fail more than succeed.  Like they say his luck is now running out. He looks a tired captain and he has excuses ready for every single occasion when India fails to win the game. For example in that super 8 game vs Australia, he had an excuse ready "RAIN". Anybody who is a decent follower of the game shall tell Dhoni that boss you erred in the team selection. No business sitting Sehwag out and opening with Irfan Pathan. With due respect, Pathan is the best allrounder we have and better than the likes of Jadeja and YP, but he is no Shane Watson. He is a decent batsman, but no means worth opening.   He top scored but took 30 balls for his 31. Game lost. Plus 3 spinners and one of them is Piyush Chawala. He was a sorry figure when he was hit for runs.  5 bowlers, with none of them being good enough to stop rampaging Shane Watson and Dave Warner.

Even in today's game with SA he got the part timers on before Ashvin and when the need was to take the wickets, Dhoni was trying to woo the new selection committee chairman by bringing in Rohit Sharma ahead of Ashvin. Ashvin might not have taken wickets or he might not be the bowler in international games, that he is in IPL, yet he could have stopped flow of runs. Rohit Sharma gave away 14 runs in that over, Faf Du Plessis got the start he needed and the target of semis was lost.  In the game against Australia Irfan Pathan was brought on in 9th or 10th over and by that time Warner and Watson were set, they tore apart Pathan.  Pathan has to bowl within 5 or 6 overs and that's where his strength lies.

Dhoni's over reliance on part timers is baffling.   He has now started to look jaded, tired and short of ideas. He has his own set of players, his own ideas which fail more now than success. He refuses to change the batting order, he refuses to drop the players that form his core team, no matter they succeed or fail.  Ashvin has taken 12 wickets in 15 games, yet he plays all matches as # 1 spinner in 3 formats.  Harbhajan got 4/12 vs England and next game he went for 20 in 2. He was dropped in games against Pak and SA. Ashvin was without wickets in game against Australia, he was persisted today and vs Pakistan. Why different benchmarks ? Just cos Ashvin plays for same franchisee as Dhoni?

Poor team selection

Srikanth should be known as the worst selection committee chairman India has ever had. Apart from all the known and reported follies he had, the worst thing he has done is created a batch of TN cricketers ready for replacements and injected a stream of failed cricketers in the national team. Ashvin for example is no different from Harbhajan (of 2010 and 2011 riled upon as container than a wicket taker) in ODIs and T20Is, yet he plays all games. L Balaji did nothing of importance in domestic cricket and yet out of blue he was in the final 15. Even though he ended with 9 wickets in the failed campaign, he was easy meat even for the tail enders and today Morne Morkel almost got SA to victory. 

Why was Umesh Yadav not selected? What is Zaheer Khan doing in T20Is when he seems disinterested in the format? What is Ashok Dinda doing in the team ? And suddenly what did Rohit Sharma do from that horror ODI series in SL to the World T20 in SL that saw him selected in the final 15?  

Manoj Tiwary continues to be benched forever across limited over formats. Why ?  Dhoni just does not seem to trust players outside his coterie of players, something which Ganguly never did and that's why his era threw genuine match winners in Yuvraj, Sehwag etc.

IPL continues to do any good

Ever since IPL has come on board India has gone down in performance in T20Is. India failed to win a single Super 8 game in 2009, 2010 edition and in 2012, it won 2 but crashed out early. IPL benefited players from foreign countries like Australia (Shane Watson, Mike Hussey and Dave Warner for ex) and SA  (Faf du Plessis, Jacques Kallis etc), but the host country whose rich businessmen hire this foreign players, fails to benefit. Where are the players who are the byproducts of the IPL in India? Who are those players? Unfortnately there are very few players who can be said to find of IPL. The Indian players who have succeeded in IPL are already playing for country or have played and failed (Ashvin, Dinda, Balaji, Rohit Sharma).

So now is the time to do a retrospective on IPL whether it is doing any good to Indian cricket in terms of quality of players in T20 format?  Take any IPL game and see the average score. Hardly it shall be less than 170 or 175. And then take a look at the scores India have made in T20Is in this year ? 152, 128/2, 140, 170, 160, 166 and 153.  Hardly match winning scores.  Last time India crossed 200 was 5 years ago when there was no IPL, no ICL and India did not know how to play T20 and neither they took it seriously. Since then every player of Indian ODI team plays average 15 T20 games per year and yet when it comes to T20Is, the star studded icon players of franchisees fail to make it "LARGE" at highest level.

CLT20 is next and barring Yuvraj and Kohli most of the players who were part of this team will be in SA playing that tournament and will make big scores (or take wickets). And of course the disgruntled fans like me shall feel cheated who want to see India "MAKE IT LARGE" in every international series or tournament.

India maintain a glorious 20 year old tradition

So the Indians make an awesome comeback beating the rogue Pakies by 8 wickets with 3 overs to spare. And by doing that they maintain a 20 year tradition -- not losing a single fucking match to them in a World event. And in this glorious tradition, I'd let go those thousands of Pakistani Sharjah victories specifically scheduled on Fridays to aid them in some special way. Gone are those days now when specific parts of all Indian cities used to rejoice on Pakistani victories and you havent heard likes of Shoaib Malik after 2007 thanking Indian "Muslims" for supporting their team.

Pakies imploded today as they explode explosives in India. They wanted to make runs, huge runs. So that their "Varied attack" could take wickets and seal a place in semi-final. But they did not apply minds. Senseless batting is Pakistan's USP. And noone better than Shahid Afridi signifies it. He believes in mentality -- if I touch a ball it has to be six or I am out. He hit 2 boundaries and then he was OUT. A golden duck against SA in first game and today he walked at # 3. 

Hafeez is T20I captain but he played a test match and made a scratchy 15 off 28 balls. And basically thats where he set a platform to allow other Paki batsmen to implode and they did. Even a Tamil Nadu centric attack with the likes of Balaji and Ashvin whose speeds might differ by 10mph or 20mph were able to get this poor non English speaking batsmen out. Heck Balaji is on hattrick next game. 

All in all a pressure game made one sided by the mindless Pakistani game plan where they not have any plan. No plan at all. They buckled under pressure. They are now a mentally fragile side. Saeed Ajmal is not going to win them all games they play. And the Pakistani batsmen need to understand the importance of playing the game as per the match situation rather than those Afridi style wild slogs.

India's Super Eights Issue

England continue to confound against spin and collapse on Sunday gives a very good hope for a Test whitewash in the winter. But then the entire batting lineup shall be different to the one we saw fold out for meager 80 on Sunday. Thanks to Dinda, England just managed to get past the lowest ever T20I score.  England next are to face Windies and their mystery spinner might be another big challenge to conquer for England. Sunil Naraine had an awful English summer in damp conditions but in SL he shall be a definitive threat to English batsmen. And the spin challenge doesnt stop right there.  Mendis or the new spinner of SL await next and then Daniel Vettori in NZ game.

England look sorry and they will not win the World T20 if they continue to fall prey to spin bowling.

And btw, here is a toast to the fighting spirit of Harbhajan Singh for his superb return to the International cricket. But if thats going to be long term, that needs to be seen.  Ashvin will return next game and that shall mark an end to Harbhajan unless MS wants to play 2 spinners. 4/12 are the best Indian figures in T20I and also that victory was biggest for India in terms of runs. A T20I win over England in 5 years.

India has its own set of problems. Batting line up looks formidable on paper and despite playing plethora of T20s in a year, India find it difficult to score or accelerate in international T20 games.  Low par scores of 159 vs Afghanistan, 155 vs SL in Aug and 170 vs England indicate that India need to pace their innings really well. Another mystery is the strike rate of MSD who has played countless "cool" innings for his IPL franchisee but he fails to repeat that form in T20Is. Or for that matter his ODI form. A strike rate of 110 and a highest score of 48 is under achievement for Indian captain.

The pace department is a poor reading for India. Zaheer Khan is of little value in T20s and less said about L Balaji and Dinda the better. Dinda has quite long runup and a high jump in his action, but his pace is again 130ish.  And no wickets either.  Umesh Yadav should have been playing this tournament, instead he was playing in pointless Irani trophy fixture.  Hopefully with new selection committee getting installed, they will iron out this kind of selection blunders in future.

Australia are top heavy and once the top 3 are gone, the rest are dicey against spin. Perhaps India should look forward to exploit this weakness in their first game of Super 8s.  Super 8s is a worry for India since first edition(Super 6 then). They have never won the first game of Super 8s in T20Is and for that matter in past 2 editions they have lost all 3 Super 8 games. Will this be different ? Hopefully yes.

South Africa are next opponents and then there is Pakistan.  So if India can win 2 of this 3 games then they would be a very good team to go in the semi-finals. But for that the batting has to click and fast scoring needs to be done.  Likes of Gambhir, Raina, Dhoni will need to pace their innings. And a little bit of patience for Sehwag.  and with a weaker bowling department, the batting is the only key to a repeat of 2007.

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Beat the rowdy Englishmen!!!

No matter how shit Indian bowling is, I'd bet them to beat down the rude English tomorrow in the meaningless last league game of Group A.  Go Indians, nail down that cranky little boy Stuart Broad's rowdy Englishmen. 

Nothing is pacifying seeing the whipped asses of this rowdy Englishmen, who are undeserving #1 in ODIs. And then wont care if Indians are kicked out in Super 8's itself!!!!

Dhoni messes up with Yuvi's return!!

When Dhoni messes up something, he has excuses ready for everything. Like he did have for the bizzare loss in the 2nd T20I yesterday. Pitch got changed when he came to bat suddenly.  He has played his IPL cricket on that damn pitch and if he didnt knew it then he should have drowned himself for not knowing it. He has been a hyped player in the T20 format and he has often gone slow in start. But yesterday he messed it up and team lost the game which it had no business losing it. 

22 off 23 balls might seem a decent score but at one stage it was 9 off 16 balls and thats where India lost the plot. He coming at 5 was also a wrong move if he is to play slow. Irfan Pathan is much of an improved batsman and he should have been coming when Kohli got out.  Sending in Rohit Sharma on Yuvi's dismissal was also a blooper and instead Tiwary or Pathan should have been sent. Dont know what the team management was thinking.

And of course it was a Chennai game, so the local heroes had to play. Didnt matter they turned out to be flops.  L Balaji and R Ashvin were flop stars yesterday.  Now that Srikanth is gone, we expect no freebies rolled out to the failed stars of Tamil Nadu cricket.

Welcome Back Yuvraj Singh

Welcome back to the field Yuvraj Singh. Today is those one of the rare days where turning up on the field would matter the most and whether you make or do not make runs shall not matter. Today's day is an ode to your persona and your spirit.  And that's what the fans are joyed to see.

 

The man of 2011 World Cup final is back and that should be the biggest plot of the day.

 

 

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Apply 25% reservation for Pakistani players in ICC awards

Let the 33% reservation quota in Indian government jobs apply to 25% reservation for Pakistani cricketers in ICC annual awards categories as well. That way the Pakistanis shall be happy given the hue and cry their board and bloggers have created over Ajmal snub!!!

PCB's sour grapes

The talks of PCB boycotting the ICC awards and instead awarding Ajmal on its own following the snub is a classic case of sour grapes.  Ajmal should have been in the list given his returns in all 3 formats of the game, but the knee jerk reaction of PCB is childish and ridiculous. 

May be Vernon Philander should have made way for Ajmal!!

Leave Sachin Tendulkar alone

Nothing is wrong with Sachin Tendulkar's batting form except the fact that he seems distracted at the moment and his picking and choosing isnt helping him any more. He is an MP, he needs a break to be with his family and then a Test series arrives once in few months. So this is the reason why he is not in the form he should be. It's not the time to go for him. He just got bowled and we are not used to see him getting bowled that often. He did have this kind of spell once in 2002 when in England and West Indies he got bowled few times in row. Pedro Collins and Alex Tudor were the culprits then, Trent Boult and Tim Southee are now.

For the transition phase, Indian test cricket is in, the team needs him and more than ever now. So lets just not get behind him to go but to stay on and focus back on cricket, not put additional pressure than he has already handled in 23 years. For a country lacking genuine heroes and role models here is one man who has passed every stern test and provided millions of cheering and happy moments, so lets not bog him down asking him to go. We're just nobodies compared to his stature asking him to go.

Leave Tendulkar alone and allow him to focus on his game.