Gambhir proves his point

Mr Vijay, please get injured or drop off the team citing personal reasons. You gotta make way for the centurion Gautam Gambhir who has given Sandip Patil a tight slap for his exclusion from the team.

Pakistan surprise themselves by gaining a top hand in 2nd Test

Saffers are Ajmalled in Cape Town on day 2 of 2nd Test. 5 wickets down and 199 runs short of a Pakistani total of 338. Thanks to the 2 double nelsons from YK and Asad Shafiq followed by some firework down the order, the team reached 338 from 4/33.

And now it is an uphill task for # 1 team in the world how they handle Ajmal on day 3. AB is on the crease with Elgar and that is the last "recognized" batting pair in the crease. 

The  spin is providing some turn and later in the day 3 and 4, turn shall be more prominent.  So how South Africa comes out of this situation shall tell a lot about their character. 

On the positive side even if Pak takes a lead of say 100 runs and then scores 250 odd runs taking the lead to 350+, Saffers will proudly say "HAMARE PAAS GRAEME SMITH HAI" (We have Graeme Smith) who possesses a formidable 4th innings record.

And we know Pakistan. If they made 338 in the first innings, days like 49 are not spread too far apart in their cricket history.

So the test match for sure shall take some more funny and curious turns.

Indian cricket in off season

According to FirstPost.com report MS Dhoni, the Indian skipper skipped the Corporate Trophy held by BCCI.  And that was a smart move by the captain who might be leading his last Test series unless he does something miraculous to keep the captaincy for the next Test series. 

Potentially he prevented another controversy -- club vs domestic cricket. He skipped Irani trophy, Sehwag did too. And around same time he was made VP of India Cements.  So if Dhoni skipped Irani trophy and played corporate cup or trophy, whatever it is, then the hell would have broken loose. Fresh allegations of unholy nexus between Uncle Srini and Bhateeja Dhoni would have been made.

R Ashvin and Che Pujara also skipped the corporate cup. Pujara married his long time girl friend on or a day before Valentine's day.

Hail No, the wife of # 3 is not from Nagpur and I guess she is not even Doctor. So the comparisons between #3 now and ex #  3 should stop now. 

The team for Australian series is announced. Gambhir is out. Dhawan is in. Delhi guy out, Delhi guy in. Jadeja, Vijay, Raina, Ashvin and Dhoni from CSK remain in the team. And the 5 are starters in the final XI. Ahh, the CSK shall make its Test debut vs Australia with a caveat that there should be 6 foreign (to Chennai) players in the CSK team that shall play the Tests.

Oh no, no Raina.  Only 4 players from Chennai. 

And they are keeping up the trend of Indian cricket. The strongest team in domestic cricket continued to have most players in national setup. Mumbai in early days of Indian cricket.  Then Karnataka in 1990s. Delhi off late with 3 or 4 players.

But now its Chennai's turn. Not Tamil Nadu. Not TN Ranji trophy. But Chennai Super Kinks. And they dont even play Irani or Duleep or Ranji trophy. They play IPL and since 2012 they have started playing ODIs, T20Is and now Tests under the disguise of Indian team.

Sehwag is not in great form too.  It was a great chance for another Chennai anna Abhinav Mukund to make his case, but he flopped in the tour game vs Australians and for now he is out of contention.

Dhawan for sure shall not make the cut in final XI. And here is what the test team will look like. Oh man, the first test CSK shall play in its own backyard. The Chepauk stadium with Uncle Srini witnessing the big moment. 

Sehwag, Vijay, Pujara, Tendulkar,  Kohli, Dhoni, Jadeja, Bhuvi, Ashvin, Ishant Sharma,  Ojha

That is the probable XI that shall take field against Australians in Chennai from next Friday with Sehwag, Pujara, Tendulkar, Kohli, Ishant Sharma and Ojha being foreign players.

Change of guard in SL

Change of guard in SL. No more character barbs from the 2 of their modern greats. One of them is out injured and the other one is in wrong books of SLC. And to make matters worse, the chief selector now is the same lad, the bald marauder from Matara, whose career was destroyed by this 2 great men.

Angelo Matthews is the ODI and Test captain. Good to see a Pune Warriors player become a captain of his national side. IPL indeed rocks. 

2 Pune Warriors players are now captains of their national teams, but none of them shall lead the IPL team. Hell, the team would even play the IPL 6, there is a doubt.

Dinesh Chandimal is now the T20 captain. Split captaincy. 

Third country. Oh no 4th. No not again. 5th country to go for split captaincy. 

Australia, England, Pakistan, South Africa and now Sri Lanka. 

A lot of new faces have been named in SL team. A squad of 20 players for a series against Bangladesh. Hallelujah.

How many of those new kids shall start their careers with inflated averages and with false sense of prides. After all SL leaves all chances to its kids to make it big in making all sorts of records. But only against minnows. 

This year, unless BCCI schedules something in July - August, the Lankans are playing only against BD and then Zimbabwe. 4-0 in offing and lot of records.  Many triple hundreds, double hundreds, 10-fors, 5-fors are in waiting.

The first campaign, Matthews says, will be to improve rankings. SL have been 6th in Tests and 5th in ODIs. SL have been hopeless in Tests like India.  In ODIs they are winning consistently in Australia than in SL.  And they are # 1 in T20s.

The ageing players Samarweera and P Jayawardhena have been dropped.  Probably end of the road for them.  SL bring in new players, dump them a lot. Only few of them go on and become notable ones. Matthews and Chandimal have been few of them. 

Let us see what the new regime of captains and Matara Marauder can do to revive SL Krikat.

Valentine Cricket Pairs

Sachin and Saurav

Gautam and Sehwag

Raina and Dhoni

Jadeja and Dhoni

Dravid and Laxman

Gavaskar and Srikanth

Kapil and Shastri

Srinath and Prasad

Yuvraj and Kaif

Harbhajan and Kumble

Dhoni and Ashvin

#Happy Valentine's day

IPL Auction 2013

The IPL auction 2013 was a relatively low key affair with most of the franchisees having a settled squad and only a few making all out effort to strengthen their squad.  The highlight of this auction was the low key players getting big money, the players who were really unheard of outside their home countries. 

For example,

• Chris Morris
• Kane Richardson
• Akila Dhananjaya who made it big in SLPL and played a couple of games in World T20, but since has been warming benches for SL team.

A lot of players went "unsold" like:

• Aaron Finch
• Ravi Bopara
• Matt Prior
• Suraj Randiv
• Martin Guptill
• Test sensation Vernon Philander

The Aussie greats Michael Clarke and Ricky Ponting were picked up for their base prices, although none of them are hot T20 commodities, it remains to be seen if Mumbai Indians play Ricky Ponting alonside their most famous player, Sachin Tendulkar of India. 

Michael Clarke had retired from T20 format couple of years ago and is not a typical T20 player. However he might offer some valuable tips to the Pune Warriors captain, most likely Yuvraj Singh.

The defending champions were the most complacent side as they bid for only two players:

 

Sachitra Senanayake and Ryan McLaren.

Mumbai Indians again made the news by bidding a million USD for Glenn Maxwell who celebrated the day by 4/63 and a first ball duck against West Indies. They also bid successfully for Ricky Ponting, Phil Hughes and Nathan Coulter Nile, all Aussies.  And  the neighbouring Jacob Oram. 

Kings XI Punjab also bid for only 2 players in Manpreet Gony and Luke Pomerbausch. 

Wooden spoon holders Pune bid for Ajantha Mendis, the guy who has a formidable T20 record (albeit against minnows), Kane Richardson and over hyped Abhishek Nayar.

Sunrisers Hyderabad, the new name for now defunct Dhakkan Fusers got a few players in their kitty too, but none of them impact players. Sudeep Tyagi, Darren Sammy,  Thissara Pereira, Nathan McCullum etc. Serious doubts exist if new name and new management might improve the fortunes of the Hyderabad team or they continue to disappoint like last 2 seasons.

Uncle Srini proved his coach Stephen Fleming wrong who had said his franchisee wont go for foreign players. Instead CSK went for 5 foreign players -- Dirk Nannes, who as per BCC! has good chance to earn an India cap, Akila Dhana....., Jason Holder of WI, Chris Morris of SA and Ben Laughlin of Australia.

Rajasthan Royals went in for few players too and the players who'd now be Rajputs will be James Faulkner, Fiddy Edwards and Kushal (or Kaushal) Pereira (or Pareira) of SL. 

Uncle Mallaya does not have money to revive his defunct Kingfisher airlines or pay the salary to pilots and other cabin crew, for sure he has lots of money to choose a Kingfisher calendar girl and few players like RP Singh etc. 

I do not care who wins IPL or who does not. I also do not care which player makes it big or which player fails. I worry about the fate of Indian cricket when few very ordinary players like Ravinder Jadeja, Rohit Sharma and R Ashvin make it big in IPL and on back of those strong performances continue to play for India. That, to me, is the saddest aspect of IPL.

MSD, the India Cements Vice President

MS Dhoni for sure has been one of most busy players for India in all three formats of the game, not to forget the IPL and Champions League duty days too.  And a rare 3 week break between the England ODI series and the upcoming Australian Test series is a rare but welcome one for the captain. Unfortunately his boss and the boss of BCCI, Mr N Srinivasan has some other plans for the skipper. 

He made him skip the Irani trophy starting in few days time and offered him to play for India Cements in the unofficial Corporate Cup. Not sure if he or R Ashvin is going to lead the IC team, but MSD has been offered a rich bounty to play for IC in this  tournament. He is also the Vice President of India Cements now. 

The nexus between Srini and MSD is not a holier one. We have seen in the past that MS Dhoni has got away with his failures in the Test cricket and often CSK implants have played ahead of deserved ones. Jadeja ahead of Rahane in Tests, ever failing Ashvin continuing in all 3 formats of the game and so forth. 

It remains to be seen if the Test captaincy switches the hands for the upcoming all important Australian test series. This is the last chance India has got to arrest the dramatic slide in the home shores as well. The cocoon of home series is going to end later this year when India travels to the # 1 test nation.  So if India is able to beat the Aussies 2-1 or 3-1 or 4-0 (very unlikely), the home season would be less horrible than it has already been till now.

Sir Ravindra Jadeja's best delivery

Video Courtesy : You tube channel of ac89jc

If this kind of bowling makes Ravindra Jadeja best bowling allrounder then more whitewashes follow in Tests vs Australia, South Africa and then again England.

Sir Ravindra Jadeja, you rock.

MS Dhoni's politics

47,4,0.

That is the scoreline for Ajinkya Rahane, the new forced opener and a replacement  for "failing" Virender Sehwag.  

And of course the above scoreline provides a solid opening stand which we have been used to see in ODIs at least ever since we have had world class opening pairs of Sachin-Saurav, Sachin - Sehwag, Saurav - Sehwag and then Gambhir - Sehwag.

96, 18 and 11 are the opening stands in the first 3 ODIs and of course for the next 2 ODIs in Mohali and Dharmsala, the same opening pair shall continue. 

What extra value has Ajinkya Rahane has added at the top of the order  ? If Sehwag failed, Rahane has been no different. Sehwag was persisted for only 2 ODIs against Pakistan. He was  rested for 3rd and then dropped for the series against England. 

The only thing that goes in favor of Rahane is that he is young, supposedly good fielder than Sehwag and he has backing of Sandip Patil who hails from Mumbai as does Rahane.  It is very difficult to ignore the selectorial bias or presidential bias in selection of guys like Rahane, Rohit Sharma and Sir Ravindra Jadeja who will always excel against England who are hopeless  against any kind of turning ball. 

Another question that arises out of Sehwag's axing is whether Dhoni feels secure as leading Team India in all 3 formats ? He is selectively kicking out people who could be challenge to his captaincy. Sehwag now, Gambhir next and who knows Yuvraj in future.  

Dhoni has been off color in Tests and T20s captaincy. Overly defensive when things go wrong. That X-factor and what they say lucky charm is long gone.  Losing 10 tests to Australia and England have been the undoing of all the hard work the golden generation of Indian cricket has done in past 14 years or so. 

There is no doubt over the class of MS Dhoni, the ODI batsman, but more results like Pakistan loss will do only harm to his captaincy. Also the backing of players like Ravinder Jadeja who come good in 2 of 10 games isnt going to do any good to Indian cricket.  There is just no logic why one player finds sudden favor from Dhoni and then loses it. Ashok Dinda at times is his go-to bowler but then next game he is out.  Shami Ahmed bowls good in one game, he is out next and back in the next. 

Piyush Chawla does no good in any form of cricket he plays and suddenly he comes in the 4th Test match out of blue replacing Harbhajan Singh (who just got Punjab back in the contention for place in Ranji final).  Yet he plays T20Is against England and  then dropped against Pakistan.

Suresh Raina, now in good form, continued to play all games when he was out of form.  Ravinder Jadeja suddenly becomes one good bowling allrounder with one innings of 61 from 37 balls after ages of failure.  R Ashvin, who has not delivered since ages, who does not get a single wicket and James Tredwell gets 4 in a game, continues to play every game, every format.  And doubt lingers over the intentions of MS Dhoni when one relates this players to his IPL franchisee.

And you are left to bite your hairs in disgust when Sir Jadeja comes in a press conference and backs "out of form" Virat Kohli.

It is high time MS Dhoni is  relieved of captaincy in Test format and a bold move is made sooner than later.  And one viable option could be Virat Kohli, aka Graeme Smith way. But if Indian selectors led by the world cup winners of 1983 world cup have the balls to take hard decisions, that remains to be seen.

Why not drop Rohit Sharma instead of Sehwag ?

India's cricket is in shambles. The ODIs were strong forte all this while with gloom setting in Tests and T20s were never India's mettle. Now the ODI wall has stood broken with 2 back to back defeats to Pakistan. Of all countries, losing to Pakistan is shambolic and sinful. No matter what, the defeats against Pakies will never be taken easily. And that when no fight has been put up. Top four showing up no fight at all. Batting has been India's strong point entire 2000s and now that is the reason for failings. 

What is Duncan Fletcher doing ? Has he got any ideas ? Has he got any plans to stop the slide ? Does he even speak more than what Manmohan Singh speaks? Or he also believes in silence ? Tests woes and now ODI woes. 

The selection of team is also an issue. Rohit Sharma is in the team after failing since ages. Single digit scores in all his ODI appearences this year, still he is in the team and will play England ODIs. And the blame of this defeats is going to be passed onto Virender Sehwag. Admittedly he has not been in great form, but he is certainly better than Rohit Sharma and Ravinder Jadeja.  This 2 lads continue playing every game despite doing nothing great and Sehwag always faces the axe.

MS Dhoni did not play an innings of substance in T20I and Tests for long, yet he remained in the team and was the captain despite losing 0-8 abroad and 1-2 at home.  N Srinivasan has his hand behind MSD, Jadeja and Ashvin. Sandeep Patil has his behind Rohit Sharma. Who said quota system did not rule Indian cricket ?

And now yet another Chennai lad is in the team. Dinesh Karthik is in the team as standby to injured MSD. Why not inject 11 Chennai players in the INDIAN team?  Sehwag will be dropped and out of nowhere M Vijay shall replace him. Does not matter Ajinkya Rahane or Manoj Tiwary have been left to warm the benches. Out of nowhere Jadeja appeared and played last test match against England when Rahane should have been playing at #6.

The string of this losses followed by Tendulkar's retirement is fast forcing me to give up watching Indian cricket for good. Chennai Super Kinks for all its patronizing is destroying the soul of Indian cricket.