Same old , some new

All the festivities and celebrations surrounding India's victory in the T20 world cup came crashing down. In a matter of 1 week since the Aussies started their 7 match series here, its been the same old comments on how the Indian team should improve their bowling and fielding. And the same sunken feeling in my stomach when the Aussies start assaulting the bowlers and demolishing the much-hyped Indian batting line-up.

The most note-worthy thing about this series has been the attitude of the players in the two teams. On earlier tours the Aussies would come-bully-win and go. On this tour, the Indians are giving it back to the Aussies in terms of bullying.

Now, I agree that it has gone over the top some times and the incident where Sreesanth tried to run Symonds out was plain stupid, but the fact remains that the Indians are not backing down to the Aussies. Only if they could perform well and win matches !!

My thoughts on the first couple of matches:

1. The Aussies seem to have planned to bat first and put up huge totals. Indians are perennial chokers when it comes to chasing and the Aussies seem to want to exploit this to the fullest.
2. The 2 captains (Mahi and Gili) are very likable, though Ponting came back for the 3rd ODI. (I'm not a huge fan of Ponting)
3. We saw sari-clad women distributing drinks during the ODI in Hyderabad !! What will they think of next ??
4. The grounds staff also performed a puja of the pitch !! Pity, it didn't help wake the Indian cricketing gods.
5. Mahi seems to play a fair game and I am impressed by his no-nonsense presence on the field.
6. Dravid seems to be lost on the ground. We hardly get to see him on the field. He does not even venture out to give any sort of advise to Mahi (which Sachin regularly seems to do). I don't know if something is amiss between Rahul and Mahi or if Rahul just wants to give Mahi his space. In any case, a few words here and there will definately help.
7. The team mgmt sat out Ganguly even when he was fit ?? I wonder why?? What was the sense of playing Rohit Sharma when Ganguly was available??
8. The behavior on the field improved considerably from the second to the third ODI. Maybe someone knocked some sense into Bhajji and Sreesanth.

India now needs to win all the remaining 4 ODIs to clinch the series. Though I don't see them doing that, I think they should use this series to identify players and get some match practice for the Pakistan series.

AND GET A COACH !!!

Tendulkar to retire from ODIs?

An excellent win against England went a little sour with the news that Sachin Tendulkar is contemplating retirement from One day international cricket.

THE greatest batsman to ever play the game has amassed phenomenal amount of runs in both forms of the game and will be heralded as the greatest who ever played the game.

His stats speak for themselves. There is no one even close enough to challenge him for his position atop the ladder.

The news says that the Pakistan and Australia tours could be his last. These are the teams against whom he has repeatedly shone and we wish he does one better on his last tour !!

Here's one from two of his most memorable innings that he played in Sharjah against Australia. The first to put India into the finals and the second to win India the cup !!

Weekend of Cricket

This weekend, like most others, I played some cricket with a team that I joined recently. We played a match in a local tourney here and even though it was no nail-biter, it had its moments.
A close game that went one way than another till about the last 15 min of play. We won the hard fought game eventually and now are at the top of our group.

Speaking of Cricket, a new cricket league has officially started in India called the Indian Cricket League (ICL). Its supposed to be a competitor to the BCCI in India.
ICL claims that they just want to help Indian Cricket by finding talented youngsters that have the potential of playing for India. They introduced 51 players at a glitzy ceremony yesterday and guess what, most of them are international rejects and semi-retired players (Press Conference). The remaining are players who have frequented the domestic circuit long enough to be "discovered" if they had talent to play at the highest level.

Lets face the truth. ICL has been established so that Zee can tap into the HUGE cricket market of the country. They are not here to serve Indian cricket by looking for youngsters and potential stars, they are here to make a buck (or millions). And the players joined to make a quick buck. Players like Lara and Inzy have finished their cricket careers and are now looking to make some quick money by playing minimum cricket. The rest were never in consideration for international selection anyway so they go where the money is (read: ICL)

But, on the flip side, its a welcome jolt to the BCCI who for too long has had a monopoly on the game. They run like a private organization and have done little or none to improve the domestic circuit in India. With the salaries that they offer the domestic players, its no surprise that fewer and fewer youngsters turn to cricket as a full-time profession and unless you don't treat cricket as a full-time profession, you're not going to reach the level thats required to play international cricket. They seem to be learning their lesson now but I wonder if they will ever match the kind of salaries that ICL is offering.

Here's the complete list of players who have signed contracts with ICL

International players
Inzamam-ul-Haq, Mohammad Yousuf, Abdul Razzaq, Imran Farhat, Lance Klusener, Nicky Boje

Indian players

Ambati Rayudu, Syed Abbas Ali Khan, Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Abhishek T, Alfred Absolem, Avinash Yadav, Deep Dasgupta, V Devendran, Dheeraj Jadhav, Dinesh Mongia, Hemanth Kumar, Ibrahim Khaleel, Inder Shekar Reddy, Ishan Malhotra, J Hariesh, Jai Prakash Yadav, Kaushik Reddy, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Manish Sharma, Mohnish Mishra, Puskaraj Mohan Joshi, R Satish, Rajesh Sharma, Ranjit Khirid, Raviraj Patil, Reetinder Sodhi, Robin Morris, Sachin Dholpure, Sarabjit Singh, Syed Akhlakh Ahmed, Shalabh Srivastava, Shashank Nag, Shibsagar Singh, Shreyas Khanolkar, Subhojit Paul, Subhomoy Das, Sumit Kalia, Dakshinamoorthy Kumaran, T Surendra, Thirunavukarasu Kumaran, G Vignesh, D Vinay Kumar, Yashpal Singh