Gavaskar-Ponting verbal duel: another opinion

Here’s an interesting link to the ‘other’ side of the Ponting-Gavaskar debate.

http://i3j3cricket.wordpress.com/2007/03/15/gavaskar-ponting-war-of-words-aussie-views/

My own take is that Gavaskar is a TV commentator and Ponting a player. Two different sets of rules apply. A commentor can stay some stupid things and get away with it more easily than a captain of the premiere cricket team.

Regardless, now even commentators have to be careful, especially when racism and bigotry is involved and now, commentators need to understand that viewing the ‘australian’ team as a bad-behaviour team is also racism. Meannig, is Gavaskar saying that every single Australian has bad behaviour? What about Gilchrist’s unpopular decision to ‘walk’ every time he nicked a catch.

Such universal statements however are equally serious as Ponting’s verbal ill-informed joust against the Indian cricket team… and so, Ponting too is wrong.

Best response… would be to keep the issue between players… like one-two Australian players, and Gavaskar. Rather than bring the whole Australian cricket team (and the nation) or the Indian Cricket team (and the nation) into this.

Let Indians talk about Indians, and Australians about Australians. And when opinions to cross=over, don’t generalise!!!

AA-and a guide to get featured?

(latest update: So I sent a mail to Matt… (from WordPress) and he said the list has changed, but cannot influence the list further. So the history of the cricket tag so far is as follows… a [Ashes] Harmison fit post. Then an “Add-on” post. And now some old news about Ganguly and Dalmiya. I find it strange that the cricket featured tag is  taking such strange articles/p0sts… but at least this latest change looks better!)

We all love cricket, here. And we all love wordpress. However, as all ‘cricket’ taggers know… the cricket featured site rarely features the ‘best’ or ‘most appropriate’ cricket related tag. As a result, I am conducted an experiment to ‘get featured’ simply to see if my theory of alphabetised featuring in WordPress is correct. If it is… then I think it is a bug in the system.

I would much rather see other sites, that talk about cricket, especially currently, word cup cricket, to get featured (in the cricket tag)! Like http://i3j3cricket.wordpress.com/ for instance. I like what these guys are doing… they spend quite a lot of effort writing articles/opinions… and at least sometimes it would make sense that they are featured. (NO! I am not associated with them in any way!!!)

So I’m not making this post to get featured, but to test whether alphabetisation in the title affects “featuring”. If so, then I can report it to wordpress support.

(next update: so far, there has been no ‘featuring’ so I guess that theory is bunked!)

Indian Cricket Team Batting Weaknesses… and suggestions

I know, I know… we all want India to win the world cup, and like millions others… I will NEVER bet against India. However, being a strong team doesn’t mean that we can’t be aware of our weaknesses. (Of course our assessment makes no difference… but when did that stop the common Indian fan from speaking!) See also Cricinfo’s much better (though later) analysis of batting/bowling strength/weaknesses of the Indian cricket team here.

We are currently familiar with this story of the batting performance of the Indian cricket team…

Opening Pair partnership…20-30 (in three/four overs)

Score at 15 overs about 80/2 (Uthappa is already out after making 20-30 quick runs)

Partnership between Ganguly-Tendulkar-Dravid: 120 (all three make 50s)

Score at 40 overs… 200-210 for 5 wickets

All down to Yuvraj and Dhoni… to bring the score up to 300!

Our tail (read Agarkar, Zak, Bhajji and Patel)… are probably worthy of a collective 20-30 runs.

And so, heavens forbid, if Dhoni fails… regardless of how good Tendulkar, Dravid batted… we may not even make it to 250!

*******

Thus, as I see it, our weakness are as follows:

Lack of stable opening partner to Ganguly.
Sehwag, Sehwag, whereforth are thou Sewhag? If Sehwag can guarantee about 35-40 runs per innings (not 10-20) then that is stable enough.

Lack of stable (read Ponting) number three
Uthappa is a strike batsman, not a pinch hitter. If we want a pinch hitter, we can recall Pathan and he might just bowl out 5 overs with a wicket! Uthappa has to plan to make a 100 at least twice this world cup…

Over-reliance on Dhoni
Let’s face it… if we were to choose between the batsman Dhoni and the batsman Yuvraj, Dhoni would clearly walk away the favourite. He has been more destructive and yet more consistent than the ’senior’ partner… and we look to Dhoni, not Yuvraj, to finish well. If only Yuvraj can compete with Hussey, aim at high-score consistency… the pressure on Dhoni would be less, and the lower order a little more stable. Right now… Yuvraj is still a little too unpredictable.

Weak tail
Without Pathan, our bowlers are just not consistent with the willow. On average, my feeling is that our tail is worth 20-30 runs tops… if someone is with them… without guidance and time… they may just collapse. As always… we need Agarkar… to shake things up… become the batsman who is worth 25-30 runs consistently by himself.

Summary:

Ganguly… keep up the good work… hopefully you will stay in the middle overs to hit the spinners around…

Sewhag… get to 40 Runs!!! (not total World Cup score but in EACH INNINGS!)

Uthappa… you are not a pinch hitter! Remember you are batting in the same position as Ponting!

Tendulkar… please be the highest scorer in the tournament… please, please, please!!!

Dravid… don’t get bogged down in the middle overs… try to keep the run rate around 6 when you bat.

Yuvraj… more consistency please… be not-out… strike rate 100!

Dhoni… you are our big cricket’ hope… DON’T GET INJURED!!!

Agarkar… 30 runs please

Zak… 18runs… 2 sixes…

Harbhajan… 15 runs…

Patel… don’t get injured… and learn to take singles fast!!! give the strike to the other batsman.

Nobody listens! And that’s OK when we win

What this heading above is trying to say is that I tried to make recommendations for the team order, and obviously it doesn’t matter. However, we went on (or actually are going on) to win against Sri Lanka dramatically. So happily… all our ‘fan’ opinions don’t matter… especially if/when we win. And we usually have no problem with whatever combination etc is used. Ultimately… if the results are in our favour, who cares!

World XI vs India XI

If we were to take this team (Mohan’s World XI), and take out the Indians place head to head with the Indian team, it’s interesting to see the result. I’ve put a star in front of who I think is better head-to-head. An (extra) star is given to the player who contributes well with bowling/ batting.

01. *Chris Gayle vs. *Saurav Ganguly (Ganguly better Batsman, but Gayle better bowler)
02. **Sanath Jayasuriya vs *Virender Sewhag (Sehwag’s contribution equal with the ball)
03. *Ricky Ponting vs Uttappa
04. *Jacques Kallis vs **Sachin Tendulkar (Tendulkar’s contribution equal with the ball)
05. *Mike Hussey vs *Rahul Dravid (both are equal in effectiveness, though they express it in different ways)
06. *Andrew Flintoff (b/c Symonds still injured) vs *Yuvraj Singh (better batsman, though Flintoff better bowler)
07. Kumar Sangakkara (wicketkeeper) vs **Dhoni (better keeper and batsman)
08. **Shaun Pollock vs Agarkar (If only Agarkar could bat better…)
09. *Shane Bond vs Zaheer Khan (Bond is clearly the best fast bowler this world cup… though Zak’s not bad)
10. *Makhaya Ntini vs Munaf Patel (if only Munaf rises to the occasion…)
11. Daniel Vettori vs *Harbhajan (Vettori is not bad, Bhajji is better)

Mohan’s World XI gets 11 stars while Indian XI gets 9 stars.

On the surface calculations, World XI would probably win because of the better bowling attack (especially since this world cup will be determined very importantly by those who bowl better.)

Now that Ganguly is ‘resting’… my team for warm up vs West Indies

OK… now that poor dada is carrying a niggle, (and without jest, Ganguli needs to be preserved for the important matches), this is my proposal for the next warm up match against West Indies. (including Bowling/Batting order).

Chiefly, my concern is to give the bowling department as much practice as possible. Zaheer would do his stuff in the beginning and then leave (to avoid injury). Agarkar would certainly have to practice bowling at the death. I feel even Munaf should practice bowling at the death, so that’s my end combination. In a large bowling line-up, one bowler would certainly bowl less, and my vote for least bowled goes to Sreesanth, who I’m hoping will not get to bowl too often for important world cup matches. Within this, I want to give Yuvraj and Sehwag their full five overs each just to get them used to the idea of being the fifth bowler.

For batting, I would ‘rest’ Tendulkar, push Dravid lower down the order and give Yuvraj and Karthik more responsibility in the middle orders. They need the practice and an understanding of the conditions. Pathan coming up 1-down is just to keep the Uthappa kind of pinch-hitter feel to the line-up… because that’s how it’s probably going to be.

Bowling Order
Zaheer Khan (1, 3, 5, 7, 9 then no more bowling for rest for the match)
Ajit Agarkar (2, 4, 6, 8 then 48, 50)
Irfan Pathan (11, 13, 15, 17, 19 and then 43, 45)
Munaf Patel (10, 12, 14, 16, 18 and then from 45, 47, 49)
Harbhajan Singh (20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30)
Kumble (21, 2o3, 25, 27, 29, 31)
Sreesanth (42, 44, 46)
Yuvraj (32, 34, 36, 38, 40)
Sehwag (33, 35, 37, 39, 41)

Batting Order

1. Virender Sehwag
2. Robin Uthappa
3. Irfan Pathan (pinch hitter slot to replace Uthappa)
4. Yuvraj Singh
5. Dinesh Karthik
6. Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wk)
7. Rahul Dravid (captain)
8. Ajit Agarkar (Opening spell of about 4 overs and then come back at the death for 4)
9. Harbhajan Singh
10. Anil Kumble
11. Sreesanth

12. Zaheer Khan
13. Munaf Patel

Quakes hit World Cup venues

Recently there was a news report of a quake that hit the World Cup cricket venues.

• February 28, 2007

ANTIGUA and Trinidad, two countries that will host Cricket World Cup 2007 matches, were jolted on Tuesday by an early morning earthquake.

A quake with a magnitude of 5.1 on the open-ended Richter scale hit St John’s just prior to 06:00 local time (10:00 GMT) around the same time that Port-of-Spain was rattled by a quake with a magnitude of 4.3.

Disaster officials said there were no reports of injuries or damage.

Antigua is set to host Super Eight matches at the new Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, and Trinidad is the venue for four warm-up matches at the Frank Worrell Oval, as well as Group-B matches involving India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Bermuda.

- AFP

—————-

Comment: 5.1 in the richter scale? That’s nothing. Wait for the world cup my friends, wait for the world cup!!!

Ok… that emotional outburst aside, note however that it also happened to the area where India and Sri Lanka will be meeting. Never a dull-moment this season, huh?

India’s road to the Semis

OK… it’s quite clear. To make it into the Semi-Finals… as our dear Coach Greg Chappell expects India to do… we have to win 4 (four) matches against the Super-8 teams.

So assuming we win against Bangladesh and Bermuda…

We simply HAVE to defeat Sri Lanka! (on 22 March)

The next match (if India do beat Sri Lanka) would be against South Africa. (on 28 March)
I actually feel that South Africa may not do as well as they will like in this tournament (I’m hoping that the tracks will be low/slow, rather than South African/Australian). I therefore have more faith in India’s grafting ability than South Africa’s… so we might just win this.

The next match would be against… Pakistan (or West Indies) (1 April).
I fear that we might lose either, but the point of this column is not to make predictions, just present possibilities. So for number sake, I’ll assume we lose this.

The next match would be against… England or New Zealand (4 April), and this we SHOULD win.

At this point India would have had 6 points from four games… and still it’s not 100% sure of making it.

The next game against New Zealand or England (12 April)

And then against Australia (16 April).

Thankfully, if we do win against Sri Lanka, our last match would be against West Indies (or Pakistan) (on April 18) 

Meaning, even if we lose to Australia and haven’t made our four wins, we still have West Indies/Pakistan to meet to qualify. However, in that case, there is a possibility that an India-WestIndies or India-Pakistan match would be like a knockout quarter finals! A must-win situation! Now that’s a nail-biter we don’t want to see!

So to summarise: we need to win at least four matches against the Super 8s. We are allowed to lose three (not more) to safely qualify for the semi finals.

Here’s a listing is similar to this listing. In fact they have gone ahead and called it India’s schedule for the World Cup.

Also, here’s some ‘hocus-pocus’ permentations from the same site.

India’s greatest ODI XI (cricket team)

In response to the Australian best ODI team (Australia’s greatest ODI XI Adam Gilchrist (wk), Mark Waugh, Ricky Ponting, Dean Jones, Steve Waugh (capt), Michael Bevan, Andrew Symonds, Shane Warne, Brett Lee, Dennis Lillee, Glenn McGrath, Greg Chappell), I guess the question is which ‘indian’ team could beat them, as well as which Indian ODI team is the ‘best’. Here’s my answer.

India’s greatest ODI XI (cricket team)

1. Sachin Tendulkar
2. Saurav Ganguly (captain)
3.  Virender Sewhag (at his best)
4. M.Azharuddin (vice-captain, assuming he doesn’t have ego issues under Ganguly)
5. Rahul Dravid
6. Ajay Jadeja
7. MS Dhoni (wicket-keeper)
8. Kapil Dev (obviously!)
9. Irfan Pathan (at his best, as a bowler… remember when he was always taking an early wicket?)
10. Anil Kumble (at his best)
11. Zaheer Khan/J.Srinath (a toss up)

12. Yuvraj Singh

What is interesting is that there is not much different in the current team. I actually believe we’re sending the best combination… largely because we have the best ODI keeper-batsman India has seen (Dhoni). Our fielding is still weak (dependent on Azhar/Jadega, and Yuvraj as 12th man). And we’re still struggling to find bowlers who can keep the score under 300! But still, there’s a chance.

My assumption is we win the toss and bat second! And let our master blaster’s take it from there. If we were batting first, I think I would need to strengthen the bowling… perhaps a fifth bowler instead of Jadega, but I have no idea who would be best as fifth bowler.

Notice, I have Ganguly as captain. Simply assuming this is Ganguly at his best and Ganguly at his captaincy best.

The problem is literally the bowling. And I feel we don’t have enough firepower. I understand the argument of including Bishen Singh Bedi, but he is not tested enough in the ODI arena.

Since Australia are using Symonds as their fifth bowler, I think i would use Jadega/Ganguly (if pacy wicket) and Tendulkar/Sewhag (if spin friendly) to complete their 10.

WordPress headers with (india) cricket themes

I recently changed my header, but I guess I did like my previous WorldCup-1983 one. So I’m going to collect any cricket-oriented banner I make/use and place it here.

The current banner I am using is called Cheer.

Another banner I played around is called Huddle (I know, I know… I didn’t say the name would be original!).

Finally, the banner I am currently using called Three.