'WC comes alive in thrilling tie' - enjoy the exciting week ahead!! :-)

After Ind - Eng match yesterday, quite a few headlines say "World Cup comes alive in thrilling tie" - yes world cup did come alive yesterday in thrilling tie - but was it only for yesterday or did it actually come alive?? I don't want to be skeptic... in the next 5 days following games are scheduled:

Mon 28 Feb West Indies v Netherlands

Mon 28 Feb Zimbabwe v Canada
Tue 01 Mar Sri Lanka v Kenya
Wed 02 Mar England v Ireland
Thu 03 Mar South Africa v Netherlands
Thu 03 Mar Pakistan v Canada
Fri 04 Mar New Zealand v Zimbabwe
Fri 04 Mar Bangladesh v West Indies

Do these matches excite / interest you? Not me... :-( 

Is India in running for world cup or ...??

Did you watch India - England match? What did you think about the match and its outcome? 

Boycott says "Tie right result"!! Do you think the same way? Nothing wrong in thinking the same way except in that case you should also think "India is not in running for this world cup!"

In the first match the Indian bowlers allowed Bangladesh to score 283 whereas Bangladesh batters had very tough time against Ireland bowlers where they could only score 205! 

In the second match the Indian bowlers allowed England to score 338 whereas England batters had a tough time against Netherlands bowlers to surpass the score of 292!! [Oh... even Netherlands batters score 292 against England's bowling attack :-)] Also England was recently thrashed 6-1 by Australia in the one-day series!! 

Previously I has stated that India need to improve their bowling... and this time also I am of the same opinion - India needs to bowl well!! Many experts think / commented that India lost last few wickets pretty cheaply [actually last 5 wickets fell for just 11 runs - which is shocking!!] and should have scored more - may be much more. 

They are absolutely right - India batted pretty badly by losing last five wickets cheaply (I will come to that later) but I think with this kind of bowling you can never be sure about what is the 'safe score' - 350, 370, 400?? And who knows England may have still managed to get to that score... :-) 

Batting 2nd put any team under huge pressure when they know that have to score 6-7 runs per over... and with that kind of pressure on England batters, Indian bowlers could not take the advantage. So, though the match is a tie but as far as the team spirit / morale is concerned 'England has won the game' as batting second and still scoring 338 is much more difficult than scoring the same batting first.

Now coming to batting - not only India's 2nd half of batters failed to shine (after first match some headlines said 'Believe the hype: India's batsmen are ready' - huh!!) but I feel the batting order was wrong!! How can a batsman in full form - Kohli - is sent no. 7 batsman when he's an accomplished opening, 1 or 2 down batsman? Whatever happens he should be sent as a batman at no. 1 to 4 - not after that as he's not accomplished to play with the tail (unlike Laxman :-))!! 

Yuvraj: Though he scored 58 - he literally 'fought' hard to score those runs and he's far from this best.

Dhoni & Pathan: Though they scored 31 (25) and 14 (8), none of them looked very convincing and one suggestion to both of them - you can't score 6 or 4 in each delivery so play as per the merit of the ball, push it and run!!

So, India should stick to same batting order for the first 4 batters Sehwag, Sachin, Gambhir and Kohli - unless something extraordinary happens!! Then they can change the ordering of the next three Dhoni, Yuvi and Pathan as they are hard hitters and 'mostly' ride on their luck!

Anyway - all the best to India and hopefully they will pickup their bowling soon!!

We hate 'Cricket Green'... is it or is it not??

I know sponsorships are an integral part of most sports, cricket included, and obviously sponsors want to advertise their brand everywhere - but why on earth ICC is allowing them to put so many advertisements on the cricket playing area!!

ICC World Cup 2011: TWO Advertisements on each end of the pitch

ICC World Cup 2011: FIVE Advertisements on one side of the pitch

ICC World Cup 2011: ONE BIG Advertisement on another side of the pitch

Some years back when 'cricket' started becoming a 'corporation' rather than just a sport, especially in the Indian sub continent, a lot of sponsors started pouring lots of $$ into each game... and they obviously must have demanded to put up advertisements for their brands and that too 'close to the ground - as close as possible'! [At this time who knew that advertisement will be put up on the ground itself!! :-)]


Advertising Step 1: We started seeing the advertisements of the sponsors on the side screen behind the wicket keeper - at first it used to be static ones and then they became dynamic & digital!! Though I did not like that but that was alright. At time they used to have problems changing those advertisements into the white / black screens where the bowling end changed - and still the problem persists at times when the batter complain.


Advertising Step 2: Once there were too many sponsors and their advertisements could not fit into side screens (shame on you side screens!!), advertisements were 'painted' on the 'ground' one behind the wicket keeper and the another behind the bowlers run-up. Fast bowlers started running over the advertisements. So, for the first time the cricket ground was used as advertisement boards!! This I hated as I thought it is spoiling the ground & the greens... but who listens to me!! Anyways, the total count of advertisements on ground was 2. 


Advertising Step 3: Now since cricket ground could be used as advertisement board, there were lots of places that can be painted!! (Yay!! Yippee!! for the sponsors)!! Then 2 advertisements were put on each end of the pitch (as opposed to 1 on each side previously). Now the total count of advertisements on ground increased to 4.   


Advertising Step 4: Then two more advertisements were put, one on each side of the pitch (offside and leg side). With this, the total count of advertisements on ground increased to 6. 


Advertising Step 5 (ICC World Cup 2011): This time the number of advertisements on the ground has increased to 10 (great batting - the score is now in double figures)!! At some grounds I saw that its up to 12 - 2 on each end of the pitch & 4 on each side of the pitch!! Way to go mate...


Advertising Step 6 (post ICC World Cup 2011): Great going... but 'we want more, we want more, we want more'!! Still there are lots of greens that I can see on the ground (and of course we had cricket green!!) - those greens can also be painted in different colours as we don't like greens any more - we need colours every where on the ground and that will also help the batters more to score runs as the fielders on the boundary lines will not be able to see the ball (red or white) properly when they pass on these colourful strips of the ground!! 


Just a thought from my side - spare the pitch at least - but of course you can paint it as well if there's too much pressure from the sponsors!! :-) 


Do you have any suggestion where sponsors can put up their advertisements?? Please send them to ICC ASAP :-) as more sponsors are coming and putting pressure!!

Zimbabwe's unconventional bowling attack

Australia defeated Zimbabwe by 91 runs. Though the result may say the win was convincing, it was not! But that’s a different story…  

My today’s story is about Zimbabwe’s bowling and bowlers. Did you notice the bowling attack of Zimbabwe? If you have missed to notice or just for your recap here is the list of bowlers, their bowling style and how they performed against Australia:

Bowlers	Bowling Style	O	M	R	W	Econ
CB Mpofu	Right-arm fast-medium	9	0	58	2	6.44
RW Price	Slow left-arm orthodox	10	0	43	1	4.30
P Utseya	Right-arm off-break	10	2	43	1	4.30
AG Cremer	Leg-break googly	10	0	41	1	4.10
BRM Taylor	Right-arm off-break	3	0	23	0	7.66
E Chigumbura	Right-arm medium	2	0	18	0	9.00
SC Williams	Slow left-arm orthodox	6	0	29	0	4.83

So, Zimbabwe used 5 'slow bowl' bowlers and even one of them opened the bowling. 4 out of 5 of them bowled really well against Australia... and that too during the 'power play' overs. And these bowlers restricted Australia to 262. And thats because they were bowling on line, short of good length and of course they were 'slow'.  


I believe this is an absolute revelation and an eye-opener for all other teams. Though Australia's pacers did well and Ponting commented "If we get those three up and running and bowling as well as they can, then I don't care what team we're playing against or what conditions we're playing in, that intimidation is going to be there. Those three guys are pushing 150kph and with the conditions that we've seen, the ball's going to reverse at different times here as well". But this is only the first match and that too against Zimbabwe's batters - and I believe Ponting has commented too early. 


I feel slow bowlers (bowling on correct line and length) are the key to bowling success for the teams in this world cup!! What do you feel??

Minnows - what are they really achieving

I wonder why some of the minnows of cricket (this time Kenya, Canada, Ireland and Netherlands) are invited to play in world cup and get humiliated (in most of the matches)? Do these teams learn anything just by getting hammered & humiliated by few of the big fishes of cricket once in 4 years? Do these kind of performances provide any motivation / encouragement - 
- to these teams?
- or to any of the aspiring teams / nations (like Afghanistan, Scotland, USA)?
- or to any of the aspiring players of these teams? 


Don't you??

• If you would have played for one of these teams, would you have got the motivation to continue playing after getting thrashed in world cup matches? I won't have.
• Would you have aspired to play for these teams after seeing their performances in the world cup? I won't have. 

Having said that I would definitely love to represent my country in any form :-) - minnows or not!!


Talking about 2011 world cup - out of the total 49 matches to be played in this world cup, 22 matches will have no or very little significance as these 4 teams will be involved in those matches. So, if these teams won't have played, the end result of this world cup would be the same with 22 less matches to play - which would have a been a smaller & compact schedule!!


But you know what, ICC must have some reasons to believe that all these 22 matches are significant enough and so these teams should be allowed to play.  So, lets see how these teams have faired last 4 years in one day matches (i.e. from 28th April '07 i.e. end of last world cup till 19th Feb '11 i.e. start of this world cup).

• KENYA: 49 matches played against the teams Bermuda, Ireland, Canada, Zimbabwe, Netherlands & Afghanistan
• CANADA: 33 matches played against the teams Afghanistan, Bermuda, Canada, Ireland, Kenya, Netherlands, Scotland & West Indies (3 matches)
• IRELAND:  46 matches played against the teams Afghanistan, Australia (1 match), Bangladesh, Canada, England (1 match), India (1 match), Kenya, Netherlands, New Zealand (1 match), Scotland, South Africa (1 match), West Indies (2 matches) & Zimbabwe.
• NETHERLANDS: 31 matches played against the teams Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bermuda, Canada, Ireland, Kenya, Scotland & West Indies (1 match)

With the above stats I feel hard to believe that these teams will perform well in this world cup and the 22 matches are significant enough - for the tournament, for the players, for the reporters and for us, the spectators & TV viewers!! And I feel hard to understand what exactly ICC is trying to do to improve the performances of these teams. And do you have any idea on how the minnows will start improving by playing among each other? And this is the only idea that ICC is implementing to improve & promote cricket in their world?


I feel one of the steps that ICC should take if they sincerely want these teams to be bigger & better and have 'some impact' on world cup - they should be make these to play against then 'big guns' of cricket more often in between world cups. 
ICC should make the these teams a part of the itineraries that are made for the big guns say by making the rule that at least one of minnows have to take part in any one day series / tournaments where more than 2 teams are playing. For example - there's a scheduled tri-series in Jan '12 in Australia between Australia, India and New Zealand - in this series ICC should also include one of the minnows say Netherlands. So, instead of tri-series it will be a quad-series and may be instead of each team playing each other 3 times can play 2 times!! 


So, little bit of twists in these tournaments, these teams can achieve a lot and this may take them to a long way to come out the shell called 'minnows'!! Just a thought... :-)


There can be 'n' number of more steps that ICC can and should take... but that can be a matter for one of my next blogs (not this one)!! :-) 


Well, let me know your views as well...

Good win for India but...

India won pretty convincingly against Bangladesh in the first ICC World Cup 2011 match on 19th Feb '11. Good on them!! Many headlines read - "India Thrashed Bangladesh"... is it actually thrashing?? India scored 370 and in reply Bangladesh scored 283!! 


Come to think of it its not a bad score, not a bad score at all for Bangladesh!! With the Indian bowling skills at this level - when Bangladesh could score 283 - any other better equipped teams like Australia, South Africa, Sri Lanka etc would have won the game, even if Indian batters would have scored 370!! What do you think?


Bowling against Bangladesh was pretty ordinary - especially by Sreesanth - this was proven by Bangladesh batters. On the slow tracks (as it is there in the subcontinents) "pace" bowlers like Sreesanths and Taits are pretty useless. Teams either need pace bowlers who have "some other ammunitions" besides the pace (like disguised slower deliveries or yorkers) or else teams need to use slow bowlers who can bowl a touch short of good length on the top on off stump consistently. So, India should drop Sreesanth and take Ashwin instead.


Today, just after couple of days of winning, some headlines say "Did India peak too soon?" or "Believe the hype: India's batsmen are ready" - so does India think that they have already peaked or is India getting overconfident about our batting lineup. One good day does not make the whole tournament - so lets not start writing about Indian batters peaking!! Its just the first match of the tournament.


I believe, in all forms of cricket - tests, one days or 20-20s - bowlers can win matches, batsmen can only make a competitive score for bowlers to win it!! Having said that both batting and bowling needs to compliment each other to win big games against big teams. So, till bowlers can deliver the goods, there's a lot to improve on for team India. 


Its a long way to go before we should say that India has reached its peak...