Just Cricket

               Captains of this era have all been the perfect ones for their respective countries, if one considers the situation that each country was in at the time of being made captain. Andrew Strauss, Graeme Smith, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Ricky Ponting have all been good captains given the records that they possess even after such lengthy stays at the international level as captains. The thing that was common amongst these people was that they all had a good base for them to start on. Strauss was probably the one amongst these four to have started on shaky ground. Statistics as Captain for each player.                               Three people who catch the eye are Michael Clarke, Misbah-ul-Haq and Darren Sammy. All these 3 have been captain for about the same number of Tests which is on...

The Forgotten Man              It has been a year and the World Cup has been largely remembered by Indians, if not anyone else, for the tears from Sachin Tendulkar, the first ball fours from Virender Sehwag, the six from M S Dhoni sailing over long-on bringing the Would cup home, the 97 from Gautam Gambhir in the final, the accurate bowling of Zaheer Khan and last but not least the tremendous show by Yuvraj Singh with both bat and ball. There are so many things that have gone unnoticed. For example, this World Cup was considered to be a poor tournament for Harbhajan Singh. People , largely think that he was there to provide wickets and he didn't and Yuvraj did his job as well. But, Harbhajan was the guy who was tying up one end which enabled Yuvraj to get wickets at the other end, sometimes even through poor short deliveries. Wickets that come to mind, Kumara Sangakkara in the final and William Porterfield when he was sailing at 74, both coul...