Just Cricket

There was this thought that came to my mind while watching the first T20 International between India and England last week. The face of the English T20 squad had changed completely, whereas India were still fielding a fair amount of players who had played in the Tests. Some numbers would give one a fair idea of how the Indian and English squads compared. The Englishmen had retained just the one player, Tim Bresnan to play in the first T20 whereas India had retained six, Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin and Piyush Chawla. This brings us to the point that has been made a million times by thousands of cricket experts all over the world since the advent of T20 cricket and the IPL thereafter. The point being there has been too much cricket and players run out of steam at one point. The length of the IPL and the ICC's Future Tours Program have been questioned in this regard which is fair to a certain extent. But, there are teams wh...

I was really looking forward to watching a test match at the Eden Gardens. The first look at the Eden Gardens doesn’t really give you the feeling that it’s huge. It looks very new though, with it being renovated very recently. The arrangements for the match looked very much in order at the outset. Things were about to change very fast. The Cricket Association of Bengal and Kyazoonga do not have the courtesy to inform people that the tickets that they have bought are no longer available because of a mistake that they had committed. It’s just ridiculous how people get treated here in India.      The hour long queue I stood in How would anyone want to watch a match at the ground with such treatment from the management!! Clearly no one cares about it and writing more about it wouldn’t solve any problem. But, I still would just want to put my experience out there so that people know. There was just one queue to pick-up tickets booked online an...

              The hawk-eye was first used in 2001 and it took seven more years to use the same technology to correct umpiring errors. There has been a lot said about the faults in the current system. The Indians, after losing multiple reviews due to poor reviews in Sri Lanka started questioning the system itself and haven't used it in a bilateral series,since then. But, the system is still doing an efficient job in correcting major umpiring errors. Thus, serving its purpose.                Most predictions that the hawk-eye comes up with seem to be fairly believable. There could be minor alterations in the predicted trajectory of the ball, but it would still be better than the trajectory predicted by the umpire which is why there seems to be very less logic in what the Indians have to say. Coming to Hot Spot, it picks up all edges that a human ear can pick up and a few edges that th...

One Day Internationals have been tweaked about a dozen times over the past 5 years. Nothing has come out of it. It has only contributed to making people less interested in that part of the game due to these many changes. Not everyone gets to keep up with the change in rules. But, when it happens on these many occasions in such a short time, a viewer who comes back to watch a game is put off considering that he finds himself not understanding the new rules. Change is good. But, too much will only lead to cricket as a product losing its old customers. Keeping all old customers and attracting new ones is always a good mechanism which the ICC don't seem to understand. They keep making changes to the ODIs hoping for increase in viewership, but ultimately end up losing viewers who aren't keeping up with the rule changes on a day to day basis. A captain on the field who is reacting more than acting is said to be behind the game always and ends up short of achieving success. This...

                 Most people don't understand sport, yet they watch and pass comments without pondering over the implications of their comments. Before judging, it would be worthwhile to remember that not every match is fixed, not everyone plays just for money, not everyone is a doper. Sport might just be entertainment for everyone, but, for the people who are involved in it, it's life. A batsman plays because he feels good every time he finds the ball hitting the middle of the bat, a bowler loves it when the seam goes perfectly upright out of his hand.                     It is understandable that these comments come from the frustration that is created amongst viewers due to the ever so many scandals that keep coming up. But, it is not understandable how people can generalize and say a particular match wa...

               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...