Just Cricket

Here’s a thought. There has been a gap of 95 days since the last test was played on March 5, 2014. Although this is a sign of what people want to see and what the administrators want to provide the world, it is important for test cricket to survive and most people who follow cricket would think that. That is something that is obvious and is not going to be the subject matter of this post. What is probably important and has escaped the eyes of cricketers, cricket enthusiasts and administrators is having a mechanism where all formats co-exist, different cricket enthusiasts get to see the formats that they want to and the shortest form of the game being the most popular format is played for the longest duration in a year. Cricket, for years has tried to emulate football to attract more viewership and has always failed. Maybe, it’s time to think differently and accept the fact that it’ll never be as big as football. Accepting that doesn’t necessarily mean that cricket isn’t doing wel...

It has been a good fortnight of cricket. Scintillating test cricket in the northern hemisphere, display of authority from a top class side in the south. For about three days in what one could call the Valentine's day Test, Pakistan looked like they had the upper hand, courtesy the partnership between Younis Khan and Asad Shafiq. It was very uncharacteristic of Pakistan to show such grit and determination, putting up such a big partnership after having been 33-4 on the first morning. Pakistan further dominated with the ball showing signs of making a strong comeback in the series. South Africa were still a worrisome 174 behind Pakistan when Peterson walked in with just four wickets in hand. But, there is just something about top sides as South Africa are currently, that they are always there or thereabouts even when the opposition is on top, waiting to seize on any opportunity presented and that's what they did, not just in this test in Cape Town, but in Adelaide last year as w...

India have finished their so called revenge series against England today. From the moment the Test series ended in the lifeless fashion that it did in Nagpur, India have won and lost five Limited overs International matches in the space of a month. Even though the numbers don't show much, there have been quite a few positives for India in the month that has gone by. For starters, India have found decent enough pace bowling replacements for Umesh Yadav and Zaheer Khan, Ashwin has been bowling slower through the air, getting more purchase off the pitch. Ishant Sharma too has hit a purple patch getting his consistency in line and length, the only question being whether he can keep it going till the Tests against Australia. The biggest positive of all has been that Ravindra Jadeja has sort of established himself as a decent enough bowler to bowl 10 overs in a One Day International Innings.  The batting however remains a worry with Dhoni and Raina, the only 2 batsmen who have impre...

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...