Off Stump

I've always felt that "The Wall" was one of the most inappropriate and unfair nicknames that any cricketer could have, but in his typical phlegmatic fashion Dravid has shrugged it off and accepted it as part of the game. The passage below from Ayaz Memon's recent interview with him really epitomizes the man and the cricketer. Q:Do you sometimes feel that you have not got enough accolades? Does that drive you to do better? RD: I've never really worried about that. People keep telling me that, maybe, you don't get the recognition you deserve; but, I think, I've got enough. In my own mind, I'm very comfortable. I think I've got a hell of a lot of recognition. When I look around me and I look at the other cricketers of India who've also done well, the number of guys who play first class cricket for years, there can be no complaint. Outside of cricket, you look around and see so many guys who struggle day and day out and get nowhere near the rewar...

For men who follow a sport passionately, one of the hardest things to stomach is their team packing it in without a fight. The fact that its just a game sinks in after some time but initial feeling is one of pain and despair, very nicely captured by both Samir Chopra and Sriram Dayanand in their most recent blogs on this topic. The morning of August 13th at Edgbaston is comfortably the worst time I have ever spent watching a Test match live at the ground and probably will be for the rest of my life. Losing to a better team carries no shame but the crippling manner of defeat is what will sting for a long time. The only thing that this team has achieved in this series is to prove to fans that just when you think things can't get worse, they will. That and the fact that the future of this team (post Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman, Zaheer, and Harbhajan) is a scary one, at least in this form of the game. Its interesting how the team has come full circle from one World Cup to another. The...

The next three days (if the game lasts that long) at Edgbaston and the fourth Test at the Oval will be a severe test of the resolve that this Indian team has and more importantly, whether they have the desire to fightback for individual and team pride. As Kumble says (in this piece from Sharda Ugra) -  "At this level, the talent is more or less the same. It is the desire that makes a difference. You have to tell yourself that out of the four bowlers, you want to become the No.1 that the captain turns to. How you want to go up the ranks is up to you." He was talking about just the bowlers, but its equally true of the batsman too. And particularly for the younger Indian players like Gambhir, Raina, Ishant, Praveen, Mishra and Sreesanth this series had represented an opportunity to do just that, i.e. show that they are the future #1s. For the older men, its a test of how long they want to keep going and whether they have reached the end of their fount of desire. At the end of ...

So far this India-England series or 'the battle for #1' as most people (myself included) had billed it hasn't quite been the Hitchcockian thriller that it was expected to be. And though a lot has been said and written about it, the primary reason in my opinion is that England have been fitter, hungrier and more disciplined (with both bat and ball). Form is something that most sportspersons cannot really control but fitness and strength is something they can and as Sanjay Manjrekar points out in this incisive article , hiding behind injuries is not something a team aspiring to be the world's best should do. Given his fitness record and athleticism levels, this piece from Ganguly is a bit rich, but the point he makes is nevertheless a pertinent one. In my opinion, fitness (or the lack of it) is a broader cultural phenomenon and until there is a distinct change there, its hard to see how any Indian team could consistently be the best in the world. Of more immediate conc...

Judging by the amount that's been said and written about Ian Bell's run-out-that-wasn't at Trent Bridge, you would think that it has been the most significant occurrence of the series so far when nothing could be further from the truth. Andrew Miller  and Samir Chopra seem to be of the opinion that it was the crucial turning point in the match, which I completely disagree with (the post-tea sessions on days one and two were far more critical and momentum shifting). Andy Flower says that if Tendulkar had been run-out similarly in Bombay, it would have caused an international incident. He's clearly feeling the effects of having been in the England cricket set-up for too long given that a) its very improbable that Tendulkar would do something as daft as Bell did, and b) when a controversial run-out (but within the laws) did happen to him (against Pakistan at Eden Gardens no less), Tendulkar went out to the crowd and appealed to them to calm down and let the game proceed...

When the Indian team looks back at the second Test over the next few days, they would be justified in wondering how after having England at 124-8 at tea on the first day, they contrived to be beaten to a pulp (to the tune of 319 runs) an hour after tea on the fourth day. The turnaround engineered by England was one of the most remarkable I have seen in some time and statistically evidenced by the fact that this was the biggest margin of victory ever by a team after having conceded a first innings lead. England once again were simply brilliant and India (unlike at Lord's) did not even have a glimmer of hope after the first hour of day three. As brittle as India's performance was, this should not take away from the fact that this was the first time since Jan 2008 that they were beaten in two Test matches in a row (obliterated more like in this one) and the first time since 1974 that they have lost more than two matches in a series in England. On current form, it would be an ach...