Off Stump

The next few days will be interesting as most of the major nations announce their final World Cup 15 (except Sri Lanka who've done so already). So time for some "crystal-balling" primarily from a patriotic perspective. My first XI to battle for the trophy is pretty straight forward (in batting order) - Tendulkar, Sehwag, Gambhir, Yuvraj, Dhoni, Raina, Pathan (Y), Harbhajan, Praveen, Zaheer, Munaf. Three of the four back-up players are also straightforward with Virat Kohli the best spare batsman, Nehra the spare quick and Ashwin the spare spinner. So the main discussion will presumably revolve around the 15th player and its a toughie. At the moment it would seem that Parthiv Patel would get the nod ahead of others simply as cover for both Dhoni and the batting which is what India will rely on in their victory attempts. So that would be my XV. Just for a lark, I've also put in my guesses for the rest of the squads that are yet to be announced. Lets see how close I get ...

So its come to this finally. As the cliche goes, the wheel comes full circle. Australian selection policies these days resemble that of England from the 1990s :-) Took a quick look at the last two years and over 37 Test matches since 1 Jan 2008, Australia have used 36 different players. That's an average of roughly one additional/new player every 1.48 matches! Talk about instability. When compared to India (a new player every 1.94 matches), South Africa (2.14), England (2.24) it shows how things have changed in the last two years with regards to the power balance in Test cricket. What the overall stat also does not show directly is that most of these new players have been bowlers. With the exception of replacing Hayden and Symonds the batting line-up has been quite stable but the bowling has been the exact opposite. Indian spinners like Amit Mishra, Piyush Chawla, Ashwin, and Murali Kartik must be ruing the fact that they don't have an Australian passport! The latter in parti...

This piece by Sharda Ugra is a very interesting read, particularly as "cheating" in various forms gets more and more prevalent in professional sport. Btw, Sharda Ugra is (in my opinion) one of the better cricket writers around today and probably the only woman who regularly writes good stuff. Long may it last.

Reading most of the build-ups and previews of the upcoming Ind-NZ series would make you think that the Kiwis need not have even bothered to turn up. And while I would be surprised if India do not win the Test series, I do not think it will be as easy as most people seem to be thinking. For one, India do not play NZ too often and also seem to find it oddly difficult to lift their game when playing weaker sides. Seven test matches is not much but the fact is that they have beaten the Kiwis just once this decade. Also, given that this is sandwiched between two tough series against Aus and SA, there will be the old "take-a-break-in-between" factor to worry about. On the positive side, Dhoni is pretty level headed and won't be complacent and the team generally seems pretty geed up about holding on to their No.1 ranking so that bodes well. The test for them will be to show that they can be ruthless and go for a 3-0 scoreline. The general Kiwi approach should also help given th...

Its ironic that when I started out blogging, I thought my most frequent posts would be on this one. And its turned out to be almost the exact opposite. My personal blogs and the ones I share with Aruna have had a lot more activity. In general though, writing activity has been up so will bring that "Force" on to here as well.

Despite the (or maybe because of the) immense passion for the game in the country, the average Indian cricket fan still shows a desperate lack of balance and perspective. A few victories makes the team the world's best and a few losses later, the same guys are the dumps. Now our cricketers are many things but definitely not schizophrenic! Samir Chopra raises that very question in this article and I cannot agree more. On a related note, Kadambari Murali asks the very pertinent question of why the BCCI constantly places gag orders on the players who are the end of the day mostly just young men at the beginning of their lives. Wish there more people like Samir and Kadambari getting a wider audience.

Post the inevitable and ignominious exit of the Indian team from the T20 World Cup there has been a lot of talk about how the batting, seam bowling and the IPL let the team down (an examples here , and here ). While I agree with those to a degree, a glaring factor was also the lack of effectiveness of the spinners, especially when compared to their counterparts on other teams. The table below compares the spinners of all the teams in the Super Eight. The Indian spinners bowled the most overs but gave up by far the highest runs per over and per wicket. When spinners from NZ, SA, WI do better than you its time for a re-think. Moreover, if you take out Harbhajan's figures from here things would have been much worse. But then that's what you get when you use part-time spinners to bowl eight overs in almost every game. Ravindra Jadeja and Piyush Chawla should not have even been in the squad, not just in hindsight but because Irfan Pathan would have given the squad better balance and...

Much like the recession in 2009, it looks like the recovery for the Australian cricket team will be much quicker than anticipated. Their batting had shown a few cracks but the development of Shane Watson into a Test class opener and the rediscovered form of Hussey and North leaves them quite solid, though back-up is a bit thin. On the one-day front, though they've never really let up since the 2007 World Cup, the recent blooming of Cameron White and Ryan Harris coupled with the re-emergence of Nathan Hauritz has made them even more formidable. They've also finally found the right personnel for their T20 side with the likes of Shaun Tait, Dirk Nannes, David Warner, and David Hussey. However, it is the Test bowling line-up that leaves me most impressed. Any other team would struggle to replace men like Brett Lee and Stuart Clark but Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus did so almost seamlessly (no pun intended!). And now, with those two injured they've unearthed Doug Bollinger and...

There has been a lot of talk recently about the big hole in India's Test team that will be left by the imminent retirement of Tendulkar, Dravid, and Laxman and this article is another example of that. And while that is likely to be true in the near term, I think the batting line-up will recover far sooner than most people think. For one, in Sehwag and Gambhir there will still be two world class batsmen remaining and also the bench looks reasonably healthy with the likes of Vijay, Badrinath, Pujara, Kohli, and Rohit Sharma all fighting for spots. What has not been talked about much and has been a problem for much longer are the bowling stocks. Despite India's improving record in Test cricket over the last 5 years, there has not been a single new bowler who has managed to establish a permanent spot in the team as a world class performer. In fact in the last two decades, India has produced only three bowlers who consistently delivered Test class performances in Kumble, Srinath, ...

Very few team sports have as much time (and media focus) devoted to picking the captain as cricket does. I've always felt that the traditional Australian view of picking the best team and then the captain is a great one because unless the captain is respected for his abilities as a player its a difficult job to direct team-mates. They seem to be violating their own principles with their T20 team though by picking Michael Clarke as the captain. He averages less than 20 after 19 matches (which is not a small number in this format) and hits less than one boundary a game. Moreover he hasn't played the IPL and nor was he a part of the Champions League winning NSW team. And yet, he's been given the job of trying to win the Aussies the only global tournament they have not made the finals of even once. Granted that other captains (Younis Khan is a good example) have led their teams brilliantly without themselves being very suited to the format, but Pakistan had very few options. Au...