I thank all the readers and those who have interacted here, most sincerely. My apologies to those who were stung by my words. I am quitting this game for the moment. I might surface during the World Cup 2011 but I cannot be certain of that.
Ole farts like me should call it a day sometime or the other. If I return to blogging, cricket might find a post among other things. Seriously, I cannot commit to watching so much cricket and writing about it anymore. maybe just the odd article or so that really touches me.
At the end of the day, for me, TCWJ, cricket blogs and cricket forums played their useful part in my life. The handle 'Soulberry' needs to retire as well. It's done its job and is now more of an irritant to me.
I made friends, I made enemies and became acquainted with many more.
To my friends, I shall cherish you all and try and remain in touch somehow.
To those who consider me 'enemy' my humble apologies for upsetting you in some intended or unintended way. My plea for forgiveness.
To my acquaintances, we'll keep bumping into each other somewhere.
There are many wonderful cricket bloggers out there - some of whom figure in the left navbar. It's a day's job reading them all and I must confess I visit them by rotation.
I have usually nothing to add anymore to views already expressed.
Then, there are all those professional writers...a few of them interesting and different like J rod (Jarrod Kimber), and who has gone on to greater things.
Talking about bigger things, there is Gaurav Sethi of Naked Cricket and BCC!.
I recall how BCC! was born and how he, along with Pankaj Sharma of Straightpoints, A Bisht of Cricket U/A, Ottayan, Victoria Minerva, initially built up the project. It was heartening to see them take wing and grow. More authors joined in and it is now a community.
Kartikeya Date and Homer have been special ones too. I admired/admire their precision and knowledge about many things cricket.
Aju John had something different to offer as well in which I was interested - he also wrote an excellent food blog.
Scorpicity - I enjoyed discussing photography with him. very knowledgable about the subject too and he gave me tips to improve my amateur passion for it.
Greyblazer, Mikesiva, Oldregret, Rusty - I thank you all mates for including me in your lives at some point of time. GB, I know where to catch up with. Mikesiva too. oldreg, I suspect, lurks at the same old haunt. :)
Namya...I'll keep popping over to his blog too.
Krishna/Keshto - another old friend with whom I plan to remain in touch for we strum to Baul music too!
Jonathan is another person I have regard for. He has allowed me to discuss with him in freestyle manner without becomin grim about it. Believe me, I appreciated that always.
Jaju saheb...is an honest blogger who is meticulous with his material. Then there's Sfx a classy writer.
Surya (admire him) and Ganeshbabu Venkat too and wishing Venky Babu all the best in his progress into pro ranks.
NM..I'd love to remain in touch with you as well.
Tony's After Grog's an interesting blog too.
I'm sure good friend, Balajhi might have some more cricket left in him! No words to express to him for all the patience, the respect and affection showered upon me by him from even before TCWJ.
Obviously I am missing many people here, but my thanks to each one of you.
Peace, Joy and plenty of warmth in your lives.
Thursday, 6 January 2011
Thanks a ton
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
Dravid will have to anchor under-4 run chase
If you want it baaad, if you want this rare chance, you've got to go that extra against all odds.
Yesterday, Indian bowlers mucked up a great chance to raze South Africa to the ground after demolishing six levels of their faltering resolve. Thanks to sloppy bowling, bizarre field management by Dhoni and one Jaques Kallis, all India could do was watch their greatest chance of a series win alter, change and recede like flickering headlight-induced shadows upon Delhi's winter fog roads. Bhajji played a lone hand to keep India in the fray as Zak walked off - his well-used body in patchy disrepair and requiring fresh renovational attention. Sree and Ishant were too exhausted by the end and quite limited in effectivity.
Kallis has greater motivation than the rest of South Africans. He has perhaps personal reasons too given that he is part of an intensively competitive cricketing cohort on the world scene. He sensed India's limitations being exposed by Zak's goodbye even as he stood in the dust of six South African wickets crashing in a heap. All he needed was one or two stout men on the other side to ride along with him. Boucher, marked man that he is now, was the one to respond. The veteran keeper and one-time august middle order batsman, gathered from his cache of experience and willed himself to forge a partnership. How crucial this partnership is will be revealed today by the end of the first session of play. It is another fact that he fell as soon as the figure 60 began to loom on the horizon - Boucher tends to fall around that score once he has crossed fifty.
So 340 is the target India ended up with. They commence chasing today with Gambhir a distinctly doubtful starter. At just under 4.00 runs per over, one would be optimistic if the match were in India, but this is in Steyn's own den. However, despite the uneven bounce, the pitch looks good for batting.
India must make the effort to win, no matter how difficult it may look or impossible. To shut shop early and play for a draw would be silly unless wickets have also fallen. If India goes into lunch without loss, then the chase is on and I expect Rahul Dravid to anchor the chase and rotate strike with strokemaking from the other side.
India must go for it - it's no longer a great chance but still an outside chance of a first series victory of immense proportions in South Africa.
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
Some essential requirements
India has managed its top spot in cricket rather well through the year, but I am wondering if it could have been better, and also worrying a bit over what lies ahead.
As far as batting goes, I am not too fussed - Pujara definitely looked like a wide-eyed boy seeing an awesome toy for the first time as Steyn bowled a masterclass to him in this Test match, but this boy has also shown that he can stay. It might be difficult to say this with small scores only to back you up, but that's my call - Pujara looks to me a learning batsman and Steyn truly bowled well to him here. The ball that pitched just on the margin of the carpet on the leg side and swung in to trap him was outstanding and many veterans would have found that tough too. That said, one would like this boy to get going sooner than later - Indian cricket, international cricket, can be heartbreaking otherwise.
In the same vein, I feel the five or six top young batsmen like Kohli, Rahane, Raina, Vijay and Mukund would be capable of growing with experience as and when they begin to gather it.
It is bowling that worries me for that has been the most prominent instrument of India's elevation through the ranks. When India built up an ability to pick 20 wickets in a match on different surfaces, different countries, things began to change for its Test cricketing fortunes. And this will remain the main instrument upon which India will either survive or fall from its perch.
We require our pace attack to be in mid-one thirties for most part of the day minimum. I shan't be too greedy and call for 140s for an intelligent bowler, with well-honed skills, in the mid-to-high 130s can achieve brilliant results. 120s are going to make it difficult to achieve consistently good results on all surfaces. And if the bowler is short of ideas, the worse it is.
Ishant Sharma looks half the bowler that had Ponting on the hop (though that's not saying much these days) after a drop from 140 Ks into the 120s. It doesn't matter what ideas he has then, he remains negotiable. Sreesanth misses out on the yorker from his armamentarium simply because the lad no longer has those additional 10-15 Ks he burst upon the scene with. He does accelerate once in a while though, but mostly bowls in 120s through the day. Somewhere down the line, it will stop working for Indian bowlers. I feel there is no harm in exploring options like Pankaj Singh
And then there is the need for a quality spinner who can pick wickets consistently home and away.
India must look to develop an attack which rarely allows teams to go over 300-350 in usual conditions. If conditions are helpful, then they must have the potency to keep it much smaller.
England will require a good bowling team. So will West Indies. Zak's on his l;ast legs and the rest are not delivering as expected. Better, India develops bowlers too along with batsmen.
If Unadkat was fast-tracked on a whim, why not check out Pankaj Singh and Chahar too? At least Singh is no rookie in the strictest sense and he appears to have grown into this season. Burly chaps, tall, can swing ball both ways, and can 'maybe hit the deck' well enough. They too are not express registering 120s and early 130s only this season, but if they can keep it up at 135, then no harm trying them out too.
Irfan, RP and the whole lot of them appear to be exhausted players.
We need bowlers to keep India in the hunt always.
N Balajhi had a suggestion to make the other day, he himself will write about it of course but let me 'leak' it ahead of his post! What if Ishant was kept only for Test duties and llowed a season of county cricket?
Now I do not know much about county cricket but can only assume there are things he will learn from there rather than forget anything he has. (which isn't a great lot these days anyway)
As far as keeping him for Tests only is concerned with very limited exposure to other forms of the game for a couple of years - that had been my litany since he was pitchforked as a teen. Even at that stage, I had suggested on 606 if it could not have been delayed a bit, or, if necessary, then could it not have been a calibrated exposure for the young lad? He was precious then - had the speed and height and enough movement both ways - we should have built him up from strength to strength rather than use him as a disposable syringe or urobag or something like that.
Monday, 3 January 2011
Great uncertainties of this game
Cricket reporting, analysis, prediction and commentary are as fraught as predicting any human endeavour usually is. The other day, day before the match, the cricket reporter of The Hindu had the following to say in his assessment of the pitch and Baroda's strategy.
Vadodara: Baroda has chosen a supposedly batsman-friendly Reliance Stadium — as against the familiar, picturesque and established seamer-friendly Moti Bagh Palace ground — as the venue for its Ranji Trophy semifinal against Karnataka here from Monday.
The visitor's quality seam attack has forced the change.
[...]
Rookie captain Pinal Shah and coach Mukesh Narula, once a skilled practitioner with the new ball in first class cricket, were also quick to recognise the potential diminishing returns from its seam attack at the palace ground strip.
The surface at the Reliance Stadium, according to the local observers, affords freedom for the batsmen to score runs and brings some cheer to the spinners.
When one considers what transpired at Reliance on the first day of the semi-final, one begins to wonder what led the seasoned reporter astray along with the Karnataka skipper, who chose to bat first upon winning the toss, when the situation unraveled thus.
Eighteen wickets fell on the first day for the princely sum of 240 runs. Nine wickets each fell to seamers and spinners. Something in the pitch fooled the veterans as much as Indian cricket is being fooled by such a set of circumstances.
What kind of strip was it? Was it worthy of a semi-final? If indeed it was, then the pitch must have worn impressive camouflage to fool all, and all batsmen bar Pinal Shah, who began as a bowler, must have been quite useless for there are no Dale Steyns running in to bowl in India in any match. Both scenarios do not speak well for the Ranji tournament, when we should be setting tough standards for both batsmen and bowlers in Ranji to ensure only the best rise to the top.
Pitch standards must improve. It's an oft repeated complaint. Unfortunately, in India, even the standards of pitches for international matches aren't stable or established.
A pitch for the longer game must be just slightly tilted in the bowler's favour without being an unreasonable and must also encourage batsmanship. It must, as the sessions pass, must age gracefully instead of wickedly. People might accuse that that is the classical image of a pitch painted by the English pen lords who have written about the game. Be that as it may, I have seen such pitches in India in my own time - both in Ranji and international matches. So it is not that such is merely a writer's figment and impractical. Neither is it that such a knowledge is unknown to curators here.
I am recalled to an article by Makarand Waingankar called A curate's egg available at Cricinfo. Maybe the incentive he suggests would work.
By the way, if the pitch was merely lively (not having seen it and probably an unlikely event), then that speaks poorly of the batsmen on display.
Irrespective of which team wins this semis from here, what conclusions can we arrive from such a match while rating players? The two Karnataka seamers, Mithun and Vinay Kumar might have been fancying selectorial interest in themselves along with Pandey and Uthappa. What do we make of all of them? If the pitch was stinging, then Mithin and Kumar failed to make best use even if they had to bowl after freshness was lost. And as far as the batsmen go, the only conclusion we can draw about Robin and Manish is that they cannot face even Vahora on a devilish pitch, leave alone Morkel and Steyn. Read More......
Sunday, 2 January 2011
I.C. comments
There are many ways you can spin around the views we have expressed here and make them appear less harsh in saying the same thing about Ponting's captaincy. We have always held on this blog, in a string of articles that have had touched the subject, that Ponting's captaincy never really mattered for Australia since it looked winning when self-performing honed veteran greats were with him and in form and once they began to wane or left, he couldn't extract the best out of what remained except for one series in South Africa against good teams, and, that what Australia mainly missed in the current Ashes was Ponting the Batsman.
One could say it differently, more hagigraphically of the man - Ricky Ponting - even if that may not be all accurate. We cannot be certain of this unless we have been inside the Australia's dressing room at all times and on the field with them during his captaincy, which we can safely say, have not had the opportunity to be. Anyway, Ian Chappell says the same thing while making Ponting look good despite failing to mask his own recent desire to see Ponting go.
When Ponting had declared in England that he'd return to claim the Ashes as captain that statement had evoked inside our heart, long stoned to the public person that is he, a seismic quake of sympathy. Immediately, in our eyes, he crossed over to be the sorriest among underdogs, and our heart naturally warms to and supports such in their well-intentioned endeavours from low points of their lives. In Ricky Penitent we had expressed this stone -shattering shift in our heart thus
He lost the Ashes twice on successive tours of England. That is a huge cross to bear for any Australian cricket captain. Pain brought out a new humility from inside the man. All the vainglorious struts of the blind past fell away from him, to leave open a clear purpose glowing on his contrite face. At an advanced age for cricketers, he resolves to undertake the journey which baulks even the young - to begin from scratch and stumble through the uncertainity of remorse and regret, upon aching limbs to retrieve what he lost for his nation - that little urn of Ashes.
As a first step on his new path, Ponting has, in the manner of another great seeker and peer named Sachin Tendulkar, whose own long quest ends at World Cup 2011, quit T20 internationals yesterday to focus on test match cricket and ODIs.Cricinfo It is possible that as the next tour to England approaches, he may have given up ODIs as well to immerse himself completely in the task he has now set himself.
We rated the task he had set himself four years from then as one worthy of being called an act of penitence. We never rated his captaincy and therefore knew the difficulty of it since cricketing quality in his team eroded alarmingly with the very ticking of the clock with no distant signs of the tide changing in his favour. Only he, as a quality player that he is, could keep Australia on the table, but not as captain.
Ian Chappell says the same thing differently
Like a politician intoxicated by power, Ponting has talked about extending his leadership maybe as far as the 2013 Ashes series. This is unrealistic, as captains have a use-by-date. Their power to inspire wanes as personnel change and new ideas are required. A fresh side requires a younger captain; it needs to be his team.
Also, the future captain needs to be installed at a time that's right for his career, rather than at the whim of the incumbent
In recent times, Chappelli has been gripped with an intense desire against Ponting's captaincy in stark contrast to his usual fawning over the same. That he is now 'washing his hands in the flowing Ganges' as the saying goes in these parts of the world, is obvious by the quick consistency and alacrity of his viewpoint. But he mellows it down by dragging in 'use-by-dates' and foggy clouds of 'younger captains'. It's fashionable to opt for something other than the regular when your regular's given you a torrid time. 'Young' is usually the preferred 'other'.
Perhaps Ian Chappell has, in his current enthusiasm, forgotten the last revival of Australian cricket scripted by an old Bob Simpson, that Ponting has finally frittered away. Maybe he only intended to say a change in leadership might help but had to find words to tone down the earlier view he expressed and felt he must stick with.
Chappelli then tries to make amends of sorts and enters the world of lipspeaking hagiography first with this statement
The Australian batting was fragile without him dominating at three, and the bowling was extremely inconsistent. In the end, the team-mates he'd protected weren't able to cover his back when he needed their help.
that tells us that Australia's batting and bowling had indeed dwindled with loss of players and Ponting's captaincy was not to blame for the team's decline, and then wants us to swallow this in the immediately next paragraph that tries to tell us that the glory days were because of his captaincy and not the quality of perfectly honed players of quality
Look, if Oz's decline is because it lost men of quality that means it's dominance was because of them. Where does Ponting's captaincy enter into the goodness aspect of it at all? He was like a boy born into a zillionaire's house, who looked good doing what he did while the safe was loaded. This is not a Bob Simpson or Allan Border we are talking about. Or, a Sourav ganguly who hauled a dismal team from doldrums of abjectness and set it on the path to Numero Uno.
The captains provided the attitudes those teams wore and turned into winners - what positive attitude did Ponting's captaincy provide other than bluster, lying, threatening, manipulation, and all things not cricket? It shows in the way Australians play their cricket now - they cannot even play with as much freedom and pride as the other teams do! For Ricky Ponting's captaincy has converted competition from the healthy essence of sporting endeavour to a filthy four letter word.
Chappell says the same thing politely
The fresh captain in Ponting merely rode the talent available and had a bit of goodness spare inside him before captaincy and pressure of being measured in it by Australian yardsticks began to make him subvert all that what was good and able in him. The pressure began to increase wih every retirement since his own demanour wasn't inspirational or transformational as was perhaps Simpson's or Border's. Maybe some players responded to him, like Symonds and the lingering portion of Hayden did, but it wasn't a mindset designed for long-term success. Naturally, since getting that 16th or 17th win became the overriding obsession than charting a careful direction for the team keeping in mind the happening retirements, everything began to collapse when that 17th failed despite hurling everything he had at it - good, bad and the ugly. The man's captaincy's character lacked the strength and substance to do otherwise.
In this Cricinfo article, Chappell goes on to describe technical shortcomings of Ponting's captaincy as if they are newly developed ones - for one who isn't an Australian, those qualities were always evident in his skippership. Only thing was he couldn't really order about key players or need to. And he didn't have to exercise his brain over selection for the team ususally selected itself.
No matter how you say it, how you dress it up as a lovely cake - Ricky Ponting's captaincy success was only a function of pre-primed players of quality and not anything of his own creation. When he had the opportunity to stamp his character on pages of Australia's captaincy sagas, without the shadow of any remanant or handouts of previous eras - what do we have? When he had the opportunity to be a re-builder in the manner of Simpson and Border, what do we have? When the true test of his captaincy came up, Ponting began to look a silly student even to his well-wishing Australians.
It was always Ponting the batsman who ever mattered to Australia, and that, hopefully, Australia hasn't been foolish to reject in it's prevailing sentiment. But like Chappelli, one hopes Ponting's captaincy is firmly behind us all.
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One for the road - A Cozier extravaganza on Ponting's culminating acts of captaincy. Read More......
