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Good to see India go with the 4th quick, 6 bowling options, how hard can it be? Here I talk Pant, Pandya, and Thakur. And refrain from saying I told you so.
Showing posts with label Pune. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pune. Show all posts
Preview of the decider (while doing a KL Rahul)
what India should do but won't. Or maybe they will. Because it's hitting them bang in the face. A show with a lotta actions - from a ghazal singer to a KL Rahul.
One all.
Some coincidence - for CricBait’s 100th episode we ended up all coordinated. A lot more than the men in blue surely.
Uncomfortably numb: Can this Indian team rise without their best man?
There appeared to be some happiness on the first day of the second Test, it was when Virat Kohli won the toss. He looked cheery, that there could be a possible change in his team’s fortunes. He chose to bat. Why? Because that’s what you do when you win the toss in India. So, with a prayer on their lip, and a rosary in their hand, two Indian openers walked out to bat.
When things
aren’t going your way, you start to believe that there is such a thing as ‘things
not going your way’ – it makes more things go against you. You become negative.
The opposition appears far too positive. They have the moves. You, you’re left
standing there. As it was with India’s first wicket, the ball appeared to plonk
itself on stand-in opener, Abhinav Mukund’s pad like some bird’s droppings. How
did that happen? New ball bowlers don’t hurl yorkers at new ball batsmen, they
bowl line and length. But Mitchell Starc is not your everyday new ball bowler.
He’s thoughtful in an eerily menacing way, as if he shares an axe murderer’s
joke with himself in the course of each ball.
That ball
he hoodwinked Mukand with, had cruel joke written all over it. Comeback to Test
cricket after all these years for this?
If the
black holes of disbelief in Mukund’s eyes were anything to go by, you knew, at
that precise moment, this team was still very much in Pune. Uncomfortably
numbed by the enormity of that defeat, kneaded like dough, baked and knifed, one
by one, into 11 equal slices.
It didn’t
matter how many you made, how long you lasted in Pune, your misery was
infectious and it had infected your mate – you were brothers in need of an
urgent balm.
There was a
stink to that defeat. One that doesn’t go away, definitely not in a few days. That
stink had accompanied this Indian team to Bangalore. And had latched on to
someone who did not even play in Pune. Being a witness on the bench was close
enough.
The
relative calm of close to two hours when Australia went wicketless was
overshadowed by Australia’s menace – it was a prelude to a kill. One that
daunted India, much as it propelled the Aussies.
On the
stroke of lunch, Pujara became the first of Nathan Lyon’s eight kills.
Possibly, the most significant. Pujara, and not Kohli, is the time delay,
before the inevitability of this series, wraps its pythonlike grip on the rest
of the batting.
After KL
Rahul’s 327 balls faced so far, its Pujara’s 147 deadpan deliveries faced that
have meekly stalled the Aussies. Followed by Rahane’s 118 largely troubled
deliveries. In three innings so far, Virat Kohli has lasted 56 balls – that’s
less than ten overs.
And with
all those stats churned out of Macs and computing staring them in the face,
these fantastic Indians faced the inevitability and sadness of listening to
Leonard Cohen speak in their ears – “If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game, if
you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame
Cohen is
dead and in all likelihood so is India’s dream homerun.
It died
some more with Kohli’s lack of judgement or possibly, excess of judgement. When
‘to play or not to play’ is the question burdening the captain, he will either
not play at one he should play at and vice versa. If Kohli’s leave wasn’t
macabre enough, the subsequent review and premature walk off was the icing on
the EEK!
For a brief
moment, India was trapped on 94/3, reminiscent of the ruins of Pune, when 94/3
morphed into Ravi Shastri’s infamous, “7-11 show” mentions.
Rahane hung
around long enough to earn himself more ridicule, and comparisons between his
overseas and home records. His stay at the crease would’ve made Umesh Yadav of
one First Class-100 fame cringe. But
this home series too shall pass, and Rahane was a mere part of a freefall, as
were the ones to follow.
Except 303*
who made way for Rahane just the other day. Karun Nair played spin and Starc
better than any Indian batsman – until, he decided his camaraderie was with his
comrades, and he too was stumped like Rahane.
And in the end there were none.
Not long
ago, just the other day in fact, there was one. Virat Kohli. The one-man show. The
others’ shone in his floodlight. The floodlights a tad dim these days, what the
other ten do through this swamp of a series will either sink this bunch further
or make them badass, hardened cricketers – players that shine in adversity, and
don’t just go down fighting but take the enemy down with them. This could be
the series to remember. Or forget.
First published here
First published here
Running Kedar Jadhav into shape
It wasn't until the evening of 15 January, 2017 that Kedar Jadhav had been made to run so much in such a little time. As it is, compared to other batsmen, most of whom tend to be taller than him, he has to run way more to finish a single.
And there he was, running with the marathon man of Indian cricket. It was as if the 100 metre heats were Kohli's first choice sport. And left to him, Kohli would've been happy enough running with his predecessor, Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Between them they could run all they like, and for Jadhav too.
Virat Kohli (R) and Kedar Jadhav run between the wickets during first ODI against England in Pune. Reuters
But it didn't quite pan out like that. Dhoni holed out on just six off six balls with one boundary. His partnership with Kohli was worth seven. Hardly any running there. Before the partnership with Dhoni, Kohli had two more insignificant ones – with KL Rahul and Yuvraj Singh. The first lasted all of 18 balls, the next, a little over four overs. So you can imagine, poor Kohli was barely warmed up on a cool Pune evening.
In Jadhav, he saw the perfect bait - "I'm gonna run this little ball into shape, he'll only thank me for this later" (which of course he did in the post-match chat). Previously, Jadhav and Kohli had hardly, if at all, run together – maybe round the park at the same steady pace as part of the team, but Kohli's memory had no reminders of the speed of Jadhav's running between the wickets.
So here was Kohli, with Jadhav, India at 63/4, plenty to score, and even more to run. Jadhav was still fresh at the crease, his legs ready to scamper those tight singles, his throat set to yell out those quick calls.
Fifty runs later, it still seemed good, though Jadhav's big shots hadn't quite dimmed Kohli's appetite for those quick singles. A nudge here, a nudge there, there even seemed to be some harmony between the running.
But not for long. Kohli, who tends to ask as much of his players as he does of himself, was now running on some cricket-equivalent of that recreational drug, speed. Hundred runs had been added, and in the blink of an eye, 200, but Kohli's hunger for the extra run only grew. He wanted that quick single even more than the boundary or six. That's when he really started to push his partner – all arms, gesturing to Jadhav to run, run, run. To Jadhav's credit, he was sedate as ever. Invariably, a boundary from Jadhav followed.
Not that it stopped Kohli, though. It only whetted his appetite for the illusive single, that second run - and he wanted his partner, not quite Usain Bolt, to help him get it.
There were false starts, a show of hands, an admission that the single wasn't there, but that did not stop the quest.
Two hundred runs later, with five sixes and 17 fours, it was those singles and twos that added 99 runs (53 for Kohli and 46 for Jadhav) that got India to 263 - needing just 88 runs of 13.4 overs for an unlikely victory.
It sounds inane to say that without those 99 running runs, India wouldn't have even got a sniff, but that's how it is in big chases that begin badly.
To rebuild, there's only that much big hitting luck that a batsman can ride. To stitch a win this contrary to the odds, loads of common sense need to be prescribed. And therein lies the Kohli prescription, not just for himself, but for his mates - 'Run Jadhav Run'. (or 'Bhaag Kedar Bhaag').
There's no other way one man can keep winning you so many games chasing. It's the down and dirty work of running singles. The fours and sixes help but they're just the icing.
As for Kedar Jadhav, this century just made his workload a lot heavier. He can now expect early wake-up calls for the treadmill. And for company at the gym, who else but his captain.
On your marks, Jadhav.
First published here
Has Virat's victory-virus infected the team?
Kedar Jadhav will turn 32 this March. His turn to play international cricket came a little over two years back. Since then, he’s played less than 20 games for India. Jadhav wasn’t always a regular in the Indian team, except when they flew to Zimbabwe. Where he scored his first one-day century. Few will remember that one though.
Few will forget this one against England. Openers gone, Yuvraj and Dhoni gone, that much mentioned score, 63/4, and the inevitability of the situation and the target facing him. What did he have going for him - he had scored eight centuries in List A cricket, 13 in first-class, he was a journeyman cricketer of sorts, his mom and dad and wife and child were in the stands – but beyond that, his captain, he of 26 ODI hundreds, was at the other end.
If you wanted to chase down any target, there was no better man to chase it with – he could be his own engine and yours too, he could be the wind, the words, and just the belief you needed to see – for Kedar Jadhav’s dare to dream big was as much as a look into his own desires as a look into Kohli’s eyes.
They had the know-how of scoring 26 centuries – of which six were made chasing targets in excess of 300. Kohli’s eyes gave Jadhav a peep into 14 centuries scored by him in successful run chases.
And as Jadhav continued to draw on his own abilities, he saw, right in front of him, something magical happen – something that went beyond the 27th ODI ton and the 15th ton scored in a successful run chase. He saw his chats with Kohli in the dressing room play themselves out in the middle. He saw how you chase a fairly unlikely target from a situation gone horribly wrong.
Just when it appears you have your backs to the wall, you push the walls back – the walls can be your own inhibitions or the bowlers coming at you ball after ball. You free yourself of defeat because right then it appears the game is already lost.
His captain counter attacked, played more in the air and over the top than he had in recent memory. The calculations had gone for a toss because there was nothing left to calculate. At 63/4 in 12 overs, there were no repairs to be made – it was burn down the house in the hope that the flames would take England down as well.
When your captain frees you to attack, like hell, you attack. There was nothing in the pitch, not much in the bowling, it was a tiny ground, it was home. It was his home ground. It was all blue in the stands.
From the word go, Jadhav was in overdrive, scoring way more rapidly than Kohli. While Kohli’s presence at just over run a ball gave India comfort and control, Jadhav’s boundaries shocked – they appeared to come out of nowhere.
Unlike Dhoni and Yuvraj before him, there was no illustrious international CV that preceded him. He was just doing his thing, whether it was timing through the covers for six, or swiveling away to the square leg boundary for four. It looked like Jadhav was having an IPL net session against an IPL team in his IPL backyard.
It seemed that simple, he seemed that assured. And while Kohli reached his 50, and sixed his way to a hundred, you had Jadhav’s innings hurtling down unannounced on some Rapid Transport System.
It seemed quite unbelievable, except when Kohli taunted his little partner to run faster or run a second even when there wasn’t one. In spite of those taunts, Jadhav was unfazed, like some veteran of 74 first-class games in his own little kingdom. Invariably, these taunts would be followed by a nonchalant boundary.
Just as when the cramps appeared as he closed in on his century, the boundary appeared again, 96 became a 100. England still didn’t know what had hit them. It still didn’t look like an amiable little guy like Jadhav could hit them that hard.
By then, Virat Kohli had reached superman mode and hit a six that had WTF written all over it.
200 runs and 25 overs later, when Virat Kohli fell, and the cramps weren’t getting any better for Jadhav – he had seen enough into those eyes to know and believe that the game was already in the bag. With that belief, cramped Jadhav, in spite of collapsing at the crease, hit two more sixes and a four after his hundred.
And in the process, Jadhav scripted some ODI history:
Jadhav's strike rate of
157.89 for his 120 (76) is the eleventh highest strike rate for a second
innings hundred in ODI history via @fwildecricket / twitter
After winning the Man of the Match award, Kedar Jadhav thanked Virat Kohli. It was a moment of rare honesty and emotion, both Jadhav and Kohli seemed quite overcome. Few things can give more satisfaction than sharing knowledge.
Virat had just taken Jadhav through the 36 chambers of Kohli’s Shaolin, on the sidelines and in the middle. Perhaps, a bow followed by a hammed “Master!” in a dubbed Chinese accent would’ve been appropriate.
First published here
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