India's bowling riches....

I've compiled a list of all the (Fast/Fast medium/Medium Fast/PK speed) bowlers in the World who would walk into an Indian T20 first XI. Feel free to add more names into the list...

Australia: I'm trying to think of a bowler who actually won't get selected. That's a toughie. Well here goes. Dirk Nannes, Mitchell Johnson, Shaun Tait, Ryan Harris, Doug Bollinger, Peter Siddle, Ben Hilfenhaus, Brett Lee, Nathan Bracken, Clint McCay(?). I'm not including Watson because he is an allrounder and we don't have a spot left for one of those after the dominant displays by Pathan and Jadeja.

Bangladesh: Mashrafe Mortaza, Rubel Hossain(?). Not too many here because we can actually still beat Bangladesh. At least in ODI's and tests (If there are no parties scheduled 15 days before or after).

England: James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Ryan Sidebottom, Tim Bresnan(?)(I can't believe England have made it to the semis and we haven't.....England! )

New Zealand: Shane Bond, Tim Southee, Kyle Mills

Pakistan: Again leaving people out is going to be difficult. Umer Gul, Mohammad Aamer, Mohammad Asif, Mohammad Sami, Naved-ul-Hasan. Heck we wouldn't mind a Shoaib Akhtar, warts et al.

South Africa: Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, Charles Langeveldt, Makhaya Ntini, Wayne Parnell.

Sri Lanka: Lasith Malinga, Dilhara Fernando. A country with a population slightly more than Mumbai has two 145+ bowlers. At least the aussies have better genes, nutrition and training facilities.

West Indies: Jerome Taylor, Kemar Roach, Fidel Edwards, Jermaine Lawson (Is he around?)

And people have trouble figuring out why we aren't good at T-20.

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MasterBlasterman begins…..

It was a fine summer night in Gothamnagar, an anonymous city ensconced somewhere in the hazy outskirts of Maharashtra. The calm was deceptive, for this was not a city devoid of crime. If anything, it bustled with crooks waiting to make an easy rupee or two. However, standing in their path was the city’s greatest ever superhero, the ‘MasterBlasterman’, a masked vigilante whose mere mention brought criminals to their knees. Although not physically intimidating at five foot four inches with tousled curly hair, he nevertheless carried with him a heavy cricket bat to administer punishment with. People adored and even his critics admitted that he was consistent.

However all was not well with our superhero. For twenty years he’d carried the town’s expectations on his own back, intercepting crime at will and thrashing the thugs without mercy. Now, finally, the age was showing. He even had to start using a lighter bat for it was getting too heavy for him. People, who saw him bash criminals, said he did not look the Blasterman of old. His aggression was waning, others opined.

Finally he had had to take an apprentice, Jatman, a village bumpkin who did not know when to stop swinging his bat and didn’t move his feet enough while at it. He only picked him because many felt they looked similar and now with his sidekick losing hair, even that didn’t hold true. But I digress here. Let’s cut back to the chase.

It was a fine summer night. The city’s most feted superhero was looking at his Bat-Light, which was basically a bat with two neon lights on it, one red and one green.

‘How does that work?’ asked Jatman, much to the Master Blaster’s annoyance. He replied tersely, ‘If it glows red, it means we’re out and we have to go. We wait until then’

‘Why do you call yourself ‘MasterBlasterman’?’ asked the ever inquisitive Jatman. ‘Well, ideally I would have liked to call myself Batman’ he said swishing his bat about, making the ‘Adidas’ logo glimmer in the dark. ‘But that didn’t work out because there was already a superhero of that name.’

‘Aila!!’ exclaimed Jatman, only to be given a hard stare by our superhero.

‘How many times have I told you not to mimic me? Remember that time you stole the paint thinner for my Bat-suit, assuming it to be ‘branded shampoo’? Look where that got you…’

Jatman rubbed his bald pate self consciously with a rueful look on his face.

Suddenly the red light went off on the radar. ‘A crime is taking place somewhere and we must stop it! To the Batmobile!’ exclaimed the superhero. Jatman whipped out his cell phone and started calling his mother.

‘Not that mobile, you dodo! The Batmobile!’ he said pointing to a black coloured Ferrari 360.

‘Ohh, Sorry, Rim to Rim free, what to do?’ explained Jatman apologetically much to our hero’s consternation who muttered some choice Marathi invective under his breath.

Nevertheless, they reached the scene of crime without any further misadventure. As Blaster-man parked the Ferrari next to the kerb, they could make out two shadowy figures in front of the local SBI branch. ‘Hmm, as I suspected. Local criminals. That’s RP and PK robbing the bank!’ explained the Master to Jatman. ‘They’re not half the size of the criminals you see abroad…’ ‘Not half as quick either’ he added as an afterthought. ‘Let’s get them early before they settle!’ announced our hero.

As the duo surreptitiously sneaked up to the robbers, a third conspirator ran up from behind and nicked the Blaster-man’s bat from his hands and promptly started doing a break dance in celebration.

‘Freesanth!’ exclaimed the Master. ‘When did this guy get back? It was a setup!!’ RP and PK were grinning maliciously as well. ‘No problem’ said Jatman and proceeded to bash the daylights out of the trio, leaving Freesanth in tears.

‘How did you do that?’ asked our superhero. ‘Oh. It was a flat deck and these guys weren’t doing much. Plus a clear sky is always good news’ offered Jatman, spouting gibberish.

‘Not important! You saved the day! The good people of Gothamnagar will probably give you one of those giant garish cheques as a token of appreciation! I have like a hundred of those but love getting them anyway…’ reminisced the superhero.

‘On that note, could we change the costumes next time? These skin tight outfits don’t flatter me’ said Jatman, pointing to his paunch.

But our superhero was busy readying himself for the camera crews. He was rehearsing under his breath, ‘We did well as a team…..’

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Sehwag Q &A

Q. How does Sehwag ‘milk’ the spinners?

A. He dumps them over cow corner.

Q. When a spinner comes on, Gambhir askes Sehwag ‘Let’s keep rotating?’ Sehwag nods vigorously. What does he do?

A. He slogs the spinner out of the attack. He assumes Gambhir wants him to rotate the bowlers.

Q. Why is the Sri Lankan squad planning to lodge a formal complaint?

A. They are certain the balls used were of poor quality. They plan to use Sehwag’s testimony which goes, ‘I only hit bad balls today’

Q. Which cricket manual consists of a single page?

A. ‘Sehwag’s introduction to battting’. The page reads, ‘See ball, hit ball. Don’t see ball yet? Wait for the ball boys to get it back. Then hit it’ There’s also a footnote, ‘Don’t forget to thank Sachin’

Q. What was the one positive of Sehwag getting out before Dravid?

A. That he didn’t get to bat with Tendulkar. Otherwise the whole innings would have been dedicated to ’Tendulkar’s advice of waiting for the bad balls’

Q. How many sane people thought Dilshan was the next Sehwag before the Brabourne test?

A. 780

Q. How many still think so?

A. 3 including Dilshan himself who is wavering. The other two are Sri Lankan fishermen who have been stranded at sea for the past two days...

Q. What is Sehwag's favourite dessert?

A. Triple layer chocolate cake. His motto in life is 'Why settle for one when you can have three?'

Any suggestions?

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Cricket’s own 'squad player'.....

Now, 'squad player' is the sort of terminology expected in a sport like football which necessitates its presence. It’s a sport where injuries are more frequent due to the physical nature and also team selection and formation tends to be very flexible and depends on a lot of external factors like where the game is being played (home, away), quality of opposition, negation of certain threats etc. A squad player in football is usually a guy who is versatile enough to play in a lot of positions competently but unfortunately not good enough to hold down a first team place in any of them. Their job is to fill in when a player is injured or better still when any of two or three is. To those who follow the EPL, Eboue and Zhirkov easily come to mind.

But could it be possible that we have squad players in Cricket as well? After a lot of deliberation, one name comes to mind. Dinesh Karthik. He has played as opener, in the middle and the lower middle order of both the ODI and Test squads. And befitting his squad player status, he has been unable to hold onto any of the slots. It’s not for lack of talent or effort either. In any other Indian team he would have been a first choice keeper with his handy batting ability.

It’s just that he has for competition, none less than the greatest wicket keeping batsman in India’s history. Dhoni, only the second batsman in ODI history to hold onto an average of 50+ for more than 150 ODI’s is that sort of rare player who, if ahead of you makes you want to give up cricket altogether. Not that Karthik hasn’t tried his best. He’s also put in some exceptional performances with the high undoubtedly being that away series in England when he topped the batting charts as opener, a traditional Indian weakness away from home.

In some ways, he’s like a Macgill behind a Warne. He certainly has been shuffled more than any of Warne’s poker sets. The emergence of Uthappa as a wicket keeping option will probably eventually shunt him out of the ODI squad. With Murali Vijay being anointed as third opener in tests, the last possible slot has just removed the neon ‘Vacant’ sign as well. I personally believe he is as good as, if not better, a bat as Dhoni in tests. It doesn't matters in the least. You don’t drop the captain for a possibly slightly better squad player, silly!

I get an intense feeling of frustration and lost opportunity when someone jumps into the loo just in front of me on an airplane. Karthik probably has that feeling 24*7. Magnified a few hundred times, of course!

Few remember that he was on all three squads for the last test series in NZ. A squad player, through and through.

Actually if one goes for a direct analogy, would he be a Goalie in football? Maybe a Toldo or Cudicini behind the indomitable Buffon? Ah, whatever…….you get the point.

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I will NOT believe again!

I’m not usually sappy enough to fall for the media promoted adulation that gets showered on any upcoming fast bowling talent in Indian cricket. I give myself credit for not setting myself up for disappointment whenever we discover the next best thing. I’ve seen the rise and fall many from ‘the next Glenn McGrath’(read Aavishkar Salvi) to ‘the next Wasim Akram’ (a certain Pathan. Enough said. Anymore would be belittling……Akram of course) with my dignity intact. I hold back chuckles when the commentators run out of hyperboles and fall over themselves in delight and always end up feeling good about my sense of realism and superior intellect. In short, I’m not a believer.

Not that Sreesanth got too many lightbulbs for his initial performances. In fact his debut test series against England saw Munaf get the lion’s share of the attention, with Nasser Hussain referring to him as ‘a gem’ (a jinx as clear as any I’ve ever seen.) I, of course, did not believe.

For the most part, he was a decently nippy, reasonably accurate swing bowler. His faults were being prone at times to altercations and always to idiosyncrasies. The pundits, however, were beginning to clear their throats to start mouthing platitudes. I, with my infinite foresight, did not believe.

He bowled with remarkable pace and consistency in his debut year and even took 6 wickets in an ODI against England. The pundits were in full flow and were competing with each other to mouth hackneyed hokum. I, with my supercilious bearing, did not believe.

Then came Jo’burg. Things would never be the same again. He ripped through a top class South African top order like no Indian bowler I had seen. I was transformed from a rational, calm cynic to a picture worshipping, puja performing dyed in the blue believer. I chastened myself for being so obtuse so as to not see his obvious talent. I nodded along when the pundits talked about his impeccable seam position. Surely he was the best bowler out there, no doubt. I harrumphed derisively at the other bowlers who lacked the swing, seam, or had only one type of slower delivery unlike our own God’s gift to fast bowling a.k.a. Sreesanth.

We lost the series 1-2. I still believed. Sreesanth began to show that in addition to two types of slower deliveries, he could also bowl many types of long hops. I ignored them and continued to believe. His histrionics kept increasing at the cost of performances. I silenced my inner fears and continued to believe.

In fact, I kept believing for a long time, almost to the point when we all saw him at the IPL, head in hands. I knew how he felt. I felt much the same way. Like someone had slapped me very, very hard in the face. I had allowed myself to be conned and I knew it. They made a prince out of a pretender and I went along with it. It took me a long time to get over it. That feeling of being cheated still haunts me. I still see those beautiful outswingers in my nightmares, sometimes.

And now he’s back. I refuse to believe it. I’m just not ready for it, emotionally. It’s too much of a commitment, I tell you. I will not be able to survive another rejection….I simply will not. That’s it. The end.

Did you see that ball that got Herath, by the way? Beauty, wasn’t it!

Aargghh!! I can’t help it! I'm relapsing....... I need help!

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Bring on some fresh blues - I

The BCCI was justifiably alarmed at the steady, if unspectacular slump in the performance of the Blue batters. ‘They have gone from beating everyone black and blue to going blue in the face at the sight of a willow’ screamed the headlines. This lead to much consternation in the BCCI and they sacked the physio without informing him. A final decision was also made to drop Yuvi and test a new talent.

To this end, the BCCI hastily organized an Emerging Blue Tournament at Motera, to congregate all the possible batting contenders who have at least a tinge of turquoise in them. The pitch, despite five days of play, was in excellent condition.

All the batting prospects were collected under one roof and given a chance to display their unquestionable talents. Kris Srikkanth, as chief selector was at hand to provide the final say on who could be given a chance at Kanpur. Ravi Shastri and Sunil Gavaskar were at hand to provide insightful comments and aid Srikkanth in making the decision.

The batsman lined up. First out of the hut was Suresh Raina, who was mistaken for a staff’s kid on the way to the middle. After a lengthy clarification, Raina whipped out his ID and ignored the collective gasps when he stated he was indeed 22, not 12. Undeterred, he began with some deft strokes towards mid on. The bowlers bowled short, full, wide of off and leg but were treated with equal disdain as Raina proceeded to chop, heave, pull and drive everything towards midwicket, as is his wont.

Srikkanth, always the sagacious one, observed ‘Eh, machaa? Why do you plaay yeverytheeng yon the leg saide??’

To this Raina excitedly countered, ‘This is nothing! I’m practicing on developing cover drives and square cuts which also end up in midwicket!!’

Suitably flummoxed, Srikkanth looked on either side for inspiration. Gavaskar mumbled on about how Greg Chappell had ruined Raina as a batsman and about how all this was Australia’s fault. Shastri was missing as he had gone to obtain some lozenges for his throat which was sore from screaming in delight at each of Raina’s shots. Srikkanth indicated for the next man to walk in.

Rohit Sharma jaunted in with a flourish. He proceeded to play five balls of every over beautifully, with grace and precision. Somehow, he always managed to get himself out on the sixth. He then proceeded to tell everyone that he was a young player and he was still developing and that was how developing players played.

As he droned on, Gavaskar looked at the floodlights and wondered whether the lack of light could be a reason for Sharma’s non performance, in spite of his obvious talent. ‘Probably imported from England. Those whites always try to screw us’ he muttered to himself.

Rohit’s whining was interrupted by Srikkanth, who said ‘Taalent, machaa! Taalent is yaal you need! Rest not important! You tamil, no?’ On being informed that he was telugu, not tamil, Srikkanth abruptly lost interest and waved him away.

Next in line was Badrinath who just proceeded to introduce himself sending Srikkanth into raptures. ‘This ess yexactly what we need!’ he said. Shastri, lozenged and rejuvenated, roared in agreement making Srikkanth duck for cover. Gavaskar voiced his assent by declaring that Badrinath was the ‘CEAT’s cricketer of the week.’

But the most promising contender was still to prove himself. Pujara had disappeared from the scene. ‘Che kyan che?’ questioned the Gujarati groundsman, oblivious to the underlying humour.

An exhaustive search was carried out and finally yielded a note of explanation in the locker room. It seems ‘Che’, a hitherto unknown computer freak, had come onto this blog of dubious quality which had a picture of his face morphed onto that of an Argentine revolutionary on its homepage. Inspired by this, he decided to dedicate his life to fight the prevailing injustice in India. He’d even left a book behind, tentatively titled ‘The Batting diaries’ which tabulated the injustice in cricket in India.

As Shastri mourned for a talent he had not seen, but was sure about and Gavaskar thumbed through Che’s biography and settled on a chapter titled ‘They call Praveen Kumar a fast bowler? It’s injustice!’, Srikkanth was at a loss of words, probably for the first time in his life.

After great contemplation, our Chief Selector finally remarked ‘Maybee deyar ess some thing in yimporting taalent from Sauth Africa…..can’t be too different fraam sauth India!’ resulting in groans being elicited from all present. The search for the next batting blue continues….

by Rohit Pillai

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Sachin – The Flawed Great

Bang on, Som I tried hard to find perspective in all that has been published, but they were all paeans and little else. The truth is that today, if anything, I feel underwhelmed. The most obvious thing that hits you is the realization that India won little in the last 20 years in spite of having one of the greatest batsmen in the modern era. You just get the feeling that we are close to the end of something special, but it could have been so, so much more. I’m not saying that Tendulkar was an inadequate match winner. Hardly. I think he did his best.

People point to World Cups won: Ponting 3 Tendulkar 0.

I personally think that's a harsh statistic. We have to compare them as batsmen first. Therefore the statistic should read;

Highest scorer in World Cups: Tendulkar 2 Ponting 0.

This gives an accurate idea of how well they individually performed at the highest stage.

But my criticism of Tendulkar has little to do with the cricketer, and more to do with the person. You just get the feeling that by trying to make everyone like him, Tendulkar ended up stubbornly sticking to a rigid path of not having an opinion at all. Tendulkar at his peak had a following that exceeded everyone else, filmstars and politicians included. The universality of his popularity has never been exceeded and never will. If anyone could have arm twisted the BCCI, (I mean the board not this blog!) it was him. We saw how Sehwag’s tame attempt to stem corruption in selection matters petered out to a farce in the face of political bigwigs. Well, hats off to you man, whatever your motives were, you tried.

Sachin, on the other hand, stuck to cricket. BCCI ridiculously claimed that the cricketers represented them, and not India. Sachin said nothing. The selection system has always had many loopholes and there is mismanagement at every level. Sachin said nothing. Our national team players were involved in match fixing. Sachin said nothing. The BCCI management has become a happy hunting ground for politicians, since Jagmohan Dalmiya pioneered the art of professional embezzlement. Now it seems each major post is being usurped by yet another politician. Sachin continues to say nothing and intersperses that with trying to illegally get his taxes waived on a Ferrari. As the decay continues to pervade, the centuries keep coming. But little else. Don’t tell me no one else has done anything either. They weren’t Sachin. Full stop.

Now people will harp on about how he’s grounded, humble, yakkety yak. He let his bat do the talking, apparently. I have always found that to be ridiculous. You’re telling me that he looks at his records and is still unaware of the fact that he’s the best? He would have to be mentally incapacitated in some way for that to be possible. Which he is not. What he is, unfortunately, is a politically correct crowd panderer who is incapable of taking a stand. He prefers to keep his mouth shut than offend anyone, which is a travesty because India is full of people like him. People who look the other way when a bribe is doled out, who are bystanders when goons thrash an innocent in front of them and who could care less if their inaction as a whole is the primary cause of the shambles that is India today. I guess I wish that all that talent had been bestowed to a person with personality, with dynamism. An individual who would have strived to use his power to rise above cricket and bring about a change, any change at all. Because that is what we sorely need. A few thousand runs less, we could have done with.

Someone may point to the statement made by him the other day against the MNS. I think that was even better than the 175 he made a few days ago. But I don’t think he actually said it. If you go through the interview, it has been taken totally out of context to make it seem like a repudiation of MNS dogma. It’s one of the few good things that have come out of the media’s ability to blow stuff out of proportion. What I do remember, however, was Sachin reading out Marathi poems at a function organized by the Shiv Sena. The Sena were at their jingoistic peak then, physically abusing hundreds of harmless impoverished immigrants, no less. But all that occurred to Sachin was to read his dad’s poems. How could he have refused? He is such a nice guy, you know…

by Rohit Pillai

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Why Doesn’t India Produce a Fast Bowler?

I’ve been cricket crazy for as long as I can remember. The earliest memory that I have is of the dull ache I felt as we slowly but surely committed Hara-kiri at Eden Gardens in WC ’96. In the last 13 years, the more Indian cricket has changed, the more it remains the same. True, we have improved in all departments and are contenders for the best team in the world. However, I couldn’t help suppressing a déjà-vu in the last two ODI’s. At Hyderabad, Sachin went solo as everyone else gave him his deserved limelight by doing as little as possible collectively circa ‘96.

At Guwahati we proved that we are still not beyond catching hold of our own jugular with a vengeance and asphyxiating ourselves, much to the delight of the bemused Australians. That got me thinking about what else hadn’t changed in the last 13 years… The answer: We didn’t have a fast bowler then, we don’t now. In fact, we’ve never had one.

When I say Fast Bowler, I mean a bowler capable of bowling a spell, if not an over at an average speed of 90+mph. The fact that Ashish Nehra bowled ONE delivery at 149.7kph in WC ’03 does not make him a fast bowler. A candidate for Ripley’s, yes, a fast bowler, no. No, Ishant Sharma, contrary to what he thinks, isn’t one either.

A tall, well built(see why Ishant doesn’t qualify? :-)!) pacer who can intimidate the batsman and force him into errors by using sheer pace and bounce has never made his way into the blues. The fact is, EVERY top cricket playing nation on the planet has had at least one fast bowler. Every one of them. Most of them have one in their current roster. Pak, SA & Aus are pretty obvious. NZ with a population of 4.5 million has discovered a Shane Bond. WI have had a number of them from Jermaine Lawson to Fidel Edwards. Their second string XI had a Roach, for god’s sake! Eng have Harmison, Flintoff and even Broad! Sri Lanka have Fernando and Malinga among the prominent ones. In comparison, India’s attack of Ashish Nehra, Munaf Patel and Praveen Kumar are rated as LMF, RMF and RM by cricinfo (RM!! Would you believe it! The same as Ganguly!) An aussie attack of Lee, Johnson and Siddle were rated as RF, LF and RFM. Herein lies the difference. Why are we the only nation without a single fast bowler? Many theories have been given, all of which can be discredited with minimal effort.

We are too nice: The most ridiculous hypothesis, given by none other than the batting great Geoffrey Boycott. He actually said that most Indians were nice and lacked the aggression to be fast bowlers, due to their Hindu upbringing and innate hospitality. Anyone who knows a little about the casteist, sexist, puritanical Indian knows that he is not a nice person. If people have been nice to you Mr. Boycott, it is because you are an affluent Caucasian. No offence intended. It is an innate, irksome subservience that makes them nice and not the fact that they are Hindus.

We don’t have supportive pitches: I don’t think the pitches are any different in Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. If anything, we have comparatively better pitches.

We don’t eat meat: I think it is sufficient to say that a lot of us do eat meat these days. At the very least, a sufficient number eat meat to produce a minimum of one fast bowler. This quibble is refined to include only red meat. To be more particular, beef. This is used to conveniently differentiate India from its neighbours. I must admit that beef consumption is on the lower side in India. However, people forget that Indians have many minority communities who do consume beef. We have 100 million Muslims, 20 million Christians and 5 million Zoroastrians and East Indians. Have any of these communities produced a first rate fast bowler?

We have genetic and physical shortcomings: This seems unlikely as not all fast bowlers have superior physiques. Aamer, for example, looks every bit a 17 year old kid except for when he hurls the cherry at 150kph. And even if a majority of Indians are genetically crippled, that still leaves a huge number of people taking into account our 1 billion+ population.

What else can it be? Flawed selection which gives stress to line and length? Not really, as we had a fast bowling competition in India for amateurs which was won by an effort of 135kph! What else? The truth is, I don’t know. I didn’t in 1996, I don’t today….

I rest my case.

By Rohit Pillai

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