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It’s not easy being a Dravid supporter. Without either a mob following, or even widespread civilian recognition, perhaps it isn’t that easy being Rahul Dravid. This is especially so since March 2007, when Dravid-lead India crashed out of the Caribbean disaster that the World Cup was. Though that was followed by a decent tour of England where India and England shared the spoils of the Tests and ODIs respectively, for Dravid personally, the scrunity was getting sharper and the screams of opposition, louder.
Dravid’s batting began to fall from its pristine average. In hindsight, perhaps it was a stroke of genius that subsequent to that tour, he relinquished captaincy for reasons that are obscure till date, for Dhoni’s boys who went to the T20 World Cup as nearly a club side returned home with the trophy. Dravid’s batting in the subsequent series against Australia didn’t flatter either. One public ignomity followed the other.
Dravid was dropped from the ODI side, and labeled as “not adding value” by the then chairman of selectors, Dilip Vengsarkar. Then in Australia, while Dravid took on the much despised role of opening the innings, and did the “dirty work”, it was only in Perth, that we saw an innings of Dravid’s standards. From them on, there was a century against South Africa, but it was mostly downhill from there on: Dravid’s batting average began to dip, the quality lacking and the stability vanishing. Half centuries were grinded through and centuries hard to come by and interspersed by long intervals of time.
Nervousness and pressure to perform seemed to be taking over one of India’s most solid batsmen. Some of us asked why, still fewer waited in patience. After the tour Sri Lanka, when Indian batting line up as a whole failed to deliver, Dravid was seen as among the chief conspirators. Many among the patient ones gave up hope, yet, a few, mind you, very few (in comparison to the garrison of Ganguly fans) held on the tiny ray of hope that the phoenix will rise again. It would only be a matter of time.
“He’s still got it, he just needs to dig it out” was our argument. We silently wished, and merrily cheered as every Test innings showed signs of revival and fluency of old.
Today, Dravid has been given another opportunity to dig it out; to show the rest of the folk what it means to be solid; to reiterate to the world that every brick in the wall counts. While it is certainly a time to rejoice, it will be shadowed by a sense of wariness, for there are still many voices who have labeled his selection in to the ODI squad as a backward move of the selectors. Dravid will want to prove his worth yet again and perhaps that when you have taken a step astray, moving backwards may not be bad at all!
Go Dravid, show us you steel yet again. Even if we don’t take to the streets, you probably will know that we are there cheering you albeit with tiny voices.
Victoria also blogs at VM's Randon Ramblings
Rahul And I
Only two Bored Members survive the IPL
A few weeks back on Election Day, the Bored Members voted for their IPL teams:
The way the cookie crumbles, only Bored Member John and VM are left with a hope in hell and a team in the Finals: The Bevadas aka BRC urf Bangalore Royal Challengers (notice how Fake smirks when we use the B word) Can almost see that shadow doing a somersault.
Others will claim BRC is their Doosra (like me) or DC is their googly (like Ottayan and Achettup) but who gives a rat's ass? The cat.
Hamilton Test Day 2 - Where's your money?
Gambhir and Dravid scored today. Laxman flopped, by his standards of course.
Where's your money for tomorrow? Here's mine:
- Sachin if he makes it past the initial "settling down"
- Harbhajan (yes, really) :)
Cheers!
Hamilton Test Day 1 - A better late than never report
I must begin with my apologies for posting so late for I'm the bored member who said I'd be up at 3:30am to watch the proceedings of a long anticipated Test clash. But dang it, my arm, I couldn't even move it two days ago, I didn't even make it to work today. Moving to the match.
If you ask me, there isn't much that's new about India letting go of an opportunity to dominate. That said, NZ did well to recover. Vettori played a captain's innings and Ryder gave good support. Good to see that Ryder got the century he deserved - wish it wasn't against us, though!
Tomorrow, Gambhir will be key. I think this will be tour in which Gambhir can go from "seems good" to "really good". This will be a true test for him.
Looking forward to tomorrow.
Telecast Blues and Gold?
I have often wondered while watching cricket on TV if others share some of my cricket-telecast related pet peeves. One thing that comes to mind at first is NEO Sports's choice of font for the scorecard. I'm not sure if it is the font alone or the strange shade of violet-ish blue in the background that causes such irritation on the eyes. If you're not very close or your cable signal isn't the best it can be unbelievably hard to read. So much for the blue. There's one "gold" thing which I thought has been cute - the little cartoon that gets displayed on the bottom of the screen when the batsmen is out - with the bat being all grumpy and the ball having a "gotcha" type of expression.
Dish yours out, folks!
Cheers,
VM
Presenting Cricket's Razzie Awards
by VM
Welcome to the cricket’s Razzies, folks! We've seen the ICC Awards for last year, shouldn't we see the Razzies? For those of you who aren’t familiar with Razzy Awards check this out.
Categories for the Razzies this year are for Worst Batsman, Worst Bowler and Emerging Flop-show.
I’ve restricted my nominees to Tests as I have followed mostly only Tests in the past year. I welcome you to present your own for the ODIs in a new thread if it interests you enough.
Since we’re democratic, so I will only nominate. You pick your winners!
My picks for Worst Batsman and Bowler are Hershelle Gibbs and Sreesanth respectively. My Emerging flop-show award goes to Dinesh Karthik.
In case you were wondering, the criterion for nomination for batsmen was:
- batting position between 1 and 7
- only regular dismissals allowed (no hit wicket or other strange mode of dismissal)
- should have featured in more than 5 Tests in the past year
From this list I picked people who have either have a very low (less than 30) average for a high batting position or whose averages have dipped significantly from their overall averages. That is how Vaughn, Gayle, Collingwood, Tendulkar, Dravid, Kallis and Ponting made the list.
For bowlers:
- bowling postion between 1 and 4
- should have played 4 or more matches
From this list I picked folks who either got too little wickets for someone bowling in postions 1-4 or those whose strike rates or averages have dipped significantly.
For Emerging flop-show:
- must be a relatively new player
- shown lot of promise in the past and failed in their comeback, or just failed to click in their early opportunity
I've restricted this to Indian players alone due to lack of knowledge, but feel free to add on to this list.
Worst Batsmen this Year
Here are the nominees. Fyi, it is after a lot of thought and sadness I included Dravid in this list. I didn't have the heart to, but the criterion forces me to. :(
| Name | M | Inns | NO | Runs | H | Avg | BF | SR | 100 | 50 | 0 | ||
| Dinesh Karthik | 5 | 10 | 0 | 151 | 52 | 15.10 | 266 | 56.76 | 0 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Hershelle Gibbs | 5 | 8 | 0 | 152 | 63 | 19 | 267 | 56.92 | 0 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Michael Vaughan | 12 | 21 | 0 | 578 | 106 | 27.52 | 1325 | 43.62 | 1 | 3 | 2 | ||
| Paul Collingwood | 12 | 18 | 0 | 601 | 135 | 33.38 | 1273 | 47.21 | 1 | 5 | 2 | ||
| Sachin Tendulkar | 10 | 16 | 0 | 517 | 153 | 32.31 | 778 | 66.45 | 1 | 3 | 2 | ||
| Rahul Dravid | 13 | 22 | 0 | 717 | 111 | 32.59 | 1944 | 36.88 | 1 | 4 | 0 | ||
| Ricky Ponting | 9 | 15 | 0 | 678 | 158 | 45.2 | 1111 | 61.02 | 2 | 3 | 0 | ||
| Chris Gayle | 5 | 9 | 0 | 274 | 66 | 30.44 | 296 | 92.56 | 0 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Mathew Sinclair | 5 | 8 | 0 | 147 | 47 | 18.37 | 311 | 47.26 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Jacques Kallis | 14 | 22 | 0 | 908 | 186 | 41.27 | 1677 | 54.14 | 3 | 4 | 1 |
The career averages for the established batsmen are as follows:
Hershelle Gibbs - 41.95
Michael Vaughn - 41.44
Paul Collingwood - 42.01
Sachin Tendulkar -54.23
Rahul Dravid - 53.92
Ricky Ponting - 58.37
Chris Gayle - 41.95
Mathew Sinclair - 32.55
Jacques Kallis - 55.46
Off topic, but had to add an interesting tidbit here. Own very own Dada is the second highest run getter in Tests this year, second to South Africa's Greame Smith.
Worst Bowler this Year
Here are the nominees. The good part is that this was a hard category as most bowlers (in my criterion) did rather well.
| Name | M | I | Overs | Runs | Wk | BBI | BBM | Ave | Econ | SR | 5s | 10s |
| Danish Kaneria | 4 | 6 | 231.4 | 730 | 15 | 4/59 | 5/213 | 48.66 | 3.15 | 92.6 | 0 | 0 |
| Sreesanth | 2 | 2 | 49.0 | 191 | 3 | 2/87 | 2/87 | 63.66 | 3.89 | 98 | 0 | 0 |
| Jacques Kallis | 5 | 5 | 93.0 | 236 | 4 | 2/50 | 4/90 | 59.0 | 2.53 | 139.5 | 0 | 0 |
| Mohammed Sami | 3 | 4 | 102 | 382 | 4 | 2/63 | 4/212 | 95.50 | 3.74 | 153.0 | 0 | 0 |
| Irfan Pathan | 4 | 4 | 111.2 | 340 | 6 | 3/112 | 5/117 | 56.66 | 3.05 | 111.3 | 0 | 0 |
Kaneria’s Avg and SR dropped from 33.9 and 68.1
Sreesanth’s Avg and SR dropped from 31.46 3 and 57.4
Kallis’s Avg and SR dropped from 31.22 and 66.6
Mohammed Sami’s Avg and SR dropped from 51.37 and 81.2
Pathan’s Avg and SR dropped from 32.26 and 58.8
Here are the nominees:
RP Singh: showed a lot of promise in England, but fizzled out since then
Yuvraj Singh: promised a lot with ODI and T20 form and even in the Test against Pak but failed to deliver in Australia
Dinesh Karthik: could have seized his position as reserve wicket-keeper in Sri Lanka but failed miserably with gloves and bat
Parthiv Patel: had an opportunity similar to Karthik, but failed to impress.
Early Cricket Watching Memories
By VM
A few days ago, for some strange reason, I tried to remember the first cricket match I watched. I was rather surprised that it took me some time to sort things out of a muddle of memories. The early matches - in which I was trying to understand the rules - I recall only in bits and pieces. In fact in such pieces that remember only one of the two teams that played the match –
The next memory that came to my mind was the ’96 World Cup semi-final between
So I ask you this. Is there a particular match that comes to your mind when you think of the first ever cricket match you saw? Are there any fuzzy memories? Any funny memories? What was your first full fledged tournament? What made you watch further?
Cricketing Inventions and Lessons from a Bored Afternoon
by VM
I never thought that an odd invention from a bored summer afternoon would occupy my childhood fancies so much. What could possibly happen when it’s so scorching hot that you aren’t allowed outside, you don’t have a proper bat, and less than three people available for a team game? Stick-cricket happened.
As the name suggests, it’s a modified form of the game we love, only with rules tweaked to make a game out of the several restrictions that I describe. It’s mostly played with only two people using a stick – often curtain rod - and a harmless plastic ball or occasionally mock-tennis ball to minimize any damage to our surroundings. A box or shelf doubled up for stumps and a line drawn with chalk delineated the batting-crease. There was no wicket keeper, unless we could afford a third player, and no fielders, well, actually there was one fielder: the bowler. There was no umpire either, the batsmen would have to “walk”, in this case to the bowling crease, to bowl to the person who he has just faced as bowler. Honesty was necessary and inevitable, for anything contrary would mean returning either to the books or the boring TV. No “in-the-air” shots were allowed, for that could cause damage at home and invoke the ire of the folk at home. The rules were thus set up.
So how does the batsman score? Well, the bowler would run up for a few steps and bowl to the only other player: the batsman. The batsman could then hit it some distance and run to the other end, quick enough to reach there before the bowler could pick up and throw to the end the batsman is running at. Hitting the end from which the batsmen is running from would not constitute a run out! So the game goes on like this.
If you’re thinking that it’s a boring game, you may not be too far from the truth, though it must be said that it kept me occupied and saved me some very boring afternoons. But more that anything, playing this game was in many ways the moment of truth for the cricket fan in me. It taught me how hard it can be to hit the ball for single, without dragging it on to my makeshift stump, how valuable the reverse sweep could be, and what talent it takes to hit a four. I must add that we did get better at scoring, but only with a lot of practice and meanwhile learned the art of patience. Most importantly, it turned me from a jingoistic cricket fan to an appreciative fan who would attempt notice the details, and most importantly realize that it is after all a game and not war, as was often portrayed by the newspapers then. Maybe this is why I like Test cricket more and than any other form. Perhaps this is also why most of favorite batsmen are the more patient like Dravid, Kallis and Chanderpaul.
Do you have a cricket-based invention from childhood or a cricket-watching moment of truth? There’s no better place than here to share.
