Yes - No - Thank You

I went to a good school. With a very good cricket team. Easily the best cricket team in Bangalore and we often speculated that if there was a national tournament, we would probably have a good chance winning it. To give you an idea...7 of the 11 from our school team were in the U-13 and then U-16 state teams. The captain of the state team was the captain of the school team. (but not for the Cottonian Shield)

Anyhow this isn't about how good we were as a school team. Its about what we learnt there. One of the things that one learns in any good cricketing environment is called "calling" - "calling" meaning when one is running between wickets. You are told from the time you are say 10 years old that there are 3 basic calls - : yes, no or wait. You are also told that there are a few basic ways to use these three calls: "wait" followed by "yes", "wait followed by no" or just "yes" or "no"

But common sense and some cricketing sense teach you this very quickly. However, what you are specifically told time and time again is never to use "yes" with "no" or "yes" with "wait"

To make this easier to understand, lets imagine you were in a car with a friend driving. And you had to give directions to your friend. You're on a busy road and your friend asks you if he must turn right. You say "yes of course!" and as he is turning you say "wait wait" and "no"

The result is obvious. A bad accident.

That's exactly what happened last night in the India vs SA game at Port Elizabeth. Dinesh Karthik flicks the ball to mid wicket (on the circle) , sets off like W. Rabbit (i'm reading Alice in wonderland right now) and when he's halfway down decides that instead of getting to the other end, he will engage in a sprint contest with Kaif to see who can get to the same end faster. Kaif's feelings resonated thousands of miles across the world into my living room at that very moment...that feeling you have when someone basically murders you on the cricket field is indescribable. Your immediate reaction is to want to use that bat to bludgeon the brains out of your partner. I think Kaif came close to doing it. His entire cricketing career is riding on this tour and one must try to imagine what happens to dressing room atmosphere when incidents like these occur.

I have long been a big fan of Kaif and I continue to be so. I think he is the future of Indian cricket but in a few seconds, Dinesh Kartik has pushed Kaif closer to the oblivion of domestic cricket than he ever has been before. As for Kartik, I think after this tour and that run out, he will not wear Blue for a long, long time.

I won't comment on the match itself...what's left for me to say?

Lets give it a rest

In recent years, cricket experts in India (and by them I mean pretty much anyone who's had access to TV or radio) as well as other pundits around the world have debated long, hard and tirelessly about who the best batsman of our era was or is. As well as who the 2nd best batsman of all time is or was.

In recent years, these two debates have more or less thrown up the same answer: B.C Lara, S.R Tendulkar and R.T Ponting

About 5 years ago, S.R Waugh was where Ponting is today in terms of being compared to the best. However, Ponting wears the pretender's crown with far greater ease.

Coming back to the eternal debate: Lara, Tendulkar, Ponting, Tendulkar, no Lara...this is how the cricketing world oscillates when asked to name the one player who would be your 2nd pick for any World XI after the late & great Sir Don. I think (as do many of my fellow experts) that its time to give this a rest, especially in India. Tiring is an understatement to describe the reams and reams of coverage given to Tendulkar's exploits or to this comparison and attached analysis.
For anyone who has followed the game closely for the last 10 odd years and who has watched many matches over the last 10 odd years, the answer to this question has smacked you in the face several times. Let us first put forth the disclaimers:

Yes, S.R Tendulkar has played several innings which are peerless (the Sharjah one keeps being hurled accusingly by many..." see ...! see that knock you fools!") and has accumulated many records. However, it is obvious for all to see that over the last 2 years and especially now, he is one of the best players in the world today but if you compare his current level of skill and form with those who were at their peak in all eras, there will be at least a half dozen names who will come up as being more valuable to a team.

R.T Ponting is probably going to finish up in 3 or 4 years as the highest run scorer in test cricket, as the man with the highest number of 100's in test cricket and also retire with the crown of one of the greatest batsmen of all time. Probably amongst the top 8.


But the one question that especially if asked to those who have played the game:

"If you had to pick one player apart from the Don from any era who would it be?"

To me that is the question that will provide the answer. I too was divided by this question for some time now. Some introspection later, especially today I think I have the answer. Today, B.C Lara scored 117 of 100 balls (his century came of 77) against Pakistan. Out of those 117 runs, 60 came off Danish Kaneria alone. Out of those 60, 5 were hits over the fence. I was lucky to catch about 20 minutes of this peerless display over lunch and that's when I knew.

Sethi had this to say,"He is truly the greatest batsman of our time and Indians need to accept it." Right you are sir. I would like to take that one step further. Not only is he the greatest batsman of our time but he truly is the crown prince of Cricket. It's a big statement yes but think about it and you too will see that if the Don is the King, there can only be one worthy successor sitting by his side. S.R Tendulkar and R.T Ponting can well be the 2nd and 3rd in line to the throne but the crown prince is a debate long settled.

Bienvenidos!

Considering that there are a significant number of cricket crazy or cricket interested nomads, I thought it would be best if I shifted my cricket blog to nomadlife. Indian, Pakistani, Aussie, Brit and other nomads interested in cricket will find something of interest here. Your comments are welcome as are your contributions to this blog. I don't blog solely on Indian cricket, although there will be some posts related to Indian cricket issues.

Many of the posts here will be on the Australian team that's for sure, especially with the Ashes coming up. A mild warning here, unnecessary derision of the Australian team will lead you being banned from commenting! :)

That's about it. Plenty of cricket coming up...the next 6 months promise to be full of highs and lows...well ok mostly lows if you wear blue most of the time but its still cricket!

Predictions

Zozo's asked me what I think will happen in the Ashes. Well...I went out on a limb last year and predicted an overwhelming Australian victory only to be left eating humble shepherd's pie (ugh)

However, that defeat has in no way dented my confidence in the Aussies. If one will recall, had Brett Lee managed to pull of the impossible in that Test along with Kaspa, the Aussies would have been 2-0 up and from that scoreline, the poms would never have been able to come back. I think that series was decided to a large extent in that final session. Freddie and Lee's moment has gone down forever in cricketing history as a manifestation of why this game still remains for the large part a game of grace and camaraderie.

But enough reminiscing. Brisbane and the 1st Test are around the corner. I say again what I said last time around: England will be lucky to win a test. Tim de Lisle (who regularly writes rubbish for Cricinfo) said England would be happy with a 2-2 scoreline. Laughable that...but he's English so we'll have to allow for some mental deficiency on his part. (And talking about mentally deficient...Duncan Fletcher and the English selectors will almost certainly play Ashley Giles instead of Monty! I laugh at the logic and explanation given for this! And De Lisle too agrees with me)

Australia should win 3-0. Worse 3-1. (allowing for an inspired Freddie and some KP pyrotechnics)

Nice jackets lads!

That's what the Queen seems to be saying. Well ok...maybe she isn't saying that but heck even in 1952, our cricket team had well made formal jackets to go with their whites. Imagine..horror of horrors, if they had had to shake hands with the Queen in tracks and a t-shirt with a "tick" on one side and a BCCI logo on the other? Preposterous...all the MCC members would be muttering.

Also, another thing that struck me was these jackets all have the "Lions of Sarnath" logo or Ashoka's logo on them - India's true emblem. The BCCI logo pales in comparison...

Balls

A recent story on Cricinfo held my attention and had me nodding in agreement (not all their opinions do..especially Tim De Lisle's...who writes some absolute rubbish) . It was about the ongoing Duleep Trophy and the players were complaining that the board or administrators (inept as always) had bungled the match ball situation. India has finally begun introducing Kookaburra balls in domestic cricket to ensure when we travel to Australia, our bowlers don't feel like impotent "gully" cricketers because the damn seam on that ball is an entire universe different from the all pervasive SG ball.

Now, the SG ball is a bowler's dream ball. Its seam is almost a 100% more prominent than the other balls, especially the Kookaburra balls and to ask a bowler to switch from one to the other almost overnight is the same as asking an F - 1 driver to switch racing conditions and circuits overnight. Inconceivable in a professional sport but in India everything goes. So the poor Duleep trophy players are not given Kookaburra balls for practice and are suddenly confronted by this strange, new and less helpful ball in dry, slow conditions where the slightly lighter seamer friendly ball doesn't count for much. I can completely picture the absolute nightmare that the spinners must have had trying to deal with the almost non - existent seam on the ball (after the SG ball that is...Warne still has over 600 wickets with the Kookaburra ball but I guess if you gave him an orange he'd still be getting batsmen out).

The point here is cricket's inept administrators have once again jeapordized the careers of several young, talented cricketers in the country. The Duleep Trophy is a tournament that decides how a player is viewed in his state and zone and if a fringe player fails, his game is many a times over. If he performs well, he is thrust back into the reckoning immediately. Puppets on a string...and all the strings lead to the money-power-hungry, ego centric CCI in Bombay.

for whom the bells toll

From Cricinfo:

Since Australia and India had recently signed an agreement where both teams would play Test and/or one-day matches against each other annually for the next four years, Sutherland felt there will be plent of opportunities for his team to make amends."There'll be plenty of opportunity for them to make amends and to show the Indian public what they really think about India and its people."

Oh my God...