Interesting

With both Gregory King and John Gloster putting in their papers, the entire Indian support staff will undergo a revamp once new coach Gary Kirsten takes over. According to sources, like his predecessor Greg Chappell, the South African is also looking to set up his his own array of support staff to help him in his task, putting a big question mark over the future of other incumbents.

The resignation of Gloster and King has eased tensions of the board to a great extent, but its major headaches will be with its present assistant coach. Lalchand Rajput is believed to be under severe pressure to extend his contract despite his successful tenure with the Indian team since Twenty20 World Cup. According to sources, Kirsten isn’t in favour of Rajput in his new team and is believed to have formed his opinion after spending a few days with the team during the last two Test matches. Kirsten, however, has indicated that he’s fine with Venkatesh Prasad and Robin Singh.

Though the board has handed out a one-year contract to Venkatesh Prasad and Robin Singh till the end of April this year, it remains to be seen how the board will proceed thereafter. Prasad has hit the headlines for helping a young Indian bowling side to some spectacular victories in the last eight months, while Robin Singh has been a quiet achiever in his domain . It’s believed that while finalising of his contract, Kirsten had only spoken about brining in a mind doctor to help the team.

There indications to Surrey’s Neeraj Patel, who worked with the Indian team during the England Test series, is tipped to take over as the next Indian team physio while South Africa’s Shyamal Vallabjee is among the favourites to join as the team trainer. Vallabjee, who has worked with Mahesh Bhupathi in Bangalore was also here when Kirsten came over and since then there has been speculations about him joing Kirsten’s team after BCCI didn’t renew contracts of King and Gloster that expired last December.

So, what of this?

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has set March 12, 2008 as the qualification deadline for the top eight teams for the Champions Trophy to be held in Pakistan in September this year, an ICC official told Daily Times here on Thursday.

and this

CRICKET Australia would face a player revolt if it agreed to tour Pakistan next month.

While the tour remains extremely doubtful because of increasing security concerns, most of Australia's senior players have made it privately clear they would pull out of any visit to the strife-torn country should it proceed.

The last Test Australia played in Pakistan was this one. In 1998/99.

Given their reluctance to tour Pakistan this time around, I wonder what stance the ICC will take if CA expresses a similar reluctance when the Champions Trophy comes around?

PS:- On a tangential note, for all the carping around of the Indians undermining the authority of the ICC, here is something to consider -

Australia did not tour Zimbabwe despite being required to do so under the FTP.
AUSTRALIA has postponed a two-Test series against Bangladesh because it clashes with the Beijing Olympics.
The current Australia tour to Pakistan is in jeopardy.

So, Australia has canceled, is canceling or is postponing scheduled tours with 3 of the remaining 9 Test playing nations despite being required to do so under the FTP.

And then there was the "request" to reduce the number of tests with India this October by 1. And the proposal to play a 6 test Ashes series with England.

So, I ask you, who is showing the ICC the finger now?

The crisis

So, cricket now has an umpiring crisis. With Simon Taufel set to consider "options" after his contract expires with the ICC and Darrell Hair, Rudi Koetzen and Steve Bucknor in the doghouse for various reasons, cricket finds itself with a dearth of "quality" umpires.

And I say, whats the big deal?

For the longest time now, cricket has had to live with very ordinary standards of umpiring.

People blame technology, but what about the over crowded cricket calenders, the minuscule pool of "Elite" umpires and the stress and fatigue of travel and officiating high pressure games, day in and day out?

The IPL has exacerbated this issue because, for the first time in a long time, the umpires, like the players, have options.

Options to make more money over a shorter duration of time. And while the stress levels may be the same or elevated, it will be over a very short span of time unlike in current circumstances.

I, for one, am glad that we have this crisis. For two reasons

1. Given the tugs and pulls of corporate driven tournaments, there will be a demand for high quality of officiating - if I have sunk in 40 million dollars in a bloody franchise and I get short changed because some duffer in a white/black coat muffs up, there will be hell to pay. Which means that there will be more accountability, transparency, technology and much higher standards when it comes to officiating.

2. The ICC has, in the past years, looked up to individual boards to supply umpires to constitute the Elite panel. There has been no push, and no investment, whatsoever to expand the panel and/or force individual Boards to provide a fixed number of umpires of a certain standard.

Hopefully, this crisis will force the ICC to introspect and hopefully, the IPL, because of what is at stake, will do everything possible to ensure that the standard of umpiring is right up there.

I expect to see a lot more gizmos and a lot more experiments to come in to aids umpires in the coming days. And I also expect greater number of people to take up umpiring because of the remuneration involved. And, if the ICC can be pro active about it, an expanded Elite umpires pool with a greater percentage of correct decisions per umpire rather than the standard "95% right across the board" bandied out by Dave Richardson.

Three worries

India lost a rain affected match against Sri Lanka yesterday. That, in itself is no cause for worry. India had to lose a match or two in the CB series ( over 11 games, maintaining a clean sheet against the World Champions and the runners up is a huge huge ask). And it is best that we lost a game where we had little control of the variables.

First, no one was quite sure when the game would start and what its length would be. Then, the Indians did not quite figure out how to pace their innings. And when they did reach a competitive score, rains interfered once again - a Twenty over shootout turned the game decisively in Sri Lanka's favor.

That said, India could have done some things better - Sreesanth needs to control his bowling lengths better, India needed to be a little more nimble with their thinking.

But there are 3 concerns that over-ride India's performance and which could have been addressed if India had won yesterday. They are ( in no particular order)

1. Yuvraj Singh's form - 39 runs from 10 innings in Australia is a worry.

2. Lack of batting opportunities for the middle and lower orders - Robin Uthappa on down, the batsmen have had only one hit in the middle in 4 games. While it is a good thing that India has not collapsed spectacularly while batting and hence havent had the opportunity to test their batting, it does not help if half the batting lineup does not get any batting whatsoever during match situations.

3. The bench strength. An India win yesterday could have allowed us to play Raina, Tiwary, Praveen Kumar, Dinesh Karthik and Piyush Chawla over the two games at Adelaide. Instead, India has to now focus on winning the next couple of games to stay in contention - and even if they do, it will be a huge leap of faith to play the bench in the last two games with the finals round the corner (not wanting to disturb a winning combination and all that - something that cost us in the ODI series against England).

Plenty to ponder for India over this week.

A deserved win

and one full of character.. The Sharma boys led the way with the ball and the bat. Everyone in the Indian team chipped in and were well led.

Kudos and enjoy the win, but the job is not yet complete.

Darren Berry on batting

a brilliant piece, reproduced here in full ( I especially liked his take on the impact of Twenty20 on cricketing skills - and I completely agree).

People say that Twenty20 is destroying the future of bowlers in the game. I disagree. This fast-food approach to cricket is destroying batsmen more than bowlers.

A few weeks ago, the Victorian 2nd XI played NSW in Melbourne and lost convincingly. One batsman aside, the rest played without purpose or accountability. After the match, I spoke to the group, but really I was talking to the young batting group about their sub-standard performance. I used the analogy that batting was like driving a car. And said that, like manual gearboxes, tempo batting was sadly becoming a thing of the past.

Batting with any sort of process and logic has been thrown out the window and old-fashioned slogging has become the norm in all forms of the game. A carefree approach of all-out attack has become a disturbing trend across the country.

Victoria has some super-talented young batsmen but the likes of Aiden Blizzard, Robert Quiney and Aaron Finch like only to work in overdrive. They are exciting to watch but rarely go the distance. They are made for the Calder Thunderdome, where speed is the ultimate concern. Put them at Bathurst and they would struggle to navigate the bends, hills and gear changes required to be still going at the end.

Starting your innings should be like starting your car in the morning - it takes some warming up. You must start slowly and proceed with caution during the early stages of your journey. Once the old choke is pushed in you may proceed into second gear. But still, you must watch the wicket, the bowler, the outfield, the field placings and construct an innings accordingly. If you have passed the first set of traffic lights you can slip up into third gear and start playing some controlled shots, accumulating runs as you go. Occasionally, you may get a break in the traffic and can quickly shift up into top gear, cracking a couple through the covers.

When the runs are flowing, this driving caper can suddenly appear pretty easy. Then all of a sudden there's a bowling change, the new bowler is hitting a line and length and, like hitting a red light, you'll need to come down through the gears. Cricket is all about tempo; the smart player obeys the red light and pauses for a moment before accelerating again. Most of the modern players are getting caught by the red-light cameras trying to run the gauntlet on amber.

I'm sure the young players thought I'd lost my marbles as I delivered my driving-the-manual-car story. Most, if not all of them, drive automatics. While handbrake starts on a hill still haunt me, the youth of today wouldn't even know what they are. And nor, it appears, do they worry about starting their innings in first and second gear. They're for old grannies.

Old grannies such as Brad Hodge, Victoria's most experienced player, who showed last Wednesday night at the MCG that to be successful, you must be able to bat through all the gears. Hodge has struggled in recent times with form and footwork. He walked to the middle after the loss of an early wicket - Blizzard, who is running short of demerit points and may soon have his licence suspended.

Hodge was stuck in first gear for ages but he persisted and finally was able to move into cruise control. Hodge was playing his 100th one-day game for Victoria - the first to do so - and showed his class, moving up and down in tempo according to the situation. In the end, he guided Victoria into the grand final with an unbeaten century. His more inexperienced batting partner, Cameron White (who also still prefers the Thunderdome to Bathurst) played equally well and is starting to realise the benefits of working up through the gears.

As I drove home from that second XI game, I wondered, like all coaches do, if I'd lost the boys that day or had I helped them to become better players? As I pulled up at a set of traffic lights, my mobile phone beeped. It was a text message from two of the young players driving home. They were stuck at a level crossing with the boom gates down and texted me to ask, cheekily, what they should do?

I wrote, 'Stay patient and wait for the right time to accelerate with caution'. In other words, take a single, get to the non-strikers end. Alternatively, smash through the boom gates like most of our young batsmen and get cleaned up by the train in the process. I hope they got my message.

A tale of two ODIs

26th November 2006 and 10th February 2008. Two ODIs. Both played in the southern hemisphere. Both featuring India.

Our bowling line up then

Zaheer Khan
Ajit Agarkar
Irfan Pathan
Anil Kumble
Harbhajan Singh
Sachin Tendulkar

Our bowling now

Sreesath
Ishant Sharma
Irfan Pathan
Harbhajan Singh
Virender Sehwag
Yuvraj Singh
Sachin Tendulkar

Our opponents then - South Africa
Our opponents now - Australia

Then, South Africa were 76/6 in the 20th over. Now, Australia were 92/6 in 25.2 overs.

Then, South Africa ended up at 274/7. Now, Australia were all out for 159.

The difference? The captaincy.

Yes, the bowlers bowled well and yes, we held on to our catches.But in the end, it was the captaincy that stood out - MS Dhoni's reading of the game was spot on.

Yes, he may have bowled Sehwag for one over too many and maybe he could have pulled in his field instead of having 3 in the deep when the spinners came on, but his field placings and his bowling rotation was brilliant.

If India go on to win here at Melbourne, the ghost of the Newlands ODI will finally be laid to rest.