Friday, February 16, 2007
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Melbourne sole destination for Indian Airlines
here.
For all you fans who plan to go Down Under to watch India take on Oz. The tour begins Dec 15th and the first Test is probably at the MCG.
PS: - You may want to confirm that it is indeed Indian Airlines ( or Indian or whatever name it goes by these days) and not Air India that is operating the flights.
The strange case of Irfan Pathan
December 25, 2006 -
Irfan Pathan, who wasn't expected to play any part in the Test series, will be heading back to India later this week to play two Ranji Trophy matches in a bid to regain some semblance of bowling form.
January 2, 2007
Pathan does hard yards on home turf
January 5, 2007
Pathan bats Baroda into the semi-finals
January 23, 2007
Pathan takes first steps on the road backJanuary 30, 2007
"When Irfan goes out there and plays a few games and performs, only then will we know. I'm just looking forward to him playing again. Him bowling well and performing well - those are important words - are critical to the balance of the team so we hope that he'll do just that."
February 7, 2007
Irfan Pathan nursed a sore shoulder and did not bowl at allFebruary 11, 2007
Today, lacking the ailing trio of Yuvraj Singh, Ajit Agarkar and Irfan Pathan, the case for Raina was strong.February 12, 2007
Sehwag and Pathan included in squadFebruary 13, 2007
Irfan Pathan is still not 100 per cent fit and will miss out, while Sreesanth will be rested.February 15, 2007
Pathan is all but ruled out of the clash as well. "It's highly unlikely that we'll play him," a member of the team management told Cricinfo, "as it would be a risk to play him when he's not 100% fit. There's no point in risking him ahead of the World Cup."
Munaf Patel was carrying an injury in South Africa and had not played active cricket for over a month when he was included in the team for the final test at Newlands.
Is this deja vu, in a different garb, all over again?
And today...
Dravid becomes the third Indian batsman to score 10,000 runs in ODIs. An appreciation here, here, here and here.
A Cricketing View has been nominated as a sports blog in the Indibloggies weblog awards - Congratulations!
Mukul Kesavan on Dhoni and Deano.
Rohit Brijnath on women athletes getting a raw deal.
Plenty of match reports on India's win against Sri Lanka at Goa. Too numerous to enumerate.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Spin
A pretty interesting discussion between two leggies and a slow left arm orthodox - here.
Just one teeny weeny itsy bitsy little point Sanjay
I am really surprised that India does not have any spinners coming through, you can understand captains supporting, but we have pitches tailor-made for spinners.Really? Have you, by any chance, followed the Ranji season over the last two years?
In other news...
Dilip Vengsarkar wants VVS Laxman to lose weight.. VVS promptly exercises his fingers.
Shaz and Waz think Irfan is a bigger worry than Sehwag. I concur.
Moody wants to win 3-0. Dravid wants to take it easy.
Ayaz Memon thinks this team can surprise the world. As does Vengsarkar. Manjrekar thinks the team is balanced. Shastri thinks its the right bunch. Mohammad Kaif and Romesh Pawar can only wonder.
Sehwag goes to Sachin's school. BCCI will act tough against drop outs .
The Telegraph opines that Chappell may not be happy with the team he got while Dalmiya believes clean drains equal complete games.
Crunch time: Pawar faces 1st test while Team India have to keep interests alive going into the final match on Wednesday
Vengsarkar wants Sehwag, Irfan and Yuvraj to play the Deodhar Trophy. Here is the itinerary.
The Indian team assembles in Mumbai on Feb 26th. Team India flies to the Caribbean on the 28th.
Go figure.
Is it just me...
or doe anyone else out there also believe that India are way too bottom heavy?
If, as experienced by India in 2006, the Windies pitches tend to get lower and slower as the game progresses and the ball is difficult to get off the square after around the 35th over - isn't having a lineup with Tendulkar at 4,Yuvraj 5, Sehwag 6, Dhoni 7 and Irfan 8 - a waste of firepower?
Monday, February 12, 2007
Stray thoughts on Team India..
...and its chances in the World Cup.
Why the selectors had to delay the announcement of the team to the West Indies until today is beyond comprehension, especially since they had zeroed on the team around the 3rd ODI against the West Indies.
The moment Irfan Pathan and Yuvraj Singh were selected to play against the Sri Lankans and continued to be retained by the team in spite of their "niggles", they were assured a passage to the Carib.
In Sehwag's case, the very fact that he played the 3rd test at Cape Town despite being out of form and in spite of being the lesser spinner compared to Harbhajan sealed the deal for him. I had written earlier that the selectors are fooling nobody by "dropping" Sehwag as he would be a shoo-in to play Sri Lanka. True to form, the selectors obliged.
I think that in trying to be all things to all people, the Team Management ( read Dravid and Chappell) lost the plot. And this happened around the time India went to Pakistan in 2006.
The intent was laudable - trying to set in motion a bunch of processes that will help the team perform better collectively and at the same time allow for players within the team to better their skills.
That there were flaws in the team was apparent even when India was on a roll against all comers at home. ( during the 17 win streak).
The fact that they lost at Jamshedpur and Hyderabad ( bouncy wickets) and Kolkata( green top) and would have lost at Mumbai against South Africa but for the catches spilled indicated an inability to adjust to conditions outside of the straight and narrow ( read patta wickets).
Selecting Saurav Ganguly for the Pakistan trip basically set into motion a sequence of events that has lead up to the mess we find ourselves in today.
The Ganguly selection undid all the effort of placing processes before personalities. And just like that, it was about personalities and not processes.
Experiments like changing the batting order became personality centric instead of process centric, players were tried and discarded and tried again and discarded again. Vide using Pathan at 3 while completely jettisoning the Dhoni option at the same position. Vide Md. Kaif being shunted up and down the order while Yuvraj Singh retained his place at 4 or 5. Vide non specialist fielders taking up specialist positions ( more so in tests that ODIs, but hey, it all counts). Vide the persistence with some players ( read Raina) at the expense of others ( read Kaif).
Things came to a boil in the West Indies where the Indians could not adjust to the bounce and pace of the wickets and just like that, the victor had become the vanquished.
It has been a free fall from then on.
People centric and people specific processes meant that if the people failed, the process failed. To arrest the slide, more processes were introduced which may or may not have been tailored to the individual concerned.
This led to greater insecurity within the team, which in turn added to process failure, which in turn led to patchwork jobs to quick fix what was broken - which increased the insecurities.
Lack of viable communication lines between the think tank and the rest of the team may have also contributed to the free fall.
A nation, polarized as it was by the Ganguly-Chappell spat, was quick to take sides and this added to the doom and gloom.
What had worked for India during its winning run is the fact that the team was quick to identify and seize the initiative during crunch moments of the game.
Ever since the second ODI against the West Indies in the West Indies, the team collectively lost that ability to identify key moments in the game ( the last league game against Australia in Malaysia and the third ODI against SA being the most glaring examples ).
This, coupled with a collective form slump and a tendency to hit one's way back to form, only made things worse.
It could all have been different if the man at the helm had shown a little more enterprise.
Rahul Dravid is India's best bat, and arguably its greatest #3. In the absence of Tendulkar and Ganguly, the onus was on him to lead from the front. And he had shown glimpses of enterprise, in the period between late 2005 and early 2006 ( vide his use of powerplays and the super sub).
I get the sense that Dravid, the Captain, is temperamentally more suited to the longer form of the game only because it gives him the time and the space to express himself.
In the shortened form of the game, I feel he is quite out of his depth. he operates as if he has done the sums in his mind beforehand, and irrespective of the state of the game, is content to lead by the numbers.
Which is great when the team operates on auto pilot, but not so flash when things are going south.
What is noticable in the period between the last visit to the West Indies and the current scheduled vsit has done is that it has made Rahul more rigid in his approach to ODI captaincy. Is it because of the pressures of the job or his inherent nature is a matter conjecture.
But that rigidity of thought has led to a rigidity in action and that brings us to today and the team selection.
Look at the team going to the West Indies. Three key members of the side ( Sehwag, Yuvraj and Irfan) have no form to speak of, Yuvraj and Irfan are crocked, Sreesanth is a borderline selection, the two spinners have become containing bowlers rather than wicket taking options.
The ground fielding is weak, and while the team can boast of a formidable batting line up on paper,the team is collectively in pre season form.
They still cannot adapt to changing situations, partly because of inertia and partly ennui.
The captain expects the team to be carried by 7-8 key members, hardly the attitude to take to the Worlds biggest stage.
On the flip side, Zaheer, Munaf and Agarkar are firing. So are Sachin and Ganguly. Dravid can bat himself back to form, and there are two more ODIs to play against SL.
At the end of the day, the Dravid-Chappell legacy hinges upon the teams performance in the World Cup. Better the effort of the JohnWright-Saurav Ganguly dispensation and they will become heroes for life ( and beyond).
Anything less and it will mean curtains to their current roles.
Personally,the negatives outweigh the positives and it will take a superhuman effort from the team collectively to get past the Super 8's.
