I'm loving it

• The prospect of India's spinners fronting up against England's bats.
• The fact that Rahul Dravid persisted with the slow bowlers deep into the slog and the fact that the bowlers varied their pace and used their heads
• Yuvraj Singh - bowler. This bowling effort should give him a lot of confidence going into his batting.
• Rahul Dravid - captain. Persistent and clear headed. No muddled thinking. Good field placings, intelligent choice and change of bowling.

And if we go on to lose this one,which I think not, it will be the batters who will carry the can.

Such fun!

The initial letter

The follow up

The follow up of the follow up

Today..

Mumbai: Uttar Pradesh batsman Tanmay Srivastata will lead a 15-member Indian under-19 team in the tri-nation one-day series in Sri Lanka from July 15 and thereafter for two three-day matches against a select Sri Lanka side. Bangladesh will be the third side in the tri-nation series.

One Mumbaikar in the squad of 15.. But what a player!

All in all I do believe this series, especially is a huge waste of time with the important tour of England coming up.

YAY Ravi!

But see the air they breathe. The BCCI has always been a money first organisation. The product and the customer have meant little and hence, the strife it finds itself in. Player contracts are a mess, there is far too much meaningless cricket, there are no A tours to speak of, the academy is, well, there somewhere and there is no coach. The BCCI is always looking at tomorrow, that perfect mirage, for it glosses over a grisly today.

YAY Harsha!

Playing for SLCA, the Baroda-based cricketer contributed 29 runs in SLCA’s first innings score of 128 and later utilised the opportunity to the fullest by removing the dangerous looking Dheeraj Jadhav in his six-over spell.

Good on you, Irfan!

If Morgan wants a theme he will be encouraged in England to lighten an international cricket calendar that, under Indian influence, has become ever more burdensome.

Righto! Fob off your greed onto us David.. Twenty20 anyone?

Worth your while

Cricket and all that and more - here!

Why the doom and gloom?

This was the thought that crossed my mind when I read this piece on Rediff.

Okay, so India lost an ODI against South Africa.. Big deal!!! This was a series no one, barring Lalit Modi, wanted in the first place.

On top of that, 70% of the Indian team is nursing some ailment or the other. So much so that we could not front up 4 bowlers who were healthy/fit.

And yet, South Africa was pushed to the limit. Two spinners in the squad on a cold, blustery Irish morning did not deter the Indians from putting up a fight.

The loss of two early wickets did not hamper the Indians from putting up a decent score, given the conditions.

The way I look at it, Sachin and Rahul had a pretty decent hit in the middle. The bowlers ( the fit ones , that is) had a decent outing in the middle. The players could stretch and test themselves in match conditions, coming as they were from a longish layoff ( Any break greater than 2 days is long when it comes to the Indian team).

And the players showed bottle- in spite of the odds stacked up against them. And that, for me, is the biggest positive we take going into the test series against England.

And with Ranadeb Bose and Ishant Sharma joining the squad, they will get a first hand experience of English conditions in less than testing circumstances.

All that remains to be done is to get the remaining batsmen ( besides Sachin and Rahul) some time in the middle.

This is no do or die battle - the war begins on July 19. Everything between now and then is just preparation and shadow boxing, nothing more, nothing less.

Awesome

the MCA website is - both for the breadth and the depth of its contents.

YAY!!!

Pawar to inaugurate MCA website

Hurrah!!!

India A agree to tour Kenya

Finally!!!! The A tour concept has been revived.

Read this and weep

Summers in England, and a life away from the spotlight

So, Mr Colonel, you of the "There is no exceptional talent in this country" fame, chairperson of the Mumbai Selection Committee, Chairperson of the India Selectors, Vice President of the MCA, Director Elf Academy - what are you going to do?

The swinging ball

and why it wont impact India as much as has been written.

I watched all of yesterday's play between England and the West Indies and saw the Windies climb back from 229/9 to 287/10 on the back of Shivnarine Chanderpaul's century.

And I watched the ball swing, in and out. And here is the thing - if you dont get it right, you are cannon fodder.

Pitch the ball short and the ball will sit up to be hit. Pitch it up a bit too much and thats a half volley waiting to be driven.

If the ball swings too much away from the batsman and you are offering him width. Too much into the batter and there is every possibility of drifting onto the pads.

And thats the last thing you want to do as a bowler when facing India's batsmen.

Now, in the swing stakes, we have Ranadeb Bose, Zaheer Khan, S. Sreesanth and R.P. Singh.

Given the performance of the English batsmen against the West Indies, I am optimistic that swing will be a non factor in deciding the series.

India's U-19 probables

The probables: Rohan Banerjee, Harshad Khadiwala, Abhinav Mukund, T. Kohli, Manish Pandey, N. Einstein, Ankit Tiwari, Saurav Tiwari, Arpit Vasavada, Dhaval Kulkarni, Amanpreet Singh, Srikant Munde, Pradeep Sanghwan, P. Das, Mohd. Arif, Bharat Reddy, Tejasvi Yadav, Srivats Goswami, Rubin Dalwadi, Ravikant Saini, G.V.S. Prasad, K.P. Appanna, Iqbal Abdullah, Swapnil Singh and Mohd. Khalid. Stand-byes: Sunil Raju, Sarthak Mundva, Suffian Shaikh, Nitin Saini and Manish Sharma.

Age is a number

Whats the fuss about Chandu Borde's age? Why is there no fuss about his designation? Whats the fuss about his designation? Why is there no fuss over what the designation entails?

Historically, managers of the Indian team have been tasked with the administrative aspect of touring a country and liaisoning with the Host Board and Media.

Chandu Borde is the manager.

Whats the fuss?

The crux of the Matter

Lara insists that the problems with West Indies cricket ran deep. "It's that we don't have a good infrastructure for young guys to develop. West Indies have a great Under-15 side. I know a 16-year-old guy in Trinidad who's awesome but I worry for him because of the facilities. A mediocre Australian cricketer at 17 or 18 will be slapping everyone all over the world five years later. If you don't have facilities and you don't have employment then you have a negative atmosphere

And that in short, is the crux of the matter.

We often lament on the quality of our sides that take to the field. A lot of debate has been generated/is about to be generated over the squad selected. A lot of ink will be wasted on the identity of the coach.

At the end of three Tests, you might just find that India have carried a couple of passengers, but this is due as much to the fact that the cupboard in domestic cricket is a bit bare at the moment,

is another common refrain.

Fair enough.

So what is being done about it?

Why is it that "A mediocre Australian cricketer at 17 or 18 will be slapping everyone all over the world five years later" ?

Why do our World Champions in the age group level falter on the bigger stage that is International cricket?

What are we going to do about it?

And isn't the answer to that question far more important than the identity of the coach and the team selection to whatever country we are playing against at the moment?

PS:-

"The problem with Munaf," says a top Indian player, "is his background. He comes from the kind of place that most of us would never have imagined, let alone been to. It has been a tremendous journey for him.

He just needs to be handled differently and needs to be understood. We all know of what happened in South Africa but the thing with Munaf is, he actually believed he was fine, that he could play. There is no malice about him, and he does not hide things on purpose. All he wants to do is play and sometimes, his body does not respond with the same enthusiasm."

What will Paras Mhambrey and Kiran More and Makarand Waingankar do?

Homer for coach

With absolutely no reluctance at all, without concern for friends and family, Homer is gleefully putting his hat into the ring for position of Coach - Team BCCI.

Here are his qualifications -

1. Resident of the USA - Hello "We need a foreign coach" lobby

2. Indian passport holder - Hello " Only an Indian can do the job of coach"lobby

3. No International cricketing background - A bow in the direction of John Buchanan. In fact, unless you consider rubber ball under arm with "one bounce outs" and "six and out" and "full toss on the wall is out" as the real deal, he has no cricketing experience at all.

4. Willing to work with players - Not only willing to work with players, willing to do the players work. Homer is a guy who had famously offered to be the lift man at Sportsfield. He will be more than willing to carry the players kit bags (coffins), run their laps for them, keep tossing balls at them during nets all day and then runs their laps for them, substitute for them during catch practice and the run their laps for them, make tea and biscuit mandatory before and after every net and then run laps - you get the drift..

5. Manage players - Like every fan worth his two paisa, Homer will go above and beyond the call of duty and pander to player egos. Homer does fawning adulation better than most.

6. Blogger and so experience in handling media matters - Newspaper wallah's/ TV wallah's khush

7. Resident of Mumbai -Namaskaar Ravi dada Shastri, Diliprao Vengsarkar, Param Pujya Shri Sunilraoji Gavaskar, Mananiya Shri Sharadchandraji Raoji Pawarji.

8. Refers to self in the third person - Shades of Michael Vaughan.. And we know what Vaughan did to those vagabonds from Down Under because they lacked manners.

9. Willing to work with coaching staff - Will play catch with Robin Singh ( since there will be no one else to who will be willing to).. Will work long with Venky Prasad to learn the nuances of bowling juicy half volleys and juicier full tosses at the nets.

10. Work with the BCCI - $20,000 a month is $20,000 too many for a role any lay person on the streets of India is willing to do.Especially when lodging and boarding come free with the job. He will not complain of crowded itineraries- who does not like to fly business class for free and bump up their frequent flier miles? And who in their right minds will say no to staying in luxurious hotels with stocked liquor cabinets?

11. Brilliant with Power Point - who does not like jazzy presentations with lots of buzz words thrown in?
--
Homer will do a stellar job of coaching the team. In fact, he will let the team coach him. And I have already started stocking up on the sledges we will use against the Poms.

Doni, Rahul, VVS, repeat after me - "Kev Pieterson has no taste - in women".

PS:- Sportsfield is a building in Mumbai that houses the whoz who of Mumbai cricket.

Darren Ganga

The West Indies had been heavily criticised for lacking pride and discipline earlier in this match, but that has not been the case over the past two days. Starting with Darren Sammy's seven wickets on Saturday, they have confounded most people's expectations by knuckling down to the point where they have an outside chance of levelling the series.

Derek Pringle 11/06/2007

West Indies are mercurial as a side can be, bouncing merrily this past month between total incompetence and steadfast obduracy.

We saw the best of it at Lord's in the drawn first Test and we have seen it in the second innings here, led brilliantly by the diligent, vigilant, unflappable Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who after four and a quarter hours will resume on 81, his third successive half-century of the series, and abetted by Devon Smith (42), Runako Morton (54) and Dwayne Bravo (49). On this occasion the tourists' batsmen have shunned the flash flippancy that has characterised too much of their cricket and taken responsibility instead.

Mike Selvey at Old Trafford
Monday June 11, 2007

Yesterday's cricket contained two collectors' items, firstly involving Steve Harmison bowling straight, and secondly a series of West Indians at least declining to use their bats as though they were auditioning for the conductor's job at the Last Night Of The Proms.

Martin Johnson 11/06/2007

How West Indies missed him during that flaccid surrender at Headingley. He had batted for four-and-a-half hours to set up the draw at Lord's, and he made another sheet-anchor half-century in the first innings here - an innings that only ended because of the wickets tumbling all around him. The spark for West Indies' fightback may have been provided by Darren Sammy's seven-for on Saturday, but Chanderpaul is the slow-burning wick that has kept that flame alight ever since.

It wasn't a solo effort by any means, although who else could have inspired Runako Morton's monument of self-denial in the afternoon session. Morton's natural game was best demonstrated by the furious swish he took after being given out lbw for 54 - it was the shot he had been gagging to play all innings, but had somehow found the willpower to resist. Instead he had been leaving the ball expertly against the quicks and spinners alike - and replays of his dismissal suggest his judgment didn't entirely desert him.

Andrew Miller at Old Trafford June 10, 2007

The underlying theme of all the reportage of the fourth day's play of the Third Test between England and the West Indies has been the levels of discipline shown by the Windies in the Test in general and the fourth day in particular.

Ganga's leadership has been about instilling discipline and nurturing a good work ethic. Sarwan considers himself a gambler who is willing to take risks.

.....

Ganga, at 28, brings a decidedly more mature approach than Sarwan, who will turn 27 in June. Not that age is the decider, but their temperaments and experiences have been starkly different. Ganga has been bumped in and out of the West Indies team, sometimes inexplicably, but he has been stoic and resilient and has always tried to work out his problems, though it has affected his confidence.

Vaneisa Baksh April 29, 2007

Maybe the fourth day was a one off, maybe it is too early in his captaincy for Ganga to leave his imprint on the team and for us to sit in judgement, maybe I am clutching at straws - but I think that Darren Ganga could be the best thing to happen to West Indies cricket in a very long time.