Let battle commence

Mumbai

Mumbai will look to avoid Railways' and UP's fate © Cricinfo Ltd

Railways, the 2004-05 champions, are currently languishing in the Plate League; UP, their successors, just about avoided relegation last season. Mumbai, defending champions this year, would look to undo the dubious trend prevalent over the last two years: of champions losing their form completely. Mumbai have already played two matches this season, beating Karachi Urban in the Mohammad Nissar Trophy, but losing outright to Rest of India in the Irani Trophy. On display were flashes of exciting new talent but also some phases of ordinary play.

They are one of the few teams who haven't lost any significant players to ICL. To add to the already existing pool, they have, among others, Ajinkya Rahane, the aggressive opener who scored century on debut and also played the Challengers and Iqbal Abdula, the 17-year-old left-arm spinner who can add up as a handy lower-order batsman. Ajit Agarkar and Ramesh Powar may play more of a role this season, given they both find themselves out of the Indian team currently.

A glaring omission is left-arm spinner Nilesh Kulkarni, who was the leading wicket-taker for Mumbai last season, with 24 wickets at 20.79. There were rumours that he might join ICL, but that did not eventually happen.

They go into the Ranji Trophy a solid team, playing four out of their seven games at home - including the last one, against Saurashtra

Karnataka

Anil Kumble, who will lead Karnataka in the first two matches, should make a big difference © Getty Images

One of the strongest contenders for this season's title, Karnataka have been boosted by the return of Anil Kumble, who will lead the team, and Rahul Dravid. Apart from the duo who will be available for two games, they will bank on the experience of Sunil Joshi and Yere Goud - who joined Karnataka last season after 11 years with Railways. Although they have lost Robin Uthappa to the Indian team, they have a formidable batting line-up in C Raghu, B Akhil, Thilak Naidu and Barrington Rowland, the men who took Karnataka to the final four in the last season.

Joshi, as always, will lead the bowling attack, but he can turn to a capable few to share the burden. There is KP Appanna, the talented left-arm spinner making rapid strides, and R Vinay Kumar, the medium-pace bowler who took 27 wickets last season. They will be bolstered by the presence of NC Aiyappa, the medium-pacer who has recovered from an injury that restricted him to just two games in the previous season. In addition they have Akhil, who blossomed into a fine medium-pace bowler last season and Raghu, who picked 10 wickets with his offspin.

Karnataka have a new coach in Vijay Bharadwaj after Venkatesh Prasad became the national bowling coach and his successor Rajesh Kamat was pouched by the ICL. Bharadwaj headed a 13-day camp - where batting and fielding sessions combined with drills and exercise formed the daily routine - at the Infosys campus in Mysore as part of the build-up to the upcoming season.

Champions versus Contenders... New Kids On The Block versus Old Dogs.... Us versus Them.

The scene is set for the last game at the Wankhede before it closes down for renovation.Stock up on the beer/coffee/chips/salsa or whatever else you might fancy - The big daddies of Indian cricket are about to play ball!

November 3rd cant come soon enough.

PS:-

Mumbai: Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) organised a ‘Gatorade Gurus’ seminar, an interactive session for the benefit of players, coaches and trainers at the C.K. Nayudu Hall, Cricket Club of India here on Wednesday.

Ramji Srinivasan spoke about fitness, Nisha Verma about hydration science and Praveen Amre about personal coaching. The Mumbai Ranji Trophy probables attended the seminar.
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It has been eight long summers since Karnataka last carried the prefix of 'Ranji Trophy champions.' Not since their extraordinary triumph at the Chinnaswamy stadium in 1999 against Madhya Pradesh has a Karnataka captain held aloft the symbol of domestic first-class supremacy in the country.
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Just two days before their opening Ranji Trophy game but well advance for the long hectic season ahead, Mumbai players got a few words wisdom from cricket’s fitness guru Ramji Srinivasan at the Wankhede Stadium. At a special interactive session; the players had their queries about niggles, gym schedule, on-field training and ways to dealing with chronic aliments answered.

One

year has rolled by since this blog came into existence.

And plenty of Thank You's are in order ( although words do not necessarily do justice to how I feel at the moment)

A Big Thank You to each and every one of you who took the time from your busy lives to spend on this blog.

A Big Thank You to each and every one of you who posted comments and, in doing so, allowed me to grow as an individual and a cricket watcher.

A Big Thank You to all of you who blog rolled me. Not only did you increase the traffic to the site, you made me privy to thoughts and ideas that I would otherwise not have been privy to.

A Big Thank You to all of the other bloggers out there. Your perspectives and insights are the difference between seeing a game and watching it.

And finally, A Big Thank You to all the friends I have made along the way. You matter more than you will ever know.

Meanwhile, Down Under

6 scorecards from the 6 venues hosting Test Cricket this southern summer

The Gabba

158, 544 and 457 in the 3 innings played for the loss of 10, 6 and 5 wickets.
This, on the fastest ground in Australia at the beginning of the season

Hobart

482,363,171* in 2 and a bit innings played for the loss of 10, 6 and 4 wickets
Ben Hilfenhaus 42-6-150-2 and 8-2-29-1
S. Tait 27-2-117-1
J. Gillespie 22-5-74-2

The MCG

277,114, 289 and 164 runs scored for the loss of 10,10,6 and 10 wickets
CL White 5-0-13-0 and 10-0-41-2
Brad Hogg 12.4-2-21-3 and 18.4-4-62-5

Interesting that the most successful bowler at the MCG in the lung opener is a left arm Chinaman.

The SCG

467,601, 398 and 34* runs for the loss of 10, 8, 7 and 0 wickets
Brett Lee 27-4-113-0 and 23-8-75-0
N Bracken 19-7-42-1 and 21-8-69-1
S Clark 27-7-79-3 and 24-7-71-4
M Johnson 32-4-134-0 and 4-0-21-0
S McGill 36-1-183-3 and 19-1-97-1

Adelaide

438, 249, 158 and 77 runs for the loss of 10,10, 4 and 10 wickets
J Gillespie 32-6-97-1 and 8-3-21-1
Dan Cullen 37-3-125-2 and 10-0-43-1
Cullen Bailey 16-2-66-1 and 10-0-37-0
CL White 11-2-34-1

Perth

267, 99, 300 and 193 runs for 10,10,3 and 10 wickets

I expect this trend to continue - runs will be scored by the billion while bowlers will toil. Factor in the drought and summer and I would even venture to say that spin will become a factor as the summer progresses. And with no McGrath and Warne and bowlers not able to blast sides out, it is going to be a long summer.

Lots of runs, bowlers not getting due reward,spin and long playing days means attritional cricket. Something India has been doing as well or better than most.

India play at the MCG, the SCG, Adelaide and Perth ( in that order).

Cant wait for the tour to begin!

Hit them early

and hit them hard.

Pakistan begins its tour to India on the back of a morale shattering loss at Lahore, earning them the tag of chokers.

And rightly so.

They lost an ODI series they should have won, they lost an ODI that was in the bag and the less said about their performance against India in the Twenty20's, the better.

And IMHO, this is the right opportunity for India to hit them hard and early.

The team selected for the first two ODI's is

Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, Robin Uthappa, Rohit Sharma, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt & wk), Irfan Pathan, Praveen Kumar, Zaheer Khan, RP Singh, Sreesanth, Harbhajan Singh, Murali Kartik

And interestingly, every single batsman/ all-rounder selected in the team is capable of tonking the long ball.And there is no sheet anchor.

And that, I believe, should be the strategy - play Twenty20 cricket over 50 overs.

Pakistan's strength is in its bowling; the batting had looked thin, barring Younis Khan and Md. Yousuf.

If India takes on Pakistan's bowling head on and does play the long ball ( right through the batting order), we will have set the tone for the rest of the series.

And if this means Md.Asif getting 5/100, so be it.

Because I believe that any bowler will be more miffed going for 100 runs in 10 overs than chuffed about getting a fifer.

And like any good sub continental captain, the pressure of expectation and the pressure of having his strong suit turn into his weak link will have an effect on Shoib Malik.

And if we put Shoib Malik on the back foot right from the outset, that will be significant over the course of the entire tour.

In fact, I would hope Delhi sets the agenda in the tour opener ( like Mumbai did in the 1998 series against Australia).

Should be fun!

PS:- On October 14, 2007, this is what I wrote about Rahul Dravid. And between then and now, nothing has happened to change my opinion ( inspite of the firestorm in the media and the blogosphere).

And vindication comes from the man himself

"I have two games, one against Mumbai [starting on November 3], and another against Himachal," he said. "It will be good to spend some time in the middle."

I'll be watching

Anil Kumble to lead 15-member Karnataka Ranji squad

VVS Laxman to lead 15-member Hyderabad Ranji squad

My two tips for India captaincy will be leading their squads in the Ranji Trophy this year.. And they both will have tough games first up - Karnataka plays Mumbai while Hyderabad tangles with Bengal.

Both games should contain useful pointers on which of the two make the grade ( and I hope SRT is not made skipper please please please!).

Vision

VB Chandrashekhar alluded to it. Sanjay Manjrekar speaks about it. So do Siddhartha Vaidyanathan and Sambit Bal, albeit in the context of the Rahul Dravid non selection.

And the leitmotif of these columns ( and most of the posts and comments in the blogosphere) is that there is an ad hoc manner in which the current selection committee operates while Kiran More's team had a much clearer "vision" for Indian cricket.

But, do the results tally?

Here is the list of players who made their ODI debuts between 24 September 2004 through 24 September 2006

MS Dhoni 23 December 2004
Joginder Sharma 23 December 2004
SK Raina 30 July 2005
Y Venugopal Rao 30 July 2005
RP Singh 4 September 2005
S Sreesanth 25 October 2005
MM Patel 3 April 2006
VRV Singh 12 April 2006
RV Uthappa 15 April 2006

Number of debutants - 9
Number of matches - 54
Total number of players selected - 30
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Here is the list of players who made their Test debuts between 24 September 2004 through 24 September 2006

Gautam Gambhir 3,4,5 November 2004
Dinesh Karthik 3,4,5 November 2004
MS Dhoni 2,3,4,5,6 December 2005
RP Singh (India) 21,22,23,24,25 January 2006
Sreesanth Mar 1-5, 2006
Piyush Chawla Mar 9-13, 2006
Munaf Patel Mohali, Mar 9-13, 2006
VRV Singh Jun 2-6, 2006

Number of debutants - 8
Number of matches - 26
Total number of players tried - 31
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Here is the list of players who made their ODI debuts between 25 September 2006 through 29 October 2007

Rohit Sharma Jun 23, 2007
Piyush Chawla May 12, 2007

Number of debutants - 2
Number of matches - 39
Total number of players tried - 27
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Here is the list of players who made their Test debuts between 25 September 2006 through 29 October 2007

Ramesh Powar May 18-22, 2007
Ishant Sharma May 25-27, 2007

Number of debutants - 2
Number of matches - 8
Total number of players tried - 20
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The more things change....

82 (79) > 5/45

That is the logic for the Man of the Match in India these days. How else does one explain S.Badrinath getting the MoM ahead of Praveen Kumar?

Kumar gets a 4fer yesterday, a fifer today. And has nothing to show for it.

Just shoot me.

Baby Steps

The Indian cricket board has moved within one step of professionalising the national selection panel with the finance committee of the Board of Control for Cricket of India clearing a proposal to pay the national selectors, so far honorary, a match fee beginning from Pakistan's tour of India next month.

Under the proposal, which is expected to be ratified by the BCCI's working committee, each of the five selectors will receive a match fee of Rs 50,000 (US$ 1262) per Test in addition to a daily of Rs 15,000, taking their total earning from a Test to Rs 125,000 (US$ 3156). For one-day matches, the fee will be Rs 65,000 (US$ 1641). Niranjan Shah, the board secretary, told Cricinfo that the new system is likely to be implemented as early as next month.

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After 75 years, the Indian cricket board has finally decided to dump the system of having national selectors working on an “honorary” basis - starting this year-end. From October 1, the present team of five selectors, led by former India captain Dilip Vengsarkar, will get Rs 50,000 per Test and Rs 25,000 per one-day international they attend.

However, this is a temporary arrangement, till Vengsarkar’s team completes its tenure by September 2008 - one of the five selectors, Sanjay Jagdale, finishes his term this year. After that the BCCI hopes to have in place an annual retainership package for selectors who would no longer be elected, but appointed by an experts’ panel.

Here is a comment

I posted on the Cricinfo website in response to Dileep Premachandran's article.

Brad William, Nathan Hauritz, Martin Love, Simon Katich, Scott Muller, Matthew Nicholson, Colin Miller, Adam Dale, Gavin Robertson, Shaun Young, Simon Cook.

Any of these names ring a bell?

Comparing Hayden with Devang Gandhi proves what exactly?

Iqbal Siddiqui and Samir Dighe made their debuts well after they were past 25. Nilesh Kulkarni made a come back after a 4 year hiatus against Australia in 2001.

Sachin Tendulkar made his international debut at 16. Which Australian can boast of being blooded at that young an age?

India waited 9 tests before Rahul Dravid scored a Test century.

I understand where you are coming from Mr Premachandran, but the argument has to be more nuanced than the one presented in your article.

Excuse me,

But if Anand Vasu and Nagraj Gollapudi think the Mumbai crowd are out of line for chanting "Aussies suck", they are welcome to join me in watching the Yankees play the Red Sox, preferably at Fenway.

Or is this just another example of bashing Mumbai because it is the fashionable thing to do these days?

And talking of Mumbai, Andrew Symonds has the last word

I'M not too sure who's more frustrated and disappointed about the controversy of the past week, me or the locals here in Mumbai.

Given the incessant calls to my hotel room, it's clear a large contingent of Indian cricket fans have been affected by the recent furore surrounding me and the crowds in India.

For the past three days, the phone in my hotel room hasn't stopped ringing.

I've had doctors, bankers and local businessmen all on the line desperate to apologise.

SHAME

(picture courtesy foxsports.com.au)

Symonds racially abused again

The Rahul Dravid conundrum

Rahul Dravid has not been amongst the runs. And today's effort ( 7 in 13 balls ) definitely did not help his cause. And he is India's most valuable player in the longer format of the game.

So here are my two cents.

Between the end of the Australia series and the start of the Ranji season, there is a gap of 16 days ( not including the Twenty20 thrashfest).

The Ranji Trophy begins November 3. The first two games that Karnataka play are

Sat 3 - Tue 6 Group A - Mumbai v Karnataka

Thu 15 - Sun 18 Group A - Karnataka v Himachal Pradesh

The first Test against Pakistan begins on November 22.

Dravid should skip the Pakistan ODI series and instead, make himself available for Karnataka in the Ranji Trophy.

The break from the game coupled with time spent in the middle in the longer form of the game should do his batting a world of good.

And God knows we will need him to come good in India's next couple of campaigns and more!

India lose

and I, for one, am glad we did.

Against England, a series which would have been ideal to blood some of the players warming the bench, we focussed too much on winning the series.

And since winning the series meant fronting up our best team, which translates to playing those guys with most caps under thier belt, we missed out on an opportunity.

And we would have done the same in the current series against Australia if we had won the game at Nagpur. And in the process, reduced Rohit Sharma, Dinesh Karthick and Subramanian Badrinath to ferrying drinks and warming the bench.

The last ODI at Mumbai is the first such opportunity available to us to play the bench warmers. And with the general approval of the paying public.

It will be interesting to see the choices the selectors and the team think tank make.

The Challengers

India Red	India Green	India Blue
Mohammad Kaif (captain) (UPCA)	Parthiv Patel (captain) (Gujarat)	Virender Sehwag (captain) (DDCA)
Karan Goel (Punjab)	Cheteshwar Pujara (Saurashtra)	Ajinkya Rahane (Mumbai)
Gautam Gambhir (DDCA)	Rohit Sharma (Mumbai)	Dinesh Karthik (TNCA)
S Badrinath (TNCA)	Murali Kartik (Railway)	Suresh Raina (UPCA)
Virat Kohli (DDCA)	Manoj Tiwary (Bengal)	Neeraj Patel (Gujarat)
Ravneet Ricky (Punjab)	Yusuf Pathan (Baroda)	Arjun Yadav (Hyderabad)
Praveen Kumar (UPCA)	Abhishek Nair (Mumbai)	Joginder Sharma (Haryana)
Mahesh Rawat (w/k) (Haryana)	Niranjan Behra (Orissa)	Ramesh Powar (Mumbai)
Pragyan Ojha (Hyderabad)	Iqbal Abdullah (Mumbai)	Amit Mishra (Haryana)
Sidharth Trivedi (Gujarat)	Pankaj Singh (Rajasthan)	Yo Mahesh (TNCA)
Ishant Sharma (DDCA)	Munaf Patel [Images] (Maharashtra)	Randeb Bose (Bengal)
Penal Shah (Baroda)	Gagandeep Singh (Punjab)	Swapnil Asnodkar (Goa [Images])
Srikant Munde (Maharashtra)	Anirudh Srikant (TNCA)	Rakesh V Dhruv (Saurashtra)
Paresh Patel (Orissa)	Satyajeet Parab (Maharshtra)	Saurav Bandekar (Goa)
Coach: Lalchand Rajput	Coach: Venkatesh Prasad	Coach: Praveen Amre

Match Schedule:
Oct 25: India Red v/s India Blue
Oct 26: India Green v/s India Red
Oct 27: India Green v/s India Blue
Oct 28: Final

All in all ,not a bad selection at all.

The selectors have done well to play those India players who have not had much match practice during the current Australia tour while resting those who have been playing non-stop ( through the Twenty 20s and the 7 ODI set).

The selection also gives the India players pause between the end of the Australia series ( Oct 17) through the beginning of the Pakistan series ( Nov 6).

All in all, a job well done.

Credibility

I read this first on the Fox Sports site

IF Andrew Symonds wasn't such a gentle fellow, India's Shanthakumaran Sreesanth's nose would probably be plastered all over his leering face.

The Hindu and occasionally Christian bowler can thank all his gods that the secular Queenslander is a man of peace and tranquility.

which pretty much says everything that had to be said about the credibility of the article.

Then the Sydney Morning Herald picked on the story

Sources within the Australian team say the Indian squad member made several aggressive gestures towards the visiting batsmen during their unsuccessful run chase, most of which were ignored.

But Sreesanth's attempt to goad Symonds after his late-innings dismissal - apparently by clapping in the Australian's face, followed by a few choice words - sparked a heated confrontation, with Clark moving in to separate the warring factions. Sreesanth denied clapping in Symonds's face or goading him. He admitted he said, "Hard luck, you're going to lose" to Symonds.

Sources within the Australian team talking to an Australian journalist about their pet peeve - taken with a ladleful of salt

None of the Indian media outlets have reported on this "incident" thus far. Cricinfo had George Binoy on the ground and Anand Vasu and Sriram Veera doing the ball by ball commentary. Nothing about this "incident" has been mentioned in the ball by ball commentary or the post match reports.

Imagine my surprise then, as unnamed "Cricinfo staff" deem it a story worthy of the main page of their web site...

S Sreesanth, India's fast bowler, has denied clapping in the face of Andrew Symonds after he was dismissed in the fourth one-day match on Monday. Sreesanth, a 12th man in Chandigarh, reportedly had to be calmed down by Stuart Clark, who was also running the drinks, when Symonds was approached between the field and the entry to the dressing room.

Sreesanth has had an eventful series after targeting the Australians with his strange behaviour and he apparently continued to argue with Symonds and his team-mates after the eight-run loss. Despite not playing, Sreesanth went to Symonds as he walked off with 75 and observers said he clapped in the batsman's face.

Strange behavior indeed!!