Arm Ball

This is in reply to the post from Dilip where he reckons India would be kicked out in the first round itself.

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1. Tendulkar
2. Gambhir
3. Dravid
4. Yuvraj
5. MSD
6. Raina
7. Pathan
8. Bhajan
9. Ishant
10. RP
11. Nehra

Bhajan would play. Doesnt matter if he is hot or cold. Choice could be between Nehra and Mishraji. We have already a lot of slow bowlers. Tendulkar can bowl. Besides Bhajan there is Pathan big, then there is Raina who rolled his arms with success in IPL – 2. Not to forget the Prince of Patiala and Parties — Yuvraj Singh.

Batting order could be a floater. Dravid, not many people would remember was a best finisher India had before Dhoni floated and Kaif faded. So who knows. But then the purpose which Dravid is in the team would serve is at 3.

I doubt if SL bowlers have that capability to bowl short at Indians. Cos the most likely ones to fall to the short balls now comes late as 6. Raina bhai wont come on top for sure. And Kulasekra doesnt have ability to bowl short if he plays. And who is Thushara ? Is he going to bowl short ? And then I dont know who else would be SL fast bowler. They come in and go as fast as an actress changes her dress in a typical Indian movie (Hindi and regional included). Would Herath play ODIs too ? Would Dilly Billy Silly play his ice cream scoop shot against Indians too ?

What about Bond ? Shane Bond ? Is he still as strong as he was pre-ICL. Not sure. Only thing that would go against the Blues would be the off-season rustiness. Especially for likes of Bhajji, Yuvraj and captain who have spent more time in driving Hummers (one of them w.o number plate ), partying, ads shoots and stuff like that. Indians havent been the best of the starters. Let me recall.

2008 : Post IPL, Indians started off well but lost 2 finals and then the dreaded botched biased partial Mendis series before they gathered their abilities to win ODI series and then set the ball rolling which hasnt stopped even as yet.

2007 : The break after WC was great infact. BD series win followed by SA series win (2-1), Ireland win, Scotland win, England test series win.

2006 : Was pathetic.

So off late not much data to say if Indians have been rusty or shining on the return. And with no Rohit Sharma, the contenders to fall to short stuff is pretty low. Forget Tendulkar, Dravid, Yuvraj and MS falling to short stuff. Gambhir , hmm, well he wont. Raina and Pathan would bat lower down the order, so the short stuff wont worry them.

Good omens. Sri Lanka for ODIs is always welcome. Always a victory. 2008, 2009 and again a 2009.

There is an excellent post by Achettup on his blog on the media getting ridiculously hyper over not so big deal of India’s ouster from the T20 world cup. Here it is. Then we have Times Now and CNN-IBN going madly behind India’s decision to field first in the game against England. A lady reporter / fashion model / cricket expert constantly bantered about how wrong the decision to field first was. Then we have Bishen Singh Bedi claiming that Dhoni’s cricketing acumen is poor cos he hails from Ranchi and that his thinking is street level. Nonsense.

Then there are self proclaimed anti India bloggers who find sadistic pleasure in everything bad happening to India, be it the 26/11 or the WT20 loss.

Then there are some really derogatory comments like Mr. 3 liters Doodh a day for MS by one of his famed critics. What about the Dancer in the reality show sir? Is he good enough to pip Doodh drinker from his spot ? I would really wish to watch out this folks what they say when India gets next success – be it in CT or be it in WI tour or whatsoever tourney. Being MS is so tough this days. It doesn’t matter if you have won everything you captained, it doesn’t matter you won a test series against 2 of the most dangerous oppositions without losing even a single test. Doesn’t matter if you won 2 on the trot ODI series in Emerald Isle, which no other captain of India was able to do. Doesn’t matter if you won a ODI series and a Test series down under in NZ in 33 years. Doesn’t matter if you won the CB series for the first and final time in history. And doesn’t matter if you won the WT20 – 2007. The fact that he lost WT20 crown and the IPL – II, he is in for a serious hit. Brand Dhoni, honeymoon Dhoni, lucky Dhoni, Doodh peeta Dhoni. What not.

Former Test stars are blaming Gary on his hinting to IPL as one of the reason for fatigue that finally led to the loss. That’s on cricketnext.com.

IBN cricket “Expert” has following analysis :

“The decision to bat Suresh Raina at number three in the batting line-up despite his obvious weakness against the short ball was also hard to understand. With the asking rate (required run rate) not too stiff, could the skipper have given himself the role of seeing the initial England burn out and kept Raina in the dugout for an assault on the spinners?”

Not so long ago MS was reeled for coming at 3. So there is a problem. MS comes at 3. Criticise. Raina at 3. Criticise. Whats MS supposed to do? Bat Nishant Arora or any journo there. I doubt if the journo would even know the rules of the game.

Yes Jadeja at 4 was a mistake. Accepted.

Then there is this generalized article from PTI on what went wrong :

http://cricket.ndtv.com/cricket/ndtvcricket/WT20/storypage.aspx?ID=SPOEN20090097586

“Matches at home, the below-par attack of New Zealand and fine performances on the worn-out pitches of South Africa during the Indian Premier League (IPL) camouflaged the young Indian batsmen weaknesses against quality pace attack of West Indies and England, who were prepared to dig it short.”

Since when England and West Indies had a quality pace attack? If they had they wouldn’t be at 7 and 8 positions in the ODI cricket and at 5^th and 8^th position in Test cricket. One off victories for both the teams don’t make them have a quality pace attack. Matches at home? Does that mean India should not play matches at home?

“Individually, captain Dhoni’s admission that he can’t hit sixes as of yore is welcomed, but his assertion that he is working on it isn’t true as the team hardly practices. The jibe at media for making an issue out of the team’s absence from practice sessions is misguided.”

Didn’t media create an issue out of the supposed rift between MS and VS ? Is media’s role glorified here? When the journos who never would have stepped on the cricket field rig the Indian cricketers, they assume they are the rulers of the game and have the audacity to pass the verdict on the topics they hardly know of.

And on one hand the lesser ex stars of Indian cricket – Patil, Borde and Rajput are reeling MS, the legends of the cricket in country who actually made it the way it is today have backed up MS. None other than Sunny Gavaskar. He has backed the skipper. There is nobody better than MS to lead India in any form of the game. And if there are polls and discussions on whether MS should resign on any tv channel or newspaper, then its just simply ridiculous. MS has accepted his fault, he has apologized. What else he needs to do? We need to move on from this defeat of course with lessons learnt. And the first lesson is that the T20 defeat shouldn’t be taken seriously. Something Younis Khan suggests.

Entire media circle has gone haywire on this loss. And till the next success this topic would be red hot and even small moves by the team would be monitored and aired as Breaking News. And not to wonder if some more derogatory synonyms pop up for MS. Yeah somebody sitting in Al Manamah, Middle East is so good at doing it.

The T20 world cup failure is just not a big deal. Not as big as ODI world cup 2007. We would lose the title in a week’s time. But thanks to ICC scheduling we have a chance to regain it in March 2010 again. So the new champions keep the world title only for 9 months. Whats the use? This is first failure for MS and it should be just about ok. True his few decisions didn’t work. But then this has always been his style. More often than not they have fired and that’s why he was a darling of the media and public. Now one world cup loss and he is termed as no more cool. Namakewl. Yes he did mistake in promoting Jadeja over Yuvraj and himself, in bowling out Ishant Sharma while Zaheer and RP, better bowlers than Ishant were under bowled. Jadeja was bowled one over more than required. Again the stage wasn’t set for experimentation. But then what can you do when you don’t have a Virender Sehwag in the team? The starts that win you matches in Tests, ODIs and T20s were missing. Make shift openers don’t always become Sehwag. And if they are IPL stars and India flops, then just forget it.

Indians were performing consistently below par their true potential. Not like their mercurial neighbors whom we don’t know which side they would be. Winners one or whiners one. Call it luck, they are still in the contention and we are out. We lost to 2 teams against whom we were never expected to lose. It was a collective slump. Batting, bowling, fielding. Just like Australia in 2009 World T20 or the Border Gavaskar trophy or the SA series. So why cry foul and focus on one man as reason for loss. If MS didn’t fire, then so did not Raina and Rohit Sharma who were IPL stars. Yusuf Pathan and Irfan Pathan didn’t fire as they did in IPL. Yuvraj did his bit. Zaheer wasn’t consistent as he has been since England 2007. RP Singh wasn’t the same bowler we saw in IPL. So whats Dhoni ’s fault here? He tried his best to do the stuff he could do. But then every team has off days. So did India. Unfortunately at wrong time. If I have to axe somebody I would kick out Mr. IPL and Mr. Useless Rohit Sharma, Ishant Sharma and put Raina on the fringe. A notice service must be done to the people who take their places for granted. IPL success is fine, but they gotta play for country too and do it with responsibility. By no means today Sharma and Raina can be said as replacements for Tendulkar and Dravid in Tests. These lads don’t even have 10% of commitment the senior pros have. Tendulkar and Dravid made money, this lads are doing better than the senior pros. But then didn’t the senior pros deliver when it came to ? 2007 was an aberration. 2003 was peak for the trio of Indian batting.

This loss could be a minor setback for 2011 mission. Every player in the squad has little bit of experience in the international arena. Most of the lads have played cricket now for an average of 3 years. Dhoni has 5 years, Yuvraj, Zaheer have 9, Harbhajan has 11, Gambhir, I Pathan have 6, Raina has 3, Sharma bandhu have it for 2 years, RP has it for 4 years, DK has it for 5 years. So the experience going to the 2011 world cup would be there. How much the lads would perform remains a different story. We need to identify the backup for openers. Sachin Tendulkar won’t be forever playing ODIs. Sehwag ’s injury exposed us. Gambhir looked fatigue after an outstanding year in the international scene. Who after this 3? Who if one of the 2 gets injured ? Rohit Sharma? Joke. Manish Pandey ? Karan Goel ? May be. They need to be groomed. What if Rohit Sharma doesn’t deliver again in ODIs ? Who to replace him ? Manoj Tiwary was one of the man after 2007 debacle identified to replace one of the batting greats, but injury forced him out of reckoning. What about Cheteshwar Pujara? Doesn’t he need to be given a chance to prove before ODI world cup ? Or some successful IPL stars ? Just identify them and test them in the upcoming ODI series in WI and Zim (if it happens). Rest the key players, send a good A team to play oDIs. May be a comeback for Uthappa ?

This are few of the questions the think tank of Indian management along with 5 wise old men would need to do including Gary Kirsten. Later this year, his contract would come up for renewal (hopefully would be extended). The debacle might not be of huge impact as compared to 2007 World Cup, but still some glaring questions need to be asked of fading stars like Rohit and Ishant Sharma, Harbhajan Singh and Suresh Raina.

This performance wasn’t something which would tag this team as the best ever. Especially when it came to giving away the momentum before the real cricket begins March 18^th. Anyways its curtains for the so called youth brigade and time for MEN to take the center stage and show the Kiwis and the so called young brigade what it is to represent the country all about. Move away Raina and Sharma, here cometh Rahul and VVS. Yes this sounds intimidating. Veeru and Gambhir to open, Dravid and Tendulkar to follow. VVS and Yuvraj to consolidate, Dhoni to interface between the middle order and the tail enders. Zaheer and Bhajji are decent bats too. Ishant can swipe the bat and he is good damn with the ball. That for me is the team to be.

Falling prey to a dibbly dobbly bowler in Jesse Ryder isn’t the performance of best ever. Woops no. No no no. Once Sachin was out to injury and the Sehwag storm was calmed down, nobody bothered to stay back and play the long innings. Perhaps dead rubber is seeming to be a problem now. It happened in SL in 08, 09 and now here in NZ. Something gotta be seen from the messrs Kirsten and MSD.

Hey doesn’t cricket seem to be a great leveler. Over confident Indians brought down in a format where they are world champs and have played their last game before they go to the defence of the title they won 2 years back. I would hate to see Indians do a 1987 in 2009. And the other one is for Graeme Smith. Man of the series in Australia for his heroics, falls for a duck. Australia is in a soup at 38/3 on day 1. And then 182/5. A debutant scores a 100, Haddin scores a 50 and then Mitch Johnson enjoys himself in the middle to remain stranded for 96*. Wow, he has now a test average of 32. Way greater than Pidge and Lee.

SA stuttered at 5/2. The heroes of down under series were back in hut in a flash and then boy. Kallis gone too but with a selfish milestone. DeVilliers and McKenzie still on crease though, but still. I am on course for a victory in the bet with Achettup. 2-1 or 3-0 for Australia or even 1-0 or 2-0, I win. Any other scoreline than the ones here I lose.

So its kinda back to the old world order. Australia thumping Saffers and Indians being blowed away by star less Kiwis. Gotta ask for Sharma and Raina, how much beer they had and how many babes they wandered with ?

Dhoni was lucky with toss in SL in 4 games. He won all those games. Mahela won the 5^th toss and the game. Vettori won the 1^st T20 toss and won the game. He has won the toss in 2^nd game too. Will he win ? Thank God Rohit Sharma is gone. Yipeeeeee. Ravinder Jadeja comes in for him. What if he plays well today ? Will he still be sent home ? Or will he replace Rohit Sharma or Dinesh Karthik ?

We all set for 2^nd of the 2 T20s of the series. Can India break its T20 jinx against this lowly Kiwi team ? Will the so called Rockstars of Indian cricket rock or rock off in over confidence ? Somehow Indians sounded rash and rude in 1^st defeat. So that answers my mate from Colombo who wanted to listen my views on Indian defeat in Kiwi land.

Irfan Pathan continues to be an enigma. From what he was to what he is now. He is hurting India’s chances in every game India plays. But then there is no bowler with his batting prowess.

Match gets underway

Sehwag on fire. 10 balls 24. 5 fours. Difference from other day. 10 balls 26 runs, 3 sixes. Today he is grounded. Hopefully he remains and realizes he has to stay back.

Gambhir seems edgy. He gotta have patience. He should stick around. Runs would come by.

Sehwag gone. Freakish hell.

Raina gone too. Now would he and Rohit Sharma go for partying ? Beer and babes ? Very much. Why not we just throw them out of the team ?