Australia vs Sri Lanka 11th CUB ODI
Australia's greatest nemesis over the past few decades hasn't been Tendulkar, Lara, reverse swing or turning subcontinent pitches. It's been the dead rubber. Can they defeat their dreaded bugbear today? Live scorecard
| Posted by JC on Fri 29 Feb |  29 comments |
Matt Hayden's weed spray
Matt Hayden is a goose. Calling Harhajan Singh an obnoxious weed is bad enough. Australian cricketers are more than just sportsman - somehow they still haven't tweaked that they also represent their country. They're ambassadors to other cricketing nations so as an Australian, it annoys me when our cricketers carry on like this. Sure, Harbhajan is an obnoxious weed but that doesn't excuse Hayden's shameful lack of sportsmanship.
But what really gets me is Hayden's response after being given a reprimand. Here are his words to the media:
"I maintain my innocence, my intentions were never to denigrate cricket or anyone."Can someone explain this to me? Maintain his innocence?! It's not like he was muttering on a noisy MCG well away from the stump mike. He said it in a radio interview! How can calling someone an obnoxious weed be anything but denigrating him? But then, when you process anything through Matt Hayden's psychobabble filter, it could mean anything.
| Posted by JC on Thu 28 Feb | 76 comments |
Summer Reflections
It has been one of those summers.
If you are like me you turn on the cricket mostly to get away from the stresses of life. Rushing back from some appointment or commitment, you click on the destop scoreboard even before checking your email or returning that urgent phone call, bursting with excitement at the prospect of Tendulkar or Gilchrist still being at the crease. Cricket makes the whole damned day seem so much brighter.
That is until this season. I never thought I would ever say this but there have been times this season when I considered unplugging the TV, turning off the radio, and disconnecting the internet. It seems as if my love for cricket has been overshadowed in recent times by much darker forces. Egos, money, blind nationalistic pride, lies, empty rhetoric, racism. Did cricket lose its innocence this summer? Perhaps not. Maybe I just lost the last dangling threads of mine.
I can't imagine what kinds of lessons young ten year olds learned about sportsmanship this summer from both the Australian and Indian teams. I wonder, what kind of world did we make for ourselves during the course of this summer?
So what to do about it.
I personally think the IPL, despite its many faults and all the money involved, will help to promote a bit of cross-cultural understanding between players. It should also bring us fans closer together. I was talking with some mates the other day and we all agreed that it would be great in the future to see a side opening the bowling with Lee and Akhtar. Or have Murali and Warnie operating from different ends. Who wouldn't want to see McGrath bowl to Gilchrist or Sreesanth to Tendulkar?
I look forward to the day when Australia and India have a rivalry which is second to none but where the players understand and are respectful of each other in a way that attracts new fans to the game and respects the love of the game the older ones have cultivated.
| Posted by TA on Thu 28 Feb | 27 comments |
Sri Lanka vs India 11th CUB ODI
After being given a lifeline on Sunday night, Sri Lanka play for their lives today. Ishant Sharma (aka Mr Send-off) has already made in-roads but Jayasuriya has made a start and is looking dangerous. Can he and Sangers bat India out of the game? Live scorecard
| Posted by JC on Tue 26 Feb | 22 comments |
Australia vs India 10th CUB ODI
Australia have found a winning strategy in this summer's Tri-Series - bat badly then bowl like demons. It's a more successful strategy than batting like demons then bowling badly. Meanwhile, India are looking to book a finals berth if they win today. They'll be hoping Australia don't figure out how to bat and bowl well in the same game.
| Posted by JC on Sun 24 Feb | 118 comments |
Australia vs Sri Lanka 9th CUB ODI
Sri Lanka play for survival in the Tri-Series today. Australia on the other hand will have their minds on how they're going to spend their IPL millions. If the hungrier team wins, my money is on Sri Lanka. Live scorecard
| Posted by JC on Fri 22 Feb | 4 comments |
IPL's razzmatazz blinding us all?
Consider this statement from Ricky Ponting in 2006 - "I don’t think I really like playing Twenty20 cricket". And late last year after the Indian team won unheard of riches, he was the first to accuse the BCCI of being 'excessive', and post Bollyline, he accused them of being 'high-handed and mighty', but over the past few weeks Punter has only been too happy supporting the BCCI. Also consider his demand of reducing the work load, saying his body was 'running on fumes' and all that crap, but now hes joined in request for setting aside a 6 week block every year just for the IPL. Sorry punter, thats just plain hypocrisy. What lured him was obvious, the most enchanting seductress of them all, Miss Dollar.
Yesterday's great IPL auction was a rare event and even sounded a bit exciting, but when I heard the obscene amounts of money splurged on star players, not only me, but many thought, where the hell is all this money where we really need it?
Also chew on some ludicrous bids yesterday - Dinesh Karthik fetched more than Ponting, Sreesanth more than Warne, and unbelievably there were no takers for McGrath and Hussey! This clearly shows us that the team owners had money, and lots of it, but not much else. And you want these people to help change the future of Indian cricket?
Which brings me to my next point - Lets get one thing straight here - THE IPL IS HERE TO MAKE MONEY AND LOADS OF IT. PERIOD. So don't let their organizers fool you by saying they are helping youngsters, helping them gain experience from world class players blah blah. Come on guys, get real! How much can a player improve by playing 20 20?! One only needs to have a glance at the similar Stanford T 20 league to see how things are going.
The quality of cricket being played there is absolutely appalling - Batsmen are playing with baseball style grips, bowlers cant bowl the same length 2 balls continuously, the catching is reminiscent of India's 'gully cricket' , and you want T 20 to help improve players? Go figure!
Even the top players who play in these T 20 leagues show absolute apathy and lethargy, their job is done once the paycheck reaches them. Brian Lara was expected to set the ICL on fire, but he managed just about 29 runs in the whole tournament, thats about Rs. 200,000 per run! But does he care? Will the star players in the IPL take any of the games seriously? Considering you'll have teammates going at each other, two competitors like Sreesanth and Brett Lee sharing the new ball, it will be more of a comedy, a showpiece event more than anything else. And when you consider that the game were playing is 20-20, theres no way anyone will even care to take it seriously.
"Dhoni is priceless" according to N Srinivasan, who shelled out a wicked 1.5 million USD (6 crores!) for MS Dhoni, but Mr Srinivasan, I have just one request to you - If you'd spent just 1/1000th of what you spent on Dhoni alone, to improve the cricket infrastructure in Chennai, you'd have done a greater service. Many talented players just can't afford to play cricket seriously and are wasting away. India is losing out by shelling ridiculous amounts on those cricketers who are already millionares many times over.
To some people, whose eyes dont bleed while watching T 20, the glitz and strobe lights lighting the field already lit by stars, might be just the tonic to get them onto cricket.
But for me, if cricket is reduced to actors and business magnates using players as commodities and staging "entertainment", sorry guys -
ITS JUST NOT CRICKET...
| Posted by Ajesh Nag on Thu 21 Feb | 19 comments |
Warnie's IPL money bags
Shane Warne will earn a minimum of AUD$495,000 for playing in the IPL Twenty20 tournament. I read somewhere he'll earn over $1,000 per delivery. Now some say this kind of money is ludicrous. Personally, I would give a finger or two (from my non-bowling hand) just to get a bowl at a Saturday club game. So to get paid more than the average battler's weekly wage just to bowl a single delivery is all out of whack. No wonder Warnie is urging everyone to embrace IPL, don't fight it. I'm picturing him saying it in a Darth Vader voice: "give yourself to the dark side!"
But spare a thought for poor Warnie. $1,000 per ball sounds a lot but what if he bowls a no-ball? Instantly, his pay rate plummets 50%. Then he bowls a wide. Again, plummets to 33%. How many of you would accept a job where your pay rate dropped every time you made a mistake? No, this IPL gig is a rort designed to exploit Australia's greatest cricketers. As a patriotic Aussie, I'm more than willing to do my bit to protect our boys and take their place (any bids for a chubby cartoonist/leg spinner?)
| Posted by JC on Thu 21 Feb | 10 comments |
Coming out of retirement Part XIII
First of all, our team finally has its own website cavaliers.criciwiki.com. I've been feverishly entering scorecards from the whole season as well as bugging teammates for photos. Dom snapped a great photo of Errol winding up in an identical pose to the iconic Victor Trumper photo - perfect for the Cavs website header. Isn't it great when sport meets geek?!
Last week ended with the match poised - we were 2 for 26 chasing 165 for first innings points. I'd batted for an hour last week just to survive to stumps. It was a great plan, start the day afresh and build an innings. Unfortunately it unravelled several overs into the day when I fine glanced a delivery into my pads that richoted into the stumps. Bowled after adding only 1 run to my overnight score! And condemned to sit in my fold out chair growing fat on muesli bars while I watched our team bat all afternoon.
Even worse - I didn't have to wait long at all. The Cavs collapsed badly, all out for 90 and conceding first innings points. The opposition came out and lost quick wickets in the pursuit of fast runs. With 90 minutes to go, they declared, setting us 167 runs off 20 overs. Twenty20 stuff! It went without saying the Cavaliers would live up to their name and go for the win.
Our ambitious run chase fell over at the starting blocks when we lost 2 wickets in the first over. A third wicket fell in the 7th ball of the innings and I walked out with the Cavs reeling on 3 for 4. Errol's plan: steady the ship, see how we're going then accelerate. Unfortunately 3 more quick wickets fell and we were suddenly 6 for 22, staring down the barrel of outright defeat. Phil, the offspinner, came out and we hunkered down for the draw. Phil started defensive but after several overs, the tailend instincts kicked in and he started swinging across the line. "Play it straight", I advised. Phil took a big swipe and skiied it to midwicket. "I played it straight," he later told me. "Straight into the air!"
Dom came in with 8 overs to go. Up till that point, I don't recall ever seeing him play a defensive stroke. Facing an off-spinner, I played at a ball outside off, missed it and it struck the pad, deflecting to first slip. The fielders went up. Jim, an elderly umpire who bases his decisions on the loudness of the appeal, raised the finger. Out to a dodgy decision but I was more annoyed at not playing the ball more securely.
7 overs to go for our last two batsman to survive. The rest of the team didn't hold out much hope. But Dom and Jamie hung in there, blocking out over after over. When we started counting down balls rather than overs, our hopes started to rise. Last over, Dom on strike, defending like Dravid. Last ball, he safely blocked and the Cavs survived for another nailbiting draw. Why do so many Cavs games seem to go right down to the last over?! For the statistically minded, you can peruse the match scorecard here.
So a deflating day - out twice in a single day and not bowling an over. But a nailbiting and entertaining finish - what club cricket is all about! Which brings me to my final point. Last week, Vishnu told us an engrossing tale of his own club cricket experience, featuring sledging, getting knocked unconscious and the demise of his team. It also offered keen insights into the culture of Indian club cricket. So if any bloggers have their own experiences of club cricket they'd like to share, whether recent or in past years, please comment here...
| Posted by JC on Wed 20 Feb | 3 comments |
India vs Sri Lanka 8th CUB ODI
Australia are playing crap at the moment yet they still manage to find themselves atop the points table with daylight second. India and Sri Lanka play today with the loser finding themselves clinging to the bottom rung of the ladder. Both teams have had recent opportunities to defeat Australia but fell over before the finish line. Who will have the kahunas to take the points today? Live scorecard
| Posted by JC on Tue 19 Feb | 16 comments |
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