India is No.1

After an incredible nail biting finish, Indians have retained their spot at the top of the ICC Test cricket ratings. Congratulations Team India! My wishes came true - Paul Harris was treated like the mediocre bowler that he is and to add icing to the cake, the umpires even wided him quite a few times for negative bowling!

Just when the teams seem warmed up after a win each, the series has come to an abrupt end and that is hugely disappointing. Just one more match to crown the true series winner would have been great.

Essentially, the matches were a tale of two first inning batting collapses. While the Indians collapsed in Nagpur unable to cope with Steyn’s outstanding swing bowling; the South Africans collapsed in Kolkata, to some mediocre batting (the bowling was good, without being great).

Despite the positives – centuries by Sehwag, Tendulkar, Laxman, Dhoni; good bowling by Khan and Harbhajan, there were a few disappointments. This was a wonderful opportunity for the youngsters – Ishant, Mishra, Vijay and especially Badrinath, to shine but all failed to grab. The opportunity, that is. And personally, I had hoped to see more of the battle between the  no.1 batsman (Gambhir) and the no.1 bowler (Steyn).

After a tightly fought Test series, it’s time to move on to the ODIs.

Fabulous Four - Beginning of the End

With Sri Lanka wrapping up an easy win, a very disappointing series for the Fabulous Four of Indian Cricket - Sachin, Dravid, Laxman and Ganguly comes to an end.

One way to look at their failure is to consider this as an aberration in their wonderful career and a watershed moment  in history when a talented spinner in Ajantha Mendis made a remarkable debut. After all, I don't think there has been any other series where all four collectively failed and based on his performance so far, Mendis (especially in tandem with Murali) does look like a quality spinner to watch out for. Plus, if these four with all their natural talent and vast experience couldn't perform, who else could have? Yuvraj Singh and Rohit Sharma? I don't think so. Olympics and the upcoming ODI series should provide enough distraction to forget this failure and move on!

But, the other way and I think the right way to look at this is as the beginning of the end of a wonderful chapter in Indian Cricket. The build up to the series couldn't have been better - the all young ODI team in good  form was rendered clueless by a new spinner and the stage was set for the aging champions to show the new kids on the block how it's done. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be. If these four with all their talent and experience could not produce a decent performance in even one innings, what is the point of persisting with them? If their talent, form and experience is not making a difference, then what value do they bring to the team? If their aging bodies and slowing reflexes has  overwhelmed their talent and experience, how are they superior to other players waiting in the wings?

This doesn't mean that all four need to be dropped and replaced with the Rohits and Rainas in waiting. I cannot confidently name one player that absolutely deserves a spot over any of the fab four. But, this does mean that the playing field between the seniors and juniors is level now. Instead of being considered automatic picks, they need to be compared and evaluated against other players. Instead of being assumed superior, they need to compete for their place with the rest. Instead of blindly preferring the old masters, the selectors should take a chance and opt for some young blood. It's not the end, but the beginning of the end.

Kanpur Test interestingly poised

The third Test match between India and South Africa is interestingly poised after India ended day two on 288r for nine - 23 runs more than the 265 the South Africans made on day one.

The crumbling pitch with uneven bounce made batting hard, but that was only until Laxman came in to bat. He batted with such elegance and composure that you wondered if he in fact relished such conditions! And just when it looked like he along with a very determined Dravid had tamed the conditions, both fell to totally unplayable deliveries from Morkel leaving India tattering at 123 for four.

And then Ganguly stepped in and took charge. He ran hard for the singles, rotated the strike, put away the bad balls, never missed an opportunity to score and remained unperturbed when the odd ball bounced or turned viciously missing his bat. In short, it was the perfect innings for the conditions. Though he missed a well deserved century, this innings of 87 should rank among the very best he has ever played. He was ably helped by cameos from Yuvraj and Dhoni; though Dhoni should be kicking himself for the moment of madness that ended his innings.

Two days, 553 runs and 19 wickets later, the match is still evenly balanced with neither side holding any distinctive advantage. After a rather dull two Test matches at Chennai and Ahmedabad, it has taken a dry and deteriorating pitch to produce two consecutive days of fascinating cricket!

India stops Australia short of 17th win at Perth!

Australia's bid for a record 17th straight test match win was brought to a halt by India at the WACA in Perth. India convincingly beat Australia in what must rank as one of their greatest wins ever! On a pitch where nobody gave them a chance, with a second string bowling attack, coming off a heart breaking last minute loss at the SCG, this win was a tremendous team effort! 

 

 

Here are the highlights of the match -

Anil Kumble winning the toss and choosing to bat - With so much talk about how the pitch is going to be fast and bouncy, and Australia bringing in Shaun Tait to go in with a 4 pace attack, it would have been the easy decision to bowl first. But, Kumble took the tough choice, which paid rich dividends at the end.

Tendulkar and Dravid's partnership - Kumble's call to bat first paid off mainly due to the partnership between Tendulkar and Dravid. Dravid back at his no.3 spot, played a wonderful innings, but, it was Tendulkar's inventive stroke play that was the highlight of the partnership.

Pathan, RP Singh and Sharma's bowling - India's second choice attack (all three played only because of injuries to Zaheer Khan, Sreesanth and Munaf Patel), instead of trying to exploit the pace of the wicket, played to their strengths - keeping the ball up and swinging. Theirs was the most consistent pace bowling by India in recent times, swinging the match India's way.

Laxman's partnership with Dhoni and RP Singh - With the big 3 failing in the 2nd innings, Australians were with a real chance to get back in the game, but ran in to VVS Laxman. With runs worth their value in gold, he patiently grafted every run in the company of Dhoni and later with RP Singh. Dhoni too, curbed his natural style and knuckled down to scrapping every run possible. This was one of the most determined batting efforts by India in recent times. To me, this was the most intense and definitive passage of play in the whole match - ugly to watch, but beautiful in intent.

Ishant Sharma vs. Ricky Ponting - What a wonderful passage of play this was - a rookie troubling one of the most accomplished batsmen in this era! Excellent pace bowling by Ishant had Ponting missing, fending, swaying, hopping, mistiming and finally edging to Dravid.

Michael Clarke's innings - Clarke exemplified the Australian winning attitude. Batting with confidence and controlled aggression, he lead Australia's charge towards an improbable win. While he was at the crease, an upset was definitely on the cards.

Sehwag bowling out Gilchrist - With Clarke batting fluently and the new ball due in 10 overs, Gilchrist was preparing to launch an assault  - he had just brought out his squash ball and stuffed it in to his left glove (remember the world cup 2007 final?). In an inspired move (or, maybe just lucky!), Kumble tossed the ball to Sehwag and he obliged bowling out Gilchrist around this legs, exposing the Australian tail and snubbing out any chance of an Australian win.

The tail wags, but....

The Indian batting lineup redeemed itself at the SCG after a dismal performance at the MCG, riding high on VVS Laxman's glorious 109 and Sachin Tendulkar's sublime 154*.  But once again, India's tactics while batting with the tail was baffling to say the least and this time it was Tendulkar who was the culprit. His strategy of trusting the tailenders and sharing equal strike with them worked pretty well with Harbhajan, who scored a very useful 63. And that partnership between them essentially enabled India to get closer to Australia's score and eventually go past it.

Once Harbhajan got out, one expected Tendulkar to take charge,  farm the strike and be more aggressive.  But, Tendulkar was happy to rotate the strike around to both RP Singh and Ishant Sharma, both of whom outscored Tendulkar in their partnerships! Agreed, Ponting made things harder by pulling back the field when Tendulkar was facing the bowling and bringing the field in for the last 2 balls of an over; but, it was frustrating to see Tendulkar neither show any intent to protect the tail nor be aggressive in scoring runs. Its to the tailenders credit that they were able to last longer than expected.

Nevertheless it was a controlled, well-paced, expert innings from Tendulkar, who after a couple of near misses in 2007 has scored his 38th test hundred - an innings that has put India on top...for now.

Batting with the tail

India has won the first test match against Pakistan and VVS Laxman's partnership with MS Dhoni had much influence on the outcome. But, consider this - when Dhoni got out exposing the tail, Laxman had scored 49 runs off 89 balls. One would expect a specialist batsman in this situation to try and farm the strike as much as possible, facing at least 3 or 4 balls per over. But, by the time the innings wrapped up, Laxman had faced only a further 45 balls scoring 23 runs, while the tail enders had faced 89 balls to score 45 runs - that translates to just 2 balls per over being faced by Laxman! Its even more baffling if you consider when the tailenders got out - Harbhajan Singh takes a single off the last ball of the 75th over and gets out the first ball of over 76; Laxman takes a single off the 1st ball of over 79 and both Zaheer Khan & Munaf Patel get out the same over leaving Laxman stranded on 72!

Contrast that with the previous instance when a specialist Indian batsman batted with the tail through the end of the innings - when Dhoni did it in the first test match between India and England in July 2007. In that innings, after Laxman fell, Dhoni scored 39 runs off 71 balls with the tail scoring 9 off 49 balls - that translates to a much better 3.5 balls per over being faced by Dhoni.

It is probably not fair to judge Laxman based on one match, but it would be interesting to compare his career statistics when batting with the tail against other number 6 batsmen.