Posts Tagged ‘T20’
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Chennai Super Kings win the IPL III defeating Mumbai Indians
Two semi-finals and one final appearance later Chennai Super Kings lead by Dhoni won the IPL title defeating Mumbai at D Y Patil stadium in Mumbai. It was a brilliant win by CSK as they were almost down and out half way through the tournament. Credit has to be given to the captain and the support staff along with the players who showed tremendous mental fortitude to script this turnaround.
For Mumbai though this was a day of mistakes as dropped catches and poor decisions with batting order punctuated their performance in the finals. Sachin Tendulkar will be really disappointed as Mumbai Indians were the best side in this IPL. Even though I was happy to see Chennai Super Kings win, I was really sad to see Sachin in the losing side. But in the end Dhoni’s captaincy and Chennai’s superior fielding was the difference between the two sides.
When Dhoni won the toss and elected to bat everyone knew that Chennai had the upper hand as teams chasing at the D Y Patil stadium had struggled in the past. The Chennai batsmen started cautiously with Hayden’s continued struggle at the top of the order and with Vijay having to do the bulk of the scoring. But the real push for the Chennai innings came when Dhoni joined Raina at the middle as they both hammered the Mumbai bowlers to set up a competitive total. Mumbai Indians did not help themselves as they fluffed two chances both of Suresh Raina and the Chennai batsman made them pay with an unbeaten 57 of 35 balls.
When Mumbai began their chase in the pursuit of 169 to win the IPL III crown Doug Bollinger and Ravichandran Ashwin choked them for runs. Bollinger sent Dhawan early and Sachin along with Nayyar forged a decent partnership but the run rate was well within control for the CSK. Murali, Ashwin and Jakati were difficult to get away and the Chennai fielders put lots of pressure on the Mumbai batsmen. Even though Keiron Pollard’s late flourish gave some hopes to MI chances, Chennai Super Kings won the game comfortably by 22 runs in the end.
It was a brilliant display by the Chennai team which was brilliantly led by their cool captain Dhoni. Stephen Fleming the coach of Chennai Super Kings also deserves a special mention along with the other support staff. Chennai was helped by the arrival of the Aussie Doug Bollinger as his presence in the team provided the much needed potency to the bowling attack. Dhoni’s decision to open the bowling with Ashwin turned out to be the masterstroke as the youngster responded brilliantly to finish as the most economical bowler of the IPL III. Suresh Raina as usual was brilliant and the turnaround of Vijay from a correct player to a swashbuckling opener was amazing. Badri was consistent and Anirudha Srikkanth played couple of crucial knocks in the end. Murali and Morkel should not be forgotten as they both contributed handsomely towards the CSK progress throughout the tournament.
Dhoni was brilliant with the bat and was very shrewd with his captaincy. Even though Chennai was not the best team in IPL III but they were the most consistent team across the three IPL’s. They were for sure the most deserving champions in IPL.
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Virendar Sehwag ruled out of World T20
With just a week left for the start of World T20, India received a body blow when Virendar Sehwag was declared unfit due to a shoulder injury. This is indeed a huge setback for the Indians as Sehwag is a key member at the top of the order along with Ghambir. Sehwag had missed the 2009 version of the tournament too under similar circumstances.
Sehwag absence means that Murali Vijay gets a chance at the top of the order. Vijay has been in brilliant form for the Chennai Super Kings in the IPL III but I am not sure whether he would be able to replicate the same at the international level. Sehwag played all the games for the Dare Devils in the IPL III, so his shoulder injury is kind of a surprise to me. He couldn’t have suddenly picked up the injury, so he should have been having it for a while. This raises the question as to whether the franchises should be more careful with the Indian recruits when they have a major tournament coming up right after the IPL.
IPL is a long tournament and I would be happy if the Franchises kind of rotate the Indian team players over the course of the series. I don’t think it is necessary for the players to play the entire tournament. Especially when the Indian team is going to participate in a major tournament right after the IPL, the team management needs to be little bit careful. I know that an injury can be picked anytime as we have seen players getting injured on the morning of the match while training but with a hectic tournament like IPL the possibilities are more.
With number of games increased for the next year’s edition, the teams have to be more careful about player fatigue. Resting major players in the team for few games in between shouldn’t hurt I feel. Indian Players representing CSK (Chennai Super Kings) and Mumbai Indians hardly get any rest before they fly to WI and will have to immediately get going. India does not even have breaks between matches as both their games are back to back in the World T20.
There is just couple of games left for the conclusion of the IPL and I hope that none of our bowlers get injured in the process as Vinay Kumar, Praveen Kumar, Zaheer and Bajji will be playing over the next two days. Sehwag’s injury should be lesson to the team management and the Franchises as representing India is more important.
Sehwag’s absence was felt in last year’s world cup when the youngsters struggled against short pitched bowling. Whether Vijay will be able to step into the shoes of Sehwag is something we have to wait and see. Ghambir will have the added responsibility of guiding the youngster through in a major event like the World T20. Hope that the rest of the team can pull their weight and guide the Indian team to their second title.
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Ashoke Dinda was one of the few Indian pacers to impress in IPL III
The Indian team for the World T20 was announced couple of weeks back and there was hardly any surprises in the squad. Vinay Kumar got his maiden call up to the national team, a reward for his excellent performances in the domestic arena. Piyush Chawla too gets a call up ahead of Ojha and Mishra as the second specialist spinner in the squad. The rest of the team picked themselves.
The fact that Ashish Nehra makes it to the squad right after a prolonged injury break with hardly any practice proves how much the selectors are deprived of options. Praveen Kumar the other pace bowler in the squad has been pretty ordinary in the IPL after few good games at the start. Mithun and Tyagi have been pretty disappointing in the IPL and don’t look like T20 bowlers, similar to Ishant. Ishant himself has been pretty ordinary for the past couple of years.
So we are going into the world cup with two world class bowlers in Zaheer Khan and Harbajan Singh, one debutant, one bowler coming back from injury and one bowler making a comeback into the team. The selection pretty much emphasizes the problem we have with the bowling. So basically the selectors have done the best they can with the limited resources at their disposal.
But heartening thing is that after a pretty bad beginning by the Indian bowlers in the IPL III the second leg has showcased some good young bowlers. Ashoke Dinda of KKR, Sid Trivedi of Rajasthan Royals, Harmeet Singh of Deccan Chargers and Umesh Yadav of Delhi Daredevils have all impressed with their bowling at crucial junctures for their respective teams. The spinners also have been on song like Ravichandran Aswin, Pragyan Ojha and Jakati have been fantastic throughout the tournament.
So it seems we have some gas left in the tank after all. The problem is tapping the talent and giving them breaks at the right time. Bowlers like Mithun and Tyagi should not be ignored either. More than having talents at your disposal, knowing when and how to give them chances are important. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the bowlers and using them appropriately is something the selectors have to look into.
Even though the bowling looks thin for India in the World T20, I am happy that the selectors at least tried something different by giving a break to Vinay Kumar.
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Pankaj Singh from Rajasthan signed up by the Royal Challengers does not find a place in the Rajasthan Royals squad
IPL III is in its third week and with the race for semi-final spot heating up every game seems like a knockout for the teams. Even though IPL as a competition has been interesting this year, the length is still a worry. It already feels like too long and I am not sure how we will feel next year with 94 games.
But the length of the tournament aside the major concern for me this year has been the team composition of the franchises. The teams have basically ignored the local talents in the team in search of glory. I thought that IPL was going to be used as a ground for nurturing and finding young talents but as the years passed by the franchises have gotten greedy. For example Ranji champions Mumbai are unable to find players from the Mumbai team to represent their IPL franchise Mumbai Indians and Rajasthan is even worse as they don’t even have a single local player representing them.
Rajasthan has been the worst offender off all the IPL teams. The franchise is been completely made up with Rest of India and the mandatory foreign players but there is no sign of any home grown talent. This I feel is ridiculous and shows how much money hungry the franchises have become. Mumbai Indians play just 2 players out of 8 in their team from the Mumbai team and Deccan Chargers somehow manage to play just one or sometimes 2 local players in their team. How do they expect locals to relate with the team if the entire team is made up of players from different teams? I am not against young Indian players getting a chance but ignoring local players takes away the charm of a city based rivalry.
This is the exact reason the IPL teams will find less success in the champion’s league. If you take Rajasthan for example, except for the 4 weeks of IPL none of their team members play together in any form of cricket unless they represent India. Entire year they play against each other and they are suddenly thrown together and are expected to gel as a team immediately. They will be playing teams in the CLT20 who play an entire year together and are more cohesive units in comparison to the IPL teams. The locals who play for team Rajasthan in Ranji trophy might actually feel little hard done by this situation. Teams like them who compete in the plate championship of the Ranji trophy hardly get any visibility with the selectors and a global tournament like the IPL should be used to showcase their talents.
The other issue is the curious case of Deccan Chargers. Due to the political issues in Andhra currently the Deccan Chargers are playing at other venues which are currently proving to be a disadvantage for them. While rest of the teams has received excellent local support for their home games Deccan have struggled in that regard. Deccan have played both their games against Mumbai Indians in Mumbai which is ridiculous I feel as whom do you think the Mumbai crowd will support in a matchup between these two teams? I feel that Deccan have received a pretty raw deal with the fixtures.
Even though the tournament has been a success and is here to stay, the organizers need to look to correct the above glaring anomalies.
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Praveen Kumar has been one of the few successful Indian pace bowlers in IPL 3
When 39 year old Anil Kumble is the best bowler in a T20 competition then you have serious issues. This is exactly the story of IPL III this year where Anil Kumble and Muthaih Muralitharan have been the best bowlers by a mile in terms of economy and wickets tally respectively. Even though the overseas pacers have done reasonably well, the Indian pace bowling continues to suffer in the ongoing IPL.
Ishant has been ordinary and the less said about Irfan Pathan’s bowling exploits the better. RP Singh looks jaded and the other young bowlers like Tyagi and Sangwan lack consistency and pace to survive at the international level. So why is India struggling to unearth one good pace bowler to compliment Zaheer in the Indian team? Praveen Kumar has been bowling very well for Bangalore Royal Challengers and Zaheer has been in decent form for Mumbai Indians but that about does it for Indian pacers till date.
Chaminda Vaas who hasn’t played for Sri Lanka for a while has easily out bowled every Indian bowler in this tournament. That says something about the plight of Indian pace bowling in the past few months. So it seems like the selectors are in for a headache when they sit together to pick a team which will best represent India in the upcoming T20 WC in West Indies. Zaheer and Praveen probably will be automatic selections considering current form but who will claim the third seamer spot is anybody’s guess at the moment.
Sreesanth has been poor, Nehra injured and Irfan Pathan not in the 30 probable’s picked for the T20 WC. The selectors might look to play 2 spinner, 2 pacer attack to counter this situation with Mishra or Chawla joining Harbajan in the bowling line up or they could give a chance to a untested youngster such as the promising Mithun or Umesh Yadav who has bowled with pace and heart for Delhi Dare devils. I guess some investigation should be done as to why our bowlers regress after a strong start in their careers to avoid such situations in the future. Is it the money? Is it the fame? Is too much cricket affecting them? Someone has to find an answer to that question.
The team selection will be an interesting one, whatever the combination the selectors come up with. I am not hoping for any drastic changes or any major surprises in the squad so we have to be prepared for Nehra, Ishant to be back in the squad. We will see Indian bowlers leaking lots of runs yet again the onus clearly will be on the batsmen to perform. Bowling continues to be a problem and looking at the IPL performances there seems no light at the end of the tunnel.
Yousuf and Younis Banned for Life
Posted on: March 10, 2010
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Younis and Yousuf recieve life ban
Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) shocked everyone with their decision to ban the two most senior players for Pakistan in Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan today. It was known that after the inquiry commission reports the PCB might impose a ban on Rana Naved and Shoaib Malik for a period of one year, but this one was totally unexpected.
The reason given by the PCB for the ban of the two was that they caused infighting, which in turn damaged the team unity. Afridi and the Akmal brothers (Umar and Kamran) were slapped a fine of $24000-$35000 and have been kept on 6 month probation to mend their ways.
The life ban on Yousuf and Younis means that they will not be considered for any future games for Pakistan from here on in any format, but the PCB have allowed them to participate in their domestic tournaments, county cricket and in any such foreign leagues. Shoaib Malik and Rana Naved have been banned for a year from representing Pakistan in any form of international cricket starting now. It was not very clear as to what was the reason for the bans on Rana and Malik.
This now puts the selectors in a predicament as they have punished almost all of the senior members of the squad, and choosing a captain for the upcoming T20 World Cup is going to be a challenge. From the available pool of players – since Afridi has been placed on probation – Razzak might take the mantle for the T20 WC. He is the most senior member left in the Pakistan squad, and he is almost certain to represent them in the 20 over format.
The captain for the ODI’s and Tests will leave the selectors pulling their hair out. Whether they will name Afridi as the captain for all three formats is something to wait and watch. The inquiry commission has certainly left the Pakistani cricket in further turmoil, and it will take a lot of planning by the PCB to get the team on track.
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India's Fielding was a concern to the Indian captain in spite of a comfortable win
In the post-match presentation after India beat Sri Lanka convincingly, Mahendra Singh Dhoni said that it was “Fishy” the way both the teams fielded in the second T20 game at Mohali.
“I have never seen a team dropping so many catches. But there was something funny going around, something fishy. Sri Lanka also missed so many run-outs. We have to improve our bowling, apart from fielding. Not only in T20s, but also in ODIs,” Dhoni had said after the Mohali tie.
He said that top sides don’t make so many mistakes in the same game and he felt something was not right.
This comment was made as both teams fielded awfully in the game as India dropped as many as 6 catches and Sri Lanka missed a bunch of run outs adding to couple of catches they dropped as well.
Even though Dhoni’s statement above might have been an innocuous one, I hope that it does not stir up any controversies. Dhoni later said that it might have to be something with the ground or lights which may have caused such appalling fielding by both the teams, but his choice of words were really interesting. Hopefully, this won’t cause more reading between the lines and turn this into another match-fixing saga.
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Indian team became the number one test side after defeating Sri Lanka 2-0
India recently have been crowned as the number 1 test team in the world in the latest ICC rankings after their impressive 2-0 win against the Sri Lankans earlier last week. Even though I am really proud of the achievement I am also little bit frustrated by the fact that the Indian team isn’t playing any test cricket till October of 2010 after their short series against Bangladesh earlier next year. BCCI have canceled the test series against the South Africans which was supposed to take place in the month of February next year to accommodate the IPL.
It’s really baffling considering that India will still be playing the ODI series. Sachin Tendulkar has already expressed his displeasure over this situation. The Indian team has worked really hard over the past 18 months to achieve something which has been a dream for every Indian fan but it’s unfortunate that they don’t have an opportunity to maintain their position. While all the other nations have their itinerary packed with test matches throughout the year, India will be playing a bunch of ODI’s and T20 games.
So after the ODI series against the proteas, India will be playing the IPL at home followed by the T20 WC in West Indies, ODI series against the Aussies and then will be playing the champions league later the same year before they host the Black Caps for a full series. I would have been happier if the BCCI had canceled the ODI series against the South Africans and just played the three test series as that would have given an opportunity for India to widen their lead over the second placed team in the rankings if they had won the series. Unfortunately that will not be the case for Dhoni and his men at the moment.
BCCI has been rightly criticized in the media for their decision to cancel the test series to accommodate the IPL. The criticism seems to have worked though as suddenly the BCCI have discovered the necessity for India to play more test matches as they have requested both Australia and South Africa to consider a revision in the schedule to reduce the ODI games for couple of test matches. Even though it does seem like a ploy to clear their name in the media and the bad press they have been receiving for the past few days, I am at least happy that they are trying something. This is an excellent opportunity for the BCCI to popularize test cricket in India as we are now the number 1 team in the world.
Motera wicket was disappointing
Posted on: December 1, 2009
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The India-Sri Lanka series touted as the race to number one rankings had a disappointing start with the first test match in Motera ending in a dull draw. The test match in Ahmadabad is all that is wrong with Indian cricket. When there have been calls to save the oldest form of the game around the world, BCCI have dished out boredom to drive the fans away from the grounds. Its seems like BCCI is only worried about the money they can make out of sponsorships and IPL and not a bit bothered about the state of pitches in India.
Sambit Bal last year wrote an article on cricinfo blasting Pakistani pitches after the Karachi game but the pitches in India are not that far behind. Sambit’s intentions may have been good by singling out pitches in Pakistan was not the right way to go. Reading the recent article by Dileep Premachandran, it seems like there is not much of a difference between the pitches in Pakistan and India. India has one of the worst percentages of results when compared to other cricketing nations.
According to the article, India has hosted 24 games in the past 60 months out of which 11 have been draws. This is a pathetic statistic for a team who is trying to become the best side in the world. With ever increasing T20 leagues in India I guess the BCCI have to take more interest in improving the quality of test cricket in India. I don’t think that anything of that sort has been even tried yet by the board. As Sourav Ganguly rightly mentioned in his column, even though Rahul Dravid and Mahela scored those brilliant hundreds the Motera pitch was a real disappointment.
No one wants to watch a game where the bowlers are just mere participants with not effect whatsoever and the batsmen are running the show. The unfortunate part is that the grounds men in India are in so much pressure to make matches last for 5 days for the BCCI to make money out of TV rights. Already we have seen paltry crowds for test matches in India and with these sorts of pitches ardent lovers of the format like me will also be driven out of the stadiums in the future.
Test cricket is still the premium form of cricket around the world and efforts should be taken to improve the quality of pitches around the world. The ICCI should crack down heavily on boards that encourage pitches like Motera for International fixtures. Kanpur (Venue for the second game which concluded last week) test was heading the same direction as Motera after the first day’s play but was saved by the result.
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MPL (Mumbai Premier League) is the latest addition to the ever growing T20 leagues in India. This one is being launched by the Mumbai cricket association (MCA) to cash in on the popularity of the T20 format and the success of IPL. The worst part is that this league is supposed to follow the IPL next year and Sachin Tendulkar is expected to play in this league. Since this league is organized by the MCA even Rohit and Zaheer would be expected to play in the league as well.
We already have IPL, CLT20 and a corporate T20 league which hogs our calendar and most of the Indian national cricketers play in them. We all know what excessive cricket can do to a player … Ishant is a fine example. We are just a year and a half away from the 2011 WC and India does not even have a settled pool of players decided yet.
If every other state decides to have such a league then the players would not have time to play for the country. India is trying to become the best side in the world and unfortunately the biggest hindrance for that is coming from the home board. It seems like BCCI does not care how the team performs; instead they are more worried about the players being available for the IPL.
It seems very funny when the players complain about overdose of cricket as they are the ones signing up to play in the various leagues around the world. Including the Australian T20 league, which is already in place, there are going to be at least three leagues every year where international players will be participating apart from the International games which absolutely doesn’t leave them with any rest.
If the Indian team aspires to be the best in the world, the players have to stop appearing in every league they are invited to play in. The players have to pick and choose the leagues they would be representing so that they are fit and available when the National team requires them. MCA has set yet another bad precedent in India and I hope that the rest of the state boards don’t follow suit.
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