Exceptional Overseas Performance

South Africa seems to be the exception to the rule.They drew with Pakistan in the UAE and won in New Zealand.It will be good if England fight to draw the series.Otherwise,English victory against any team in England will not really advance their reputation.Just as England are discovering that cricket is little different outside the UK, Afghanistan are also discovering that t20 and ODIs are different sport.The Netherlands have been playing ODIs for much longer and it will be some time before Afghanistan can be considered as a regular ODI side.

Overseas Win

The travails of English and Indian cricketers in overseas tours makes the South African victory in Newzealand a creditable one.While following the Test Match at the Basin reserve,on the last day, the radio sport commentary team and their impassioned description highlighted why the TV commentary cannot match up.The cricket follower is wiser as he gets a more informed view.The summariser is privileged ex cricketer and gives his view as if talking to the uninitiated not one expert talking to other expert.
Kane Williamson set up a fighting draw and South Africa should have declared earlier and keeping him company for much of the way was Kruger van Wyk, a blue blooded South African.Gayle cannot be accused of being the only mercenary cricketer.

The winner comes second.

Five thousand Englishmen and women are in Sri Lanka for the test series.Test Matches appear to be alive in the UK at least.And the smiling and jumping West Indies supporters at Gros Islet on.Friday also are good tidings for the game.So is Bangladesh's spirited Asia Cup Campaign where the winner actually came second.
The t20 qualifier established Afghanistan as an up and coming t20 team.The Associates are playing cricket of high quality and popularity is.on the rise.The Afghans have aem with no expats and soon cricket will be a majot sport itrhete.r. sport

No Free Lunch

If he Indian cricketers thought Sr Lanka will toil to get them through to the Asia Cup Finals, they were befooling themselves.They simply failed to realise that as per the playing condition,the Bangladesh match was a must win because Bangladesh were playing the last match and they merely needed to win.So India inspite of defeating Pakistan for which the media went gaga,find themslves knocked out after having beaten both Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
The obsession of the media and fans with Pakistan needs to be put into perspective.An India Pakistan match up should be given just the mileage it deserves.Pakistan has been doing well in Tests but are struggling in ODIs under Misbah and it would be in fitness of things if Bangladesh win the Asia Cup.

Waiting for the 50th ODI 50

Now that Tendulkar has reached his hundredth international hundred,albeit in a match which was more about young Bangladeshis batting their way to glory, the Indian media more than its fan can rest easy.The dedicated cricket follower can heave a sigh of relief.The hectic cricket across so many continents means that few matches register for long.However Bangladesh defeating India coincided with Sachin's hundredth Hundred and we will cherish the match.From pure cricketing point of view it has thrown the Asia Cup wide open.Any of the three teams can join Pakistan for the finals.

However, there is a milestone Sachin's 50th ODI hundred to look forward to.It will be the beginning of a fresh count, ten more,may be twenty, who knows what the count will be by the time Sachin has played his last match.It will be really replicate the record for oldest ODI player.Maharaj Singh was 72 and Governor of Bombay,it will be fitting if Sachin is a governor of an I.ndian state when he goes past this record.

Sachin in a Raj Bhavan will be a greater thing than a Bharat Ratna.

Regional Carribean Cricket and Asia Cup

The two regional matches between T&T and Jamaica and Guyana and Barbados finished mid way through the last day.The West Indies batting will continue to be in an unsettled position as the best bet yet appears to be Chanderpaul.However with the changing nature of wickets the spinners will be more than handful for the Australians.

Gautam Gambhir has been an India regular for some time now but has played many more List A and First class matches in proportion to ODIs and Tests.This is a good trait.One that is evident in Ganguly's penchant to lead Bengal quite some time after having retired from international cricket.Playing for Bengal when he could easily do cushy commentary is what marks out genuine cricket lovers from only the players.

Into Hey nonny, nonny. Into Hey Nonny,Nonny

"Converting all your sounds of woe
Into. Hey nonny, nonny."
That's how "Much Ado About Nothing" ends and we are perhaps in a similar situation when a troubled tour to Australia has been converted into a comedy, with Kohli and Raina playing deftly at Hobart.so much so that the eventual failure of India to make it to the finals was hardly noticed.Viewers have moved on to Live election Coverage which will be followed by Holi and the Asia Cup.

Which will mean that for sometime now the spectre of away matches does not loom on the horizon.India can rebuild and even though it might be some time before India could push to the No.1status in Tests,the future will depend on how good we are at home.That was what launched decent performance abroad.If India is not good at home,they can hardly be good overseas.For that to happen our spinners have to be good, keeping has to be good (Remember Mongia keeping to Kumble) and of course batting has to be good.

So with Asia Cup and one off ODI in South Africa notwithstanding, it is the English visit that we must look forward to.Redemption must start from there.

Joy in Hobart

Irrespective of the qualification for the CB Series Final, the win with a Bonus point has served the purpose that sport ultimately is all about.The participants and those watching should be filled with joy.Sri Lanka batted well but clearly Kohli and Raina were enjoying their game.This was the element missing in Australia earlier.Belief in oneself and a pivot of the team are necessary.In Kohli India has found that crucial playmaker.

Joy in Hobart

Irrespective of the qualification for the CB Series Final, the win with a Bonus point has served the purpose that sport ultimately is all about.The participants and those watching should be filled with joy.Sri Lanka batted well but clearly Kohli and Raina were enjoying their game.This was the element missing in Australia earlier.Belief in oneself and a pivot of the team are necessary.In Kohli India has found that crucial playmaker.

Et tu Brute! Done in the ODIs as well!

Something must be rotten in the BCCI world,as the World Champion team has been playing sub par cricket in CB Series and have quickly managed to get itself eliminated.England rallied from a 3-0 whitewash to win the ODI series in the UAE, however Indians have gone from one defeat to another with such aplomb that it is difficult to appreciate that this indeed is the World Cup winning team.Only Yuvraj singh is missing from the Team that won the World Cup and the team is playing poor cricket all round.

Several myths appear to have gone bust.One is something that is not borne by sustained set of convincing data about Sehwag being a good one day opening batsman,his 219 notwithstanding.Even at the World Cup, his ordinariness was covered by Gambhir.He may be scoring at a quicker pace but Saurabh Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar outpace him by miles in matter of partnerships and winning matches.Another is that the young players are good enough to carry on on their own in ODIs.They will do well at home but struggle against good teams on sporting surfaces.Only Kohli looks to be a genuine prospect and settles one middle order slot for sometime.Sehwag has lost the plot by thinking that natural game and genius that he possesses is siuted to ODIs.He is best suited for tests.It will not be for the first time that he will lose his Test place because of continued failure in ODIs.

Ranji Trophy is played in the best season in this country for outdoors.BCCI can make it a spectacle.Imagine a Bengal vs railways Match in Central delhi with a bengali Food Festival for four days.Ticket Prices could include a buffet.there could be some music as well.Two of the days could be weekends.It is not as desperate as it sounds.
Television does not necessarily make an event a success.India vs France was low quality hockey with medium or low TRP but 15000 people in the stadium madefor a festival atmosphere.Cricket should learn.With so many children playing Tennis and Football and following various leagues around Europe, it is matter of time that cricket will face competition to generate eyeballs.

The generation now in their forties have all been weaned on diet of well attended domestic matches and ALL India Radio providing them ball by ball coverage.This generation will retire in over a decade but live for at least three decades thereafter.several of them will be well healed pensioners.Cricket could build on this generation like in England.The grand children they take to the matches Tests and Domestic would make for the future generation of cricketers.

Certainly better than the Team of 1983 in ODIs

The current Indian Team is the ODI World Champion.The Indian Team has had troubled times in tests.But in ODIs, they are still rather good.They first defeated the west Indies and then They lost fighting to England, pummeled them 5-0 and then easily beat the West Indies.And now they have after dropping a game to the No.1 ranked side, defeated the World Cup runners up and the World No.1 back to back in tough matches.The same cannot be said of Kapil's team which was thrashed so badly by the West Indies in ODIs that Kapil was no longer the captain when India won the World Championship in Australia in 1985.
It must be said of KapilDev and his core team that they remained a competitive Test Team and in 1986 won a series in England 2-0 in 1986.That is the biggest margin by which an Indian team has won a Test series away outside of Bangladesh.They had won 3-1 against Newzealand in 1968 but there was one loss, though the margin remains the same.
Gambhir,Kohli, Ashwin and Yadav can be the core of the team which can win by a bigger margin abroad and achieve the first Test series win in Australia and South Africa.India can build a team which can be good across the two formats like the Australians till recently.

Ranji Final epitomises the Indian Test scenario

For the past several months, the Indian Cricket team does not seem to be doing anything right in Test matches overseas.Cricket followers younger than fifty are trying to remember any similar bad patch overseas.The 3-0, defeat in England was followed by a 2-1 defeat in the West Indies, so it has been better for last 40 years or so.And here the Ranji Final won on the basis of first innings offers the epitome of the situation.

Tamil nadu was packed with recent India discards.Vijay,Mukund,Badrinath and Karthik besides Balaji.They missed Ashwin but they still were a stronger batting side playing on home surface.They lost the toss and lost the plot.That has been happening to India so often, a big partnership and they fall back.A batting team so strong collapsed for 295.How often has this happened on the Tours by India recently.And when Ganguly had led his team to Australia they were not fazed by 600 runs at Adelaide and went on to win a match.When Gavaskar led his team in 1980-81,they lost the first test but came back to draw the second test and win the third when Australia needed just around 150 runs to win the match.Those teams were not dominating World beaters of Australia from 1996-2009 or the West Indies in late seventies and early eighties.However, they were not the ones to be cowed down.And no one dared to talk down to either Gavaskar or Ganguly in their playing days.

Inspite of a commanding lead and no realistic chance of losing, rajasthan did not enforce the follow on.If India has not been going for wins,We know where the attitude comes from.There is a case for a six or seven day Ranji Final and no trophy on first innings lead.Rajasthan's victory though creditible is diminished by the lack of desire to win outright.Cricket matches are played to be won.To fight and draw is all right.To settle for a draw with more than a day's play remaining and 326 runs lead shows disrespect to the game.No wonder very few people turned up for the match.Just two finals back in 2010, Mysore had a full house for a Ranji Final.I hope Akash Chopra will write a book on this next.

The Indian batting colllapses so easily facing big totals that one looks back longingly to the days when Gavaskar could bat for a day for close to hundred and on benign pitches nobody ever got him out cheaply. Throughout the seventies and eighties India used the grinding ability to draw matches at Home.Then came Kumble and the rest is history.Losing at home became a rarity.From there they went on to build a team that could fight well overseas.

We have come back many steps and the next two years will be a time when India can rebuild at home.What India can do is to send a strong India A side whenever Visitors come to play Pakistan in the UAE and play a couple of build up matches..They can at least be familiar with conditions similar to home.

The scenario as it unfolds,Indfia has a bigger hole in bowling to fill after Kumble and Harbhajan than the batting.Any four of Raina, Rohit Sharma, Kohli, Pujara, Rahane can make up for the batsmen retiring but Bowling?Only Ashwin among the spinners took wickets in the Indian winter amongst spinners in first class cricket and he hardly bowled to the flat track bullies.We need to regroup and quickly as October comes with little first class cricket in between.Give our spinners "Turners", I say and hope for the Best.

From the BBC in London the TMS on the smartphone

Even as the World's second best team is fighting back at Dubai I have been able to listen to TMS on Five Live Sports Extra on my smart phone.This is the first time in more than thirty five years of following cricket on the radio that I have been able to listen to TMS for an overseas match.Even when TMS was available on the World Service till the eighties overseas Tests were not broadcast on the World Service, though snatches could be heard on the Sports Round Up and Saturday Special which later transformed itself into Sportsworld.
There are rights restriction for International IP addresses on Sports Extra Website.Maybe the rightholders will realise that there is a market out there using phone applications and using internet radio to by pass these restrictions and block these streams.May be it would be a better idea for the BBC to acquire international rights and take their English into what will soon be the largest English speaking community in the World.They will not be able to compete with the American TV and Movies but to a large population on the move in South Asia and further who follow English Football and Cricket, English is the natural language to follow in and what better medium than the BBC.
The English Language as spoken and evolving in the UK will then be in a closer relationship with the "Coommonwealth",whose common wealth it has really become.It will also pave the way for a post colonial impact in a way which would be at once new and unconventional.

The Best Indian Team to visit Australia

Ever since the miserable condition that this Indian team has landed itself in 2011-12 and particularly against a side which was playing at par with New Zealand little over two weeks back, I have been wondering which was the best Indian team to have toured Australia and for that matter the West Indies.I will go into a detailed analysis later on.However the Indian team to tour Australia in 1977-78 appears to be the best indian side ever to tour Australia.Forget the loss and also the fact that this team was playing a side wekened by packer exodus.Forget also that a team comprising the bulk lost to Pakistan later that year, managed to lose all its World Cup engagements and also lose 1-0 to England before going on to defeat Australia at home.The only competition this side has is with the 1980-81 tourists.This was the series with full strength Australia and India drew the series by bowling out Australia for 83 at the MCG.

The difference between the two teams was simply of selection or India could have had a 5-0 result in 1978.We lost three close matches, the decider on the sixth day. India refused to play ghavri and Madan Lal together though between them they took 20 wickets.Doshi and Shiv Lal Yadav in a team which had Ghavri bowling with Kapil and Patil as the fifth bowler perhaps the best team ever.

Can it get better than this?

A bowling line up comprising of Russel,Roach,Rampaul,Sammy and Sunil Narine with back up from Marlon Samuels.On paper, this looks like the best bowling combination in ODIs.The indian team not having Tendulkar will be in for a good contest.Though India nearly lost a Test,they were clearly favourites in that series.I am not quite sure for this one.
Earlier today, my driver asked when the next match was.I only knew about the Brisbane Test and not about the Cuttack ODI.We were in class I in 1971.The first one day match between two tests had taken place some time during the Winter Break.None of us knew anything about it though there were a few who had heard about the Test series in Australia.One day Cricket keeps coming in and out of consciousness while Test matches remain.1971 turned out to be a glorious year for India in Tests though it was only from the winter vacation of 1972-73,that I started following Test Cricket ball by ball.

Test Matches still cannot be written off

The exciting "Draw" in the Mumbai test where till the penultimate ball all four results were possible,has done a great deal of good for Test Matches.And has again established that Mumbai is the main cricketing centre which their ranji record establishes.Delhi is catching up and the attendance for the first and third tests do not give any cause for worry.

As regards the poor attendance at Kolkata, Mudar Patherya has done an excellent analysis on Cricinfo and his arguments can be supplemented by the fact that till 1982, only New ZeaLand was a weak side and the matches against them presented India an opportunity to win and therefore the matches were well attended.Now we beat most teams at home regularly and draw a considerable amount of Tests, therefore Test Cricket while not out of a knowledgeable fan's radar is not on casual cricket follower's agenda.

However those who can distinguish Doug Bracewell from John Bracewell and remember Floyd Reifer, test Cricket will always remin the real thing.

Get the Distraction out of the way

Media and fans have made a big issue of tendulkar's 100th Hundred.I wonder why the hoopla was missing when Tendulkar became the first player to have scored fifty hundreds.However it would be a great idea if Tendulkar plays all the five ODIs against the West Indies and gets 50 ODI hundreds and 100th 100 as well before the Boxing day Test at the MCG lest the campaign for a first series win in Australia is dwarfed by the 100th 100.Now that every run Tendulkar makes is the first such run made in that format in the history of mankind,We might as well celebrate Tendulkar's last few years in International Cricket and I am sure that will include the world Cup Down under.

Test Matches on Television

Two relatively sparsely populated countries have played a gripping Two test series.One that was followed by cricket followers round the world.SABC 3 was the host boadcaster and channels around the world were showing it.The Time difference was such that at least a session and a half could be viewed in India in the evenings.Which of course has been the reason that I have followed Cummins and Philander more than Yadav and Ashwin ,the local debutants this Indian Winter.And this gives me hope for the future of Test Cricket.Inspite of the naysayers and the dwindling Test audiences, test Cricket will never die.It makes so much of low cost programming available to a not very committed audience worldwide that it offers tremondous flexibility.

One can get up in the morning to a test match in New Zealand or Australia and watch for sometime and come back to the match only the next morning, having kept up with basic details on the Net/news.It would be night time in India for the matches in the West Indies and evenings for those in UK/South Africa .The timings in different zones would vary but what is unique is that the Test Match in one's own country would be the least watched on working days except when school children and school teachers return usually after the Tea session.Hence Test Match of high quality or on certain days of any quality would have a passing interest.To that extent a low turn out is not a worry.Since immediate result is not very relevant spending whole days in front of the Television set is not required.
Moreover,Test matches can be dovetailed with international holidays and in case of India with domestic holidays.Consider a holiday in the hills of Himachal for a week for a thousand families in summer for a Test Match involving India and a top contestant outside the FTP.Test Matches can therefore retain a niche.After all inspite of Chetan Bhagat,Amitabh Ghose is also read.Some readers read both.So with Test Matches and the audience.

Akashvani from Trinidad

Last few years I have rediscovered the Radio.However unlike the sturdy two band or three band radio of old, the radio now is available to me on my mobile phone and my desk Top PC.The range and scope of Radio has greatly improved.I can listen to internet radio streams of various Radio stations.I have now for several years followed Grand stand Commentary of Cricket Matchesfrom Australia's ABC radio, the Test Match special of the BBC on Five live cricket extra for all of England's home matches,lot of New Zealand cricket on Talk Sport and incredibly listened to the last time South Africa played in Pakistan on radio Pakistan.However, Akashvani as in All India Radio remains largely internet unfriendly and therefore though I remember Sushil Doshi and Anant Setalvad who brought the 1979-80 India-Australia live to millions of Indian homes, I hardly remember many Indian commentators of present day.Brian Waddle from New Zealand, Jonathan Agnew from England,Fazeer Mohammed from Trinidad,Neil Manthorp from South Africa, Glenn Mitchell and Jim Maxwell from Australia are more a part of my consciousness.

And beyond cricket there is Five Live's coverage of Wimbledon and extensive news and views.Listening to radio commentary conects you to the place the way TV commentary does not these days.Television commentators are hardly local and Walsh in South Africa or Tony Greig in a sri lanka Pakistan series stick out like aliens on earth.The SABC commentators including Aslam Khota and Natalie Germanos speak with enthusiasm and partisan feeling but are good to the ear especially playing in the background.
The mobile phone has brought back Indian Radio stations to our consciousness including the much maligned All India Radio.The absence of FM radio on Blackberry made me chose Sony Ericsson's Experia Arc and through the Android Market, I downloaded Tune in Radio app.Now I can follow SABC 200fm on the move and listen to Indian music from New Zealand and yes a radio station called Akashvani from Trinidad.
Radio experience has widened and the serendiptous find of a cricket match being covered in Tamil and Gujarati on Short wave radio has been replaced by joys of stumbling on new radio stations on the net.And the reception is much better.

An Exaggerated Fear

Harsha Bhogale read Chemical Engineering followed by a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM(Ahmedabad) and is a gifted writer.He has in a recent article on the strength of a poor attendance at Eden Gardens, bemoaned the lack of interest in Tests.He recalls old times to which one can add the full house gathered in January 1977 to watch England wrap up a match by scoring 16 runs required to win.Much as these are heartwarming instances, one needs to analyse the situation in context.In those days a Hindu vs Stephen's match had up to 20,000 spectators watching.Durand, DCM and Beighton Cup matches in football and Hockey were played to packed houses.A full house for a Test was therefore in keeping with sporting activity of a nation trying to build itself into a modern nation state.
That project is complete and Indians today aspire to various kind of options.A straight case study that analysts like Harsha Bhogale may like to anaalyse with all their IIM expertise is that in 1976, CAB had a few tickets for Bihar Cricket Association and dozens of lucky ticket holders from Jamshedpur,Patna and Ranchi went to Calcutta to watch Tests.Today Bihar with its teeming millions are disenfranchised from First Class Cricket.And while Dhoni may be an icon in Jharkhand, nobody in contemporary Bihar identifies with Saurav Tiwary, even though he is from Bihar and plays for Jharkhand only because Bihar is dienfranchised.But Bihar has found ways to stardom as the three KBC crorepatis can testify.
Even ODIs may not get the kind of attendance seen earlier.More active life, hectic school and coaching schedule, semesters, professional courses have opened avenues for the middle class and left them with less time for Cricket in general and Tests in particular.But Harsha need not despair as the Gangothri Glades Ranji Final in 2010 in Mysore displayed that given the occaison and the weather there can be a full house for a cricket match.It is nothing to despair and Harsha sounds to be making a case for bail out.It is certainly not in terminal decline and Harsha is mistaken about Green Park.Enough support has been there so far and also at New Delhi.However if Test Cricket is really dying may be nothing will help.
But Cricinfo and online streams keep getting audience for Tests as well.Perhaps the news about the decline of Test Matches are greatly exaggerated.