Pakistan 161 all out

Nuff said.

Read the fineprint

Sides outside the top six places in the LG ICC ODI Championship table on 1 April 2006 have to play in the preliminary round of the ICC Champions Trophy, with the top two sides in those qualifying matches earning the right to play in the second round of the tournament. India, as hosts, will automatically qualify for the second stage even if they are outside the top six on 1 April. If that happens, then the sixth-placed side in the table will take part in the preliminary round.

Taken verbatim from here.

Bummer

Just found out that Flintoff will miss at least part of the series against India because his wife’s expecting a kid around March 10th.  Here’s to hoping that it’s no more than one Test match.  The series wouldn’t be the same without him.

Inzy’s already making excuses

Read about it here.  Akhtar and Afridi are no greater a loss to Pakistan than Sehwag and Harbhajan are to India.  Strangely, Inzy’s tone reeks of resigned defeat.  That’s not good from the Pakistan point of view.  He’s lacking the fervor to win, and beating India’s going to be all the more difficult now.

This gives me another reason to call for him to be axed from the captaincy.  With due respect to his talent for hitting a ball, he’s, how do I put it mildly…cerebrally challenged (read: dumbass — okay, perhaps that’s too harsh).  It has been abundantly clear to me for quite some time now (from their last tour to India) that he doesn’t have the tactical nous to captain an international side.  He’s defensive on the field to a rule, and knows no other way of playing.  His calls about field placings, bowling changes and just about everything else have been baffling, and while Osman Samiuddin may think they bordered on masterstrokes (come on Osman, really), it was been quite lucid to me that they bordered on retardation.  If any further proof of his ineptness was needed, his comments after being given out obstructing the field should more than suffice.

What’s more, Inzy doesn’t come across as a natural leader either.  Sourav Ganguly, another cerebrally-challenged skipper, was at least capable of motivating and leading his side.  Especially when Pakistan has a good potential replacement in Younis Khan, I fail to see why nobody’s ringing the changes.  Is it because they don’t want to humiliate a Pakistani great by axing his captaincy?  Surely, if he could be dropped from the team altogether after one poor series (World Cup 2003), this can be no worse.  If Pakistan wants to have a realistic shot at the next World Cup, Inzy needs to be removed from the helm.  Plain and simple.

Australian rotation policy brouhaha

A placard at one of the recent VB series games read:

My girlfriend’s a fan of the rotation policy.

Came across this on Will’s excellent The Corridor of Uncertainty blog and found it so funny that it had to be added to my collection of qutoes.

Deja vu?

India is doing quite well in the U-19 World Cup and is now expected to face Australia in the final. They beat West Indies to make it to the semi-final. And it seems they’re riddled with the same problems as their senior countrymen. As the senior team did in the first ODI against Pakistan, the junior team collapsed after a terrific start (209-1 in the 35th over) to end up with 284-9 at the end of 50. They’re all having problems capitalizing on a good start.

India and Australia have been in really good form in the tournament (the only two undefeated teams so far) and are the favorites to make it to the final. Any wagers on this junior version shaping out to be much like the senior World Cup 2003?

Same old attitude problem

Ind v Pak
1st ODI
Lunch break

India was looking good to reach a 350+ score until the 41st over, and then, as always, they screwed it up. It was the same old problem resurfacing under the Chappell/Dravid era. Tendulkar started the rot by slowing down his scoring rate as he got closer to his hundred, even though the situation demanded for fast runs. There has been a lot of undeserved criticism aimed at Tendulkar the last few days, but now that there’s truly something that he should be criticized for, he won’t be. Everybody will laud his “brilliant” (a term used for most of his centuries) century, overlooking that his tactics towards the end prevented India from getting a higher score. This point will be even more lost if India win this game, which I think is unlikely. 330 is the new 300 considering the new ODI rules — supersubs and powerplays. Add to that the nature of the pitch and India’s bowling attack and 330 just seems like a par score.

There’s been a lot of talk about Tendulkar putting the team before the self, and this has conclusively shown that that’s just a bunch of hogwash. And Tendulkar is not the only one here. The subcontinent is littered with such examples. There are only a few choice exceptions, and most of them are the young breed. India will never be the best ODI team in the world with such attitude. I would have thought that Chappell would have looked to it that such things don’t happen. Either he’s failed to do that, or Tendulkar’s been deemed above the law. We’ll have to wait and se e if this gets rectified.

What has also been clear now, and for quite some time, is that Kaif can’t slog. Agarkar or Zaheer are better bets to get big hits in towards the end of an innings. Does the Indian team management not realize this? Or they just wanted to show their respect to Kaif? Kaif usually has to come out after the 40th over of the innings, which means he needs to make fast runs. Instead, he just runs fast…usually, singles. On the rare occasion that Kaif is needed before the 40th over, it usually means that the team’s in some sort of trouble. There might be some juice in the wicket or something, and that means Kaif is usually as ineffective as the ones before him. In fact, in the last four years, there have been only two innings (Natwest final in 2002 and Champions Trophy later that year) where he’s come out and rescued the Indian batting. This is by no means a criticism of his batting. In fact, I think he’ll do quite well in Tests (or up the order in ODIs). But his style of batting is not suited for what’s usually required when he comes out to bat.

So, the question is who should replace him. I think Suresh Raina is the front-runner for that position. He’s definitely a better fielder (or at least just as good), and from what little I’ve seen of his batting, it looks like he can score fast or temper his innings, as the situation demands. This will be the first step towards find a lower-middle order that rivals the Aussie line-up of Symonds, Clarke and Hussey.
I’m tired of hearing that Murali Kartik is a “handy batsman” (damn you Lakshman Shivaramakrishnan). He’s as handy as a hammer is to fix the intermittent network connection problem that I’m experiencing on my laptop right now. He plain sucks. I’ve never seen him do anything with the bat. He can barely hold a bat. And I’m not a fan of his bowling either. Yes, you know what I’m suggesting….find someone better, or drop him from the team.

Anyway, now we’ll have to see how India bowls. They’ll have to bowl exceptionally well to prevent Pakistan from chasing this total.

Spare a thought for my kind

And what kind is that, you ask? I speak for the cricket fandom in the US. We’ve come to terms with staying up odd hours to watch streaming pixels of dubious quality (or worse, follow text-based commentary on Cricinfo) and going to work all bleary-eyed the following day. No, we’re fine that. Just a test of our fervor for the game, we say. What irks me though, is how we get singled out time and again as potential targets to be looted. If you’ve ever been to Willow TV, you know what I am talking about: they charge US residents higher for watching cricket than the rest of the world. Why is that? And this is not a sole instance of the case. The 2005 Ashes DVD set (which I recently bought) is available for about £15, but the NTSC version (for N. America) comes in at US$40. There are similar instances of cricket magazines and what not.

So, do spare a thought for my kind. Being a cricket follower is an expensive hobby in the States.