Killing Test cricket

Tests like the first one between India & SL in Ahmedabad has the potential to kill test cricket. The wickets should be more evenly balanced between the bat & ball. 5 days of cricket & only 19 wickets ? Its 19 wickets as in the first innings our heros probably did not apply themselves very well. Would it have been different if India on batting first had got a score like SL did? Maybe so.

We need Shewag to make a good contribution for our team to do well. A 150+ score from him would have boosted the total & the runs itself would have come at a fair clip, thereby saving some time. He did not do very well in the ODI's against Aus or in this test match. In the second innings of this match he got 3 chances & yest failed to capitalize. That was disappointing. He is the guy I like watching the most in our team & I hope he does well in the remaining tests of this series.

The ahmedabad Debacle

I write this after the second days play of the India vs SA test at Ahmedabad. My mood has been bad the last 2 days and our cricket performance has made its contribution to it. India's old frailty against the moving ball and raw pace has been exposed. Irrespective of whether its the 1980's, 90' or now this is in our genes.

There was a small indication of things to come in the Chennai test. SA had phases in Chennai where both their batsmen and their bowlers had it going for them. There were 2 spells one each fron Ntini and another from Stein where they picked up a wickets or alt least tested our batsmen. For India it was just one batsman's performance that overshadowed every thing else. It then (in Chennai) made one think of how our top order would fare if Stein were to reproduce his spell to our top order guys in Ahmedabad that he did to the later order in Chennai. We know the answers now.
What would be the chance of the match finishing on the 3rd day, pretty good I think. Being the forever hopeful cricket fan, I would like to think that a miracle would get us out of the woods.

A second three hundred & hopefully many more

Virendra Shewag has proved himself yet again in emphatic fashion. He is not somebody who should ever be dropped from the test side. He should be treated on par with Tendulkar in Test cricket. This is for his consistency & ability to score quickly at the top. Scoring quickly has been a trend in Test Cricket for the last 9-10 yrs, since the advent of Gilchrist on the scene. Shewag is the Indian representative of this quick scorers brigade. No cricket team can afford to have two plodders at the top of the innings. In fact, these days no team has two plodders at the top.

I am probably willing to bet that whenever Shewag chooses to retire, he will have a test batting average that will be among the best of this generation. Among the current crop Ponting will probably have the best & I feel Shewag will better this at retirement. He is going to leave Tendulkar & Dravid behind.

With his ability to score big there is a good probability that SHewag will score a third 300 in test cricket.

Among all the records of his that got mentioned on TV & other media the one that did not get much focus, was that his last 10 hundreds have been 150 + scores. Check out Hanging in there after a hundred

Vengsarkar vs Powar

It looks like the board is annoyed with Vengsarkar or is it Vengsarkar thats annoyed with the board ? Vengsarkar wants to travel abroad for Indias matches (so that he can butt in team selections, make comments and get the captain to resign) & he also wants to write columns but the board wants none of it. U would have thought that chief selector & a board president being from the same state vould have worked better together.

He was a great batsman but is not turning out to a great selector. His ego seems to have grown real big since retirement & probably feels his is the biggest chief selector there ever was.

The Second cricket test

I did not blog for almost a week, not that it mattered. Nobody seems to have read my earlier blogs :-)

This is on the first day of the second cricket test between India and Pak. India have come out on top after Shoaib Akthar met his friend of a lifetime, an injury !!Without him Pak had no potency in their attack. I hope & wish India score enough in their first innings to be able to bowl them out twice in the next days of the match. We will havbe to counter with both Younis & Yousuf but it should still not be beyond India to win this match and the series. Can we dream of a 3-0, well it looks like that will be a reality. The one thing against that happenning is the fact that the last match is being played in Bangalore which is not a good hunting ground for India. Well some exceptions do happen & lets hope the Bangalore jinx is overcome.

With todays display we seem to have solved one half of the openning batting problem & I still hope the solution to the second half is Virender Shewag. With that solved we might have a good enough batting lineup in Australia to help us save the series.

The third day roller-coaster

At the end of day yesterday it felt like India would come out on top in this test match, these hopes were belied pretty quickly on the third day. The batting of the Indian batsmen showed no conviction or commitment to a cause. This approach made one feel that we need a psychologist who can give the Indian team a single minded focus to the job on hand.

When the Pakistanis started they took the attack to India and scored briskly. They exposed the lack of depth in the pace attack. These are two of the attack that we will use in Australia !!! India came back into the match late in the day in the last session to pull it back. At the end of the third day India still look to be a bit, a little bit ahead.

Its interestingly poised & in all likely hood will be decided on the fourth day.

Looking Ahead to Australian Tour

I write this at the end of the second day of the 1st cricket test between Ind & Pak. The game is interestingly poised & maybe over the course of the next 3 days India might manage to pull of a victory. But if U were to use the 2 days of our game and look ahead into the Australian tour then, it feels more and more that it is our batting that will make or break (a whitewash) that tour. Australia in all likely hood will post 500+ scores on those wickets against our bowlers & we will have to respond with similar scores to stay afloat.

Shoaib Akthar knocked out our openers in quick time here & when he has not hit full form yet. What would happen when these openers on the Australian wickets face up to a Bret Lee. We will have to counter it well by having batsmen who will be able to score quick runs against Lee & company. A dour batting of a couple of hrs for few runs will yield nothing beyond postponing a result by couple of hrs. The more I think of it the more I feel we need Shewag in the team for Karthick & maybe Yuvraj for Ganguly.

We cannot read too much into the success of our spinners in the ongoing test match, the likely hood of Kumble repeating his performance from last time is probably remote. Our pacers are in no form to counter the Aussie batting, our batsmen & their rate of scoring is the only hope.