Goodbye Sanga, Mahela, and Yuvi

The farewell to Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene couldn't have been scripted better. Yuvraj Singh's couldn't have been scripted any worse.

Sanga and Mahela decided to walk away from T20 cricket before the end of this tournament - two legends walking away from the game while still being good enough to walk into any side in world cricket. The one missing item on their resumes was an ICC world trophy in spite of several close calls in finals. Well, not any more. They accomplished that feat in their last game, both making significant contributions. I am sure these gentlemen will walk away from Test cricket ahead of their time as well.

Technically Yuvraj's international career isn't over yet. He is out of the Test and ODI sides, and was selected for the T20 world cup on past glory. However for all practical purposes, his international career is over. A legend like him didn't have to go this way, and Dhoni and our selectors are to blame for Yuvi's humiliation. The signs have been there for a while. Since Yuvi's comeback from cancer treatment, he has not been the same player. In the current tournament, he has looked slow, jaded, and completely out of his depth in all departments of the game. In the innings against Australia he appeared to be back, but that innings was an aberration against a dispirited opponent. Dhoni had no business to play him after his first or second game.

However let us not forget what an elegantly destructive cricketer Yuvi was. He, Kaif, and Azharuddin changed Indian fielding forever. He won us tournaments almost single handedly. But it didn't have to end this way. That is why I like to see legends walk away from the game when they are still on top of their game. I hope Yuvi is remembered for the good things he did for Indian cricket, and not for the one sorry innings, even though it might have cost India the tournament.

George Carlin on God & Religion

I am an atheist and frequently get into heated conversations with others regarding God and religion. I came across this video of George Carlin, the celebrated American stand up comic, where he talks about his views on the subject. I can't imagine a better articulation of my own views.

Grow up Virat

It has not taken Virat Kohli very long to transition from a world cup winning U-19 captain to a regular for India in all forms of the game. He has established himself with grit, determination, and a demonstration of unusual cricketing maturity in one so young. At the international level he has played stunning innings in the shorter formats, and he has ground out important runs in the longer format after some initial struggles.

However Virat Kohli has a lot of growing up to do. And he must do that quickly if he is to play for his country's cricket team with dignity.

Virat got into a needless confrontation with his India teammate Gautam Gambhir in an IPL game a few days ago. Apparently Gambhir said something after Kohli was dismissed, and it irked Kohli enough that he got into an ugly brawl with Gambhir. It took a timely intervention from Rajat Bhatia to separate Kohli and Gambhir.

A few days later the Mumbai crowd tore into Kohli for what they saw as unsportsman like conduct from the Royal Challengers captain. Kohli responded with incredulity. He could not understand why he, an India star, got such treatment in an IPL game being played at an Indian venue. After all, wouldn't the crowd cheer for him if he were playing for India at the same venue? "The IPL is not the end of the world", Kohli went on to say.

I have a simple question for Kohli. If he were playing for India, would he have blown up in similar fashion at a teammate like Gambhir? And if IPL is not the end of the world, why did he make a fool of himself by reacting like he did when Gambhir had something to say to him in the heat of the moment? I suppose all is fair when Kohli is dishing it out, but those giving him grief must be villains, even if it happens in the IPL, which is "not the end of the world".

Virat must realize that he is a very good cricketer, not the conscience keeper of everyone around him. He needs to look at seniors like Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman, and Kumble, and realize that what makes these gentlemen who they are is not just cricketing brilliance. These men have played the game with such dignity, grace, and humility that everyone would want their kids to follow them as role models.

Over the last one week I have gone from being a great admirer of Virat Kohli to one who doesn't care very much for him. Even if Kohli goes on to become the best Indian batsman ever, I certainly don't want my kids to grow up to be arrogant like him. I will be a bigger fan of a humble and less successful cricketer than a haughty and wildly successful Virat Kohli any day.

Grow up Virat. The Bangalore brawl perhaps cost you a friendship. The Mumbai outburst certainly cost you a lot of fan following. If you carry on like this, it might jeopardize something bigger - your legacy. Cricket has given you a lot. Stop taking it for granted.

The worst captain in 50 years - an Aussie cricket fan's view of Michael Clarke

Yesterday I wrote a blog post titled "Bravo Michael Clarke". My Aussie friend Adam Davenport read this post, and sent me his perspective, which couldn't be more different than mine! That is what makes life so interesting. Same situation, the same set of facts, but a diametrically opposite view point!

Adam runs his own IT security firm and is based out of Sydney. He is a typical Aussie - funny, warm, fun loving, and candid. His birthday wish to me last year was like no other - "Happy birthday you old bastard". All in all he is a wonderful bloke. Here's Adam's take.
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Sitting in airport lounge on way to Brisbane.

Read your blog. Interesting perspective but not shared by many in Australia including me. Clarke looks after his mates. The best opening pair for 20 years was Watson and Katich. Katich doesn't get on with Clarke so he has never played test cricket again despite his average in first class cricket of 52 and a test average of 45. Cowan, Clarke's mate, is a no hoper with an average in the 30s. Watson and Clarke don't get on. Watson prefers to open, we need an opener. His best average is as an opener but Clarke insist he plays down the order.

The team travel to the 3rd test together, Clarke goes on a private side trip to see the Taj Mahal!

He's a great batsman, made to look even better as he is surrounded by a poor team but he is the worst captain we have had for 50 years.

Despite this I can't blame him too much for the decision to stand down the 4 players and send Watson home. He didn't make it.  It was made by Dovey the manager, a 31 year old former administrator of ASDA the drug admin body whose sporting experience is as a junior at Menai High School! He has no cricket credentials. The decision is appalling. Supported by Pat Howard who has similarly no cricket credentials. Apparently Clarke just went along with what Dovey wanted to do. Dovey used to manage the English rugby team. Apparently wearing the right uniform is pretty important stuff for the rugby boys.

These guys are a joke and should be thrown out. What they need over there is some mentors from the past and some tough team leadership. Deal with dissent internally, sit them down, talk to them. Not evict them without any discussion and in the glare of the world media. This guy Dovey thinks he is Barrack Obama. He loves the spotlight. I saw him giving a press conference like he was discussing invading Afghanistan. They didn't hand in their homework!

Tough team players like Border, Chappelli or Steve Waugh would have dealt with discipline issues internally. The Captain needs to get the team focussed on trying to solve some problems. Like footwork to spinners and how to build an opening partnership. Clarke is more concerned about his media profile and showboating with wifey like Lady Diana at the Taj.

There is a lot more to this story to come out. I think your praise of Clarke is unfounded. He is a great player but a sensitive soul when it comes to his team-mates, if they don't support him or criticize him in any way he gets them canned.

The actions of Howard and Dovey will set Australian cricket back 10 years in this country. I guess Clarke read about what was happening in the paper from his hotel room at the Taj Mahal.

Lets hope some of the great players from he past stand up and do something. There is certainly little support for the way Clarke has behaved down here and Dovey or Howard will do well to make it out of Sydney airport without being lynched.

The English are salivating. An Ashes tour against a leaderless rabble will be easy pickings. Bookies have them at short odds for a clean sweep. A similar result is inevitable in India now.

Just an unemotional early morning viewpoint!

Bravo Michael Clarke

Michael Clarke has been one of  international cricket's premier batsmen over the last two years. Now he has shown that he is also the best leader in the cricket world.

Clarke's action in suspending 4 of his key players for one Test Match has caused a huge uproar. It has polarized opinions both for and against his decision. The general argument against his decision is that it is too harsh, and will not help matters as far as the morale of the team is concerned. I agree with both of these arguments, and that is the reason I think Clarke is a phenomenal leader.

Clarke has made a decision that will invite a lot of criticism, and perhaps hurt his side in the short term. However he has made it crystal clear that interests of the team come first. The rules apply equally to every member of the team, and the bottom line is to help the team win. Michael Clarke could have chosen the easy way out and let things slide. He didn't.

For me the point is not whether Clarke's decision is correct or not. The point is that he made a very tough decision at a very tough time for the team, and he made it for the right reasons. Opinions about the decision may vary, but Clarke is in charge, and he carries responsibility for results - short and long term. And he chose to act in the interest of the team at great personal risk. I wish we had candor like this in Indian cricket.

Bravo Michael Clarke!

Why India have never been able to dominate Test cricket

After watching Vernon Philander decimate the New Zealand top order in the Cape Town test, I wondered where Philander stood in the career strike rate rankings among bowlers. A strike rate represents the number of balls a bowler has to bowl on average to capture a wicket. It represents the true wicket taking efficiency of a bowler. Philander has been a revelation since his debut and already has 67 Test wickets in 12 matches. Sure enough Philander is second only to the legendary Englishman GA Lohmann on this list.

As I browsed through this list of 126 bowlers, I started looking for Indians and was astonished not to find an Indian in the top 50. All the usual suspects from the great Test teams are on this list - the Windies of the 80s, the Aussies from the 90s and 2000s, the great Pakistani pace bowlers of the 80s & 90s. Marshall, Holding, Roberts, Garner, Walsh, Thomson, Lillee, McGrath, Gillespie, Clark, Willis, Botham, Waqar, Akram, Imran are all in there.

The full list is here...Best career bowling strike rates

The first Indian to appear on this list is at number 87, and that name is the much maligned Chetan Sharma! Chetan Sharma has the best strike rate ever for an Indian bowler in Test match history! The only other Indians in this list are Irfan Pathan, and Zaheer Khan. Amazingly spinners like Warne, McGill, Murali, and Swann are in this list, but no India spinner is in the top 126!

No wonder India has never been a dominant force in Test cricket. A great batting line up without strike bowlers will give you a lot of draws, but not regular wins. Spinners usually bowl a lot of overs for their wickets, and are seldom match winners outside the sub-continent. However what you need to win consistently world wide are aggressive wicket taking pace bowlers. And we have hardly ever had them except for Zaheer Khan recently. That is why India rose to the number one ranking in Tests briefly. India's decline has coincided neatly with Zaheer's decline in wicket taking ability.

So what do we need to do to become a force in Test cricket? Cultivate a culture of fast bowling, nurture these bowlers, and make them feel like heroes. To win consistently we don't need as many Dravids, Tendulkars, Laxmans, and Gavaskars. We need more Zaheers. We need to create conditions favourable for fast bowlers all over the country, particularly in the North where we have more of the athletic and aggressive bowlers. And then take care of them.

Otherwise we will keep wondering where the next Dravid or Tendulkar is going to come from instead of worrying about the next Zaheer Khan or Chetan Sharma. We will continue to throw our occasional wicket taking fast bowler into ODI and T20 cricket and burn them out. And always remain an average Test side that is unable to live up to its potential.

Goodbye Bill Lawry, you beauty!

The iconic channel 9 cricket commentator Bill Lawry will retire from the commentary box at the end of Australia's test series with Sri Lanka. He will do two more test matches - the boxing day test at Melbourne, and the Sydney test from January 3 to 7.

If you are a Lawry fan, these are your last opportunities to listen to him live. I am, and intend to catch as much of the TV action during these two test matches as I can.

Lawryisms like "It's all happening there", and "you beauty" have become standard commentary phrases now. Lawry's unique voice, the trademark laughter, and the excitement in his commentary are unforgettable.

Thanks for the memories Bill, we will miss you. Wish you the best with your health and retirement.

For the full story check out http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/cricket/bill-lawry-to-retire-from-the-commentary-box-at-end-of-summer-test-series/story-e6frey50-1226528533064

Tendulkar and the future of the Indian test cricket team

Sambit Bal has summed up the Tendulkar situation very nicely in his article on espncricinfo today: "The team to play the next Test for India needs to be picked not merely with the next series in mind but the next season. The Tendulkar question will hang heavy, but it will be, as has been suggested widely, unfair to leave the answer to him. Indian cricket owes him gratitude, but not the burden of a perpetual debt.".

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/current/story/597649.html

India will play Australia at home next, but then they have to tour South Africa, New Zealand, and England. If they want to be competitive on these tours, they better start rebuilding now.

Over to the BCCI to make some tough calls now.

A tale of two declarations

A declaration, and the approach to a declaration in a cricket test match tells you a lot about the captain, and the overall approach of a team.

On day two of the ongoing Hobart test match between Australia and Sri Lanka, Australia were cruising at 450/5 in their first innings. The scoring rate was high and conventional wisdom would have suggested that Australia would score 600+ before declaring, and have Sri Lanka bat for about 20 overs on day two. However that didn't happen. There were some signs of rain, which meant that the test match could be truncated. Michael Clarke declared at 450/5 to give himself some additional time to bowl Sri Lanka out twice just in case some time was lost to rain. As it happened, the rain never came, but Clarke's proactive declaration set the tone for the match, and Australia will likely win the test match anyway.

10,000 kilometers away India and England were battling each other in the Nagpur Test match. India could salvage some of their damaged reputation and level the series with a win, while England only needed a draw for a historic come-from-behind series win. After day three, India were about 40 runs behind England in the first innings. Their only hope was to bowl England out the next day, and chase down the runs on the fifth day.  Conventional wisdom would have dictated one of two courses of action - declare overnight and give your bowlers some more time to bowl the opposition out. Or have your batsmen go hammer and tongs for 30 minutes and get out or declare. Right? But that's not what happened. India inexplicably crawled along for 62 minutes and 29 runs before declaring. If that is not an example of lack of leadership, or just plain old brain dead cricket, I don't know what is.

That is the tale of two declarations. A captain looking to find a way to win, and another one looking for ways to not lose. Both India and Australia are teams in transition at the moment, but it is not hard to predict which one of these teams will win more test matches over the next 5 years.

Craig McDermott's mantra

For about a year from May 2011 to May 2012, Craig McDermott was the bowling coach of the Australian Test cricket team. He took over a team that was winning about half of its matches, and losing the other half. He transformed the Australian bowling unit with a simple mantra "Pitch the ball up". The results during his stint were spectacular - Australia played 14 matches, won 9, and drew 3.

What McDermott achieved with his bowling unit was remarkable, but what is even more remarkable is how quickly the lessons have been forgotten by Australia, and how completely they have been ignored by other teams around the world.

Since McDermott's departure from the Australian coaching staff, they have played 3 matches, drawn 2, and lost 1. Apart from the results, what is noticeable is how much the effectiveness of the Aussie seam attack has dropped. In the series against South Africa, they bowled too short most of the time, and failed to be consistently threatening. Against Sri Lanka in the test match today, their two wickets have come with full deliveries, but overall they have bowled too short.

During the time McDermott was doing his thing, the whole world was watching and admiring what he was doing, but failed to learn from him. Almost all international bowling attacks continued to bowl too short in Test matches, with the exception of Dale Steyn. What is going on? Why have McDermott's lessons been lost on everyone?

Perhaps the answer is that it takes a lot of heart and courage to bowl full and risk punishment. The ball does not swing and seam in all conditions, and the full delivery invites drives and it can be demoralizing if you are consistently driven through the off side for boundaries. Ian Botham famously said about Mike Hendrick, the former English bowler - "Throughout his career he bowled a foot too short. Twelve inches further up and he'd have been a world beater. He stopped himself being a great bowler". Botham was an extrovert bowler who was willing to risk punishment for wickets - a magnificent test match performer.

I suppose ultimately it is a matter of nerve. The one Indian bowler who is not afraid to pitch it up is Sreesanth. It is not surprising that he is perhaps the most consistently threatening Indian bowler when he is healthy and bowling well. McDermott would be proud of him.