ESPNCricinfo: Ross Taylor

I am a fan of Ross Taylor. He was an adopted son of Bangalore during the heady early days of  IPL, where there was still some innocence left in the spectacle.

Before betting, before Sreesanth and company, and before two-feet no-balls on the second-last ball of the over.

Taylor. He had lost his way somewhat, for a while. Mouthed off too often, about too many things in the setup. .. Well, this is no transformation, yet. But a reminder that he can still do things which few others can. Read this piece. Click here.

Allan Donald, Stop Being So Damn Modest

The interview is here, click.

Dale Steyn is not

Without a shadow of a doubt, the greatest bowler South Africa has ever had.

You are the shadow of a doubt. Because you were better. Marginally better, but better.

I think that he had a spell – a duel with Paul Collingwood - in Cape Town. It was a Test match I commented on, a Test match in which England were in trouble. Steyn went past the outside edge probably four times an over in which he bowled at 148-150kph without any luck. I think it was one of those spells where you deserve a six-for or a seven-for. But it didn’t quite work out. England managed to draw the game right at the death, being nine-down. That was probably one of the best spells I’ve seen without any results.

It is probably one of the best, but not the best. Because the best was yours, with Atherton batting. And you got him out fair and square, and would have won the Saffers the match if not for an umpiring error.

Jesse Ryder // The Cult Hero // The Cordon

Glad that Jesse Ryder is out of danger.

Here’s a nice article on what makes Jesse Ryder a cult hero, and even on the phenomenon of a cult hero itself…

From the Cordon – ESPNCricinfo.

Ryder, and Gavin Larsen before him, Shahid Afridi, Patrick Patterson, Venkatesh Prasad, Marvan Atapattu … these are my walk-on-water guys. These are the guys who will be discussed about when I start my cult

The IPL : Wherever is it going? No SL Players for CSK Home Games?

Now you say Sri Lankan players cannot play in Chennai! What a joke IPL has become!

Not a political statement. Chennai and CSK can feel whatever it wants about Sri Lanka; this cannot be a reason to sabotage the other teams’ chances.

ESPN Cricinfo: Franchises fear Chennai no longer level playing field

As above is the article.

 

The joy of Sehwag

Harsha’s article.

Yes, it should have been, you’d say. There was hardly a choice, you’d say. He was given a long leash, a longer leash than almost anyone else would have been given, you’d say….

But who cares? Cricket is not merely cold, hard logic … and that scheming, conniving bastard: statistics.

And either Sehwag’s return will be celebrated, or his departure rued… oh his departure! May us not talk of an impending departure today, and celebrate.

What a player! What a player!

Hindi Commentary

I like Hindi commentary. It’s a lot more ….how should I put it…. raw.

The predictable media-trained image (Sourav – iconoclast; Rahul – meticulous and polite; Shastri – boisterous; Gavaskar – older statesman) is mercifully absent. Sidhu can anyway only play one tune – which does not jar as much in hindi (waah waah mitthu mitthu indeed), Kapil is way too knowledgeable, and sourav too is a lot less predictable.

Ah, Comments!

The article, is the standardfare Sharada Ugra article, about cricket selectors not taking a decisive step. Sensible without being overbearing.

….. but the comments’ section!

Rediff’s comment section, meet Cricinfo’s comment section. Woohoo!

 

Thank you India

Thank you India.

Thank you MS Dhoni for being a man among boys, for your straight-talking, your courage and for being one of us. For the pride you give us middle-class boys from small towns.

Thank you, Gary Kirsten. Thanks a lot!

Thank you Zaheer Khan for the skills, the bag of tricks, and for carrying the weakest bowling attack for any top-four nation on your shoulders.

Thank you Worcestershire for giving us back the Zaheer we didn’t imagine we could have.

Thank you Wankhede stadium, for making the last flickering flame of the erstwhile heartcenter of Indian cricket a forest fire.

Thank you Mumbai.

Thank you Gautam Gambhir for being a far better Larry Gomes than Larry Gomes ever was. Thanks for gritting out what is already, and probably will forever be the greatest forgotten innings in a world cup final.

Thank you Harbhajan Singh for the tears. Our tears.

Thank you R. Ashwin.

Thank you Mahela Jayawardene. It was the greatest one-day innings I have ever seen. And that’s including Sachin’s Sharjah tree-uprootings.

Thank you Kumar Sangakkara, for being the unscrupulous chaalu guy at the start of the match, and the gracious, glorious big man you showed yourself to be at the end.

Thank you Shehan Karunatilaka for writing that amazing book on Sri Lanka.

Thank you Lasith Malinga, you glorious freak!

Thank you Muttiah Muralitharan, for picking up a cricket ball.

Thank you, Sri Lankan cricket team. How can anyone dislike you? You are the pride of our sub-continent.

Thank you Sreesanth. You are the classic a-hole, but you are our a-hole.

Thank you Viru Sehwag.

Thank you, you Bollywood and TV stars, you glory-mongers, you. Thanks for being us for a day.

Thank you Sourav Ganguly for building a cricket team. Today, it’s the best cricket team in the world.

Thank you Sunil Gavaskar.

Thank you Rahul Dravid for being the rock we could lean on for so long.

Thank you Anil Kumble. Grit will find a way. Please become the BCCI chairman someday soon now.

Thank you VVS Laxman equally for the magic and for the dignity. A class act you forever will be.

Thank you Ashish Nehra for coming back from the SA onslaught, you deserve way more credit than you get. Gawky and gangly has its disadvantages.

Thank you team India. It was supposed to be ‘Do It for Sachin’, and not ‘Sachin will do it for us’, and thank you for keeping to it.

Thank you Paddy Upton. We do run chases only one way? No, we can do it the other way, this way too.

Thank you Eric Simons.

Thank you, Doordarshan, for those days of free-on-air cricket broadcasting.

Thank you Dhirubhai Ambani, for the Reliance cup.

Thank you Virat Kohli. Would love to see you lift the damn trophy someday. And thanks once more for ‘Chak De India’.

Thank you Yusuf Pathan. Throughout the world cup, we knew we had Yusuf. And the others knew that too.

Thank you, Hall of Fame sports pub, Road 36, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad. My ears are still buzzing from the whistle-shrieks, and I think I still smell of beer.

Thank you Mohammed Azharuddin for teaching me to love this game. That’s what I remember of you, and that’s what I will remember forever.

Thank you Munaf Patel. Oh how much we laughed! But who cares now! You won! We won! We are all laughing now!

Thank you Harsha Bhogle, for speaking for us.

Thank you Navjot Singh Sidhu, you joker! The cornflakes taste best when the milk has just been poured, my friend. Or rather, who cares? We won!

Thank you Piyush Chawla.

Thank you Yuvraj Singh. What started with those potbelly jokes ended with you as the man of the tournament! We ate our words. Have already eaten them, with breakfast, in the morning today. Didn’t taste bad at all. Shabaash, champion!

Thank you Shahid Afridi for your magical bowling all throughout the world cup.

Thank you England for this amazing adventure of a world cup. To make CWC11 the awesomeness it was, your contribution was foremost.

Thank you New Zealand for packing off South Africa, the only team that beat us, in the quarters.

Thank you South Africa, for giving us the kick up our backsides we so desperately needed, in the leagues. With an easier run to the quarters, I have little doubt we would have become complacent.

Thank you Suresh Raina. Against Australia, a Yusuf would not have done. We needed a Bevan. We got our Bevan. Bevan tended to have to do nothing in the finals of world cups. Just like you didn’t have to. Will you be our Bevan, then?

Thank you Kapil Dev for doing it once, so we can bask in the glory of doing it again. Today.

Thank you Kapil’s Devils.

Thank you Sachin Tendulkar. Thank you, Sachin Tendulkar.

Thank you, Men in Blue.

Thank you India.

Yes Yes Yes

Yes yes yesyesyesyesyes Yes Yes!

Finals, here we come!

Sachin v2

This started as a comment on sidvee’s blog, which became a ramble. So, since I generally put up my rambles here, here you go…. Of course cleaned up a bit for the blog

_____________

I’d been a Sachin-baiter for a very long time…

The Sachin v1 of the ’90s was almost repellant in his perfection. He could do everything! And the only way he knew to win was the Sharjah way, as the one-man battering ram. The team around him, it seemed, was not inspired by his greatness, but was just dependant on him to pull off the win singlehandedly. Those wins would come, yes, but is there a doubt that those would be rare? There’s a reason there are 11 players in a cricket team; and in the context of Jordan, we forget Scotty, and Grant and Kukoc. We even forget Rodman. We forget they play 5 in basketball. And we forget Deschamps, and Desailley and Blanc and Youri and Thierry and Paddy Vieira and Petit and Pires and Ronaldo and Raul and Figo and Hierro and McManaman and Makalele and Casillas and — hell what are we talking about here, France ’98/’00 and Real early ’00 were, with or without Zidane, some of the greatest football teams mankind has seen.
Why did I dislike Sachin? That’s because there could be only one Diego.

And then, somewhere in the early ’00s, Dravid grew up, and Dada grew up, and Laxman grew up, Sehwag came to town, and we realized the real worth of a bespectacled quick-ish legbreak googly bowler. I believe that was when the injuries and the pressure – the weight of a decade of a nation expecting him to haul a comatose team across the line — took its toll. We had the Pippen, the Grant and the Kukoc, but Jordan didn’t show up all the time. He still did sometimes! That legendary on-side double in Australia; the Shoaib demolition in 2003, were both Jordan moments.

And then came the injuries.

And then came Sachin v2. Sachin v2, is our Jordan. And who doesn’t like Sachin v2?
He sheet-anchors with a strike rate of more than a hundred; he does not deal in sixes in T20′s, he scores with a strike rate of 30 for the first half of his innings in tests.
And he scores 8 hundreds in a year; scores double-hundreds in one-dayers; finishes off test centuries with two sixes; makes Yuvraj Singh play responsibly in a second innings chase of nearly 400; he even scores the highest in the IPL. That’s not Jordan, that’s Rajinikanth.

Perhaps. Perhaps that’s what we needed.