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Five years ago, in my first ever guest post on Cricinfo (other posts here and here) , I wrote,

But why have most of us chosen to turn a blind eye towards a player with all the prerequisite skills and caliber required of him? Just because he seems laid back, or is this another case of the “regional bias” that has plagued Indian cricket over the ages? The second excuse seems a bit far-fetched, considering that many players from the same zone have won places in the team in the last few years; I must stress, incidentally, that the quality of such players is never in doubt.

Although I do not know the reason, Sadagoppan Ramesh seems to the black sheep that nobody wants in the team. Is his footwork, or rather the absence of it, the cause? Admitted that this aspect is quite alarming, but his flowing strokes and awesome timing still catch the eye.

A online survey to pick the 16-member squad for the West Indies reveals the flawed and perhaps mistaken opinions largely prevalent in the minds of the average Indian cricket fan. At the time of penning this piece, Ramesh’s replacement Deep Dasgupta gets twice as many votes as Ramesh (913), while Shiv Sunder Das gets more than four times as many. I attribute this more to ignorance than to clarity of thought. Ramesh’s career stats should be a eye-opener to anyone who thinks that he does not merit a place in the team. (more…)

Aakash Chopra, writing on the TMS Blog, writes (via),

In this millennium, India have won more Tests away from home (16) than any other country apart from Australia (26) in the same period.

Interesting. But how many of these have come in series that India has won? I would say (without going to Statsguru for reference) that this number is either 3 or 4. And if I remember right, most of these wins have come either in test no. 1 or 2 of a 3 (or) 4 match series.

Why do we win one and lose the rest? Complacency? That’s the most obvious answer.

While I think that this will be fact of choice for Team India’s ardent supporters for some months to come (incl. me), I’d be happier to quote the number of series wins as my reason to support this Indian team.

As for Aakash Chopra, his dropping continues to irk. Sure, Jaffer has his occasional monster score, but Chopra tended to inspire more confidence. And also the context of a Chopra innings is different. I think even with a test average of 23, he did quite well, considering that the man at the other end was Sehwag playing a swashbuckling innings. So to me, Chopra remains a “what if”.

A big thank you to whoever linked to my latest post on UberDesi at the South Asian Journalists forum’s post announcing coverage of the World Cup finals.

I’m flattered, considering the state I was in when I wrote the post at 3 am this morning.

Is Subhash Chandra trying to do a Packer? Is this what India needs? Let’s wait and watch as more details unfold…

Incidently, another Cricinfo piece by Sambit Bal calls for something similar - A revolution, if you please. Hmm…

For more, head over to my World Cup guest blog at UberDesi….

As I mentioned earlier, I am going to be guest blogging the cricket World Cup ‘07, exclusively on ÃœberDesi.com. Here are the first few posts.

• Confessional first post…
• The carnival begins…
• The carnival begins - part deux
• Cricket’s most momentous day - The St. Patrick’s Day massacre
• India vs Srilanka and the group of death… (*new*)

With the upcoming World Cup in mind, the uber cool chaps over at ÃœberDesi.com have invited me to blog about cricket as their first ever guest blogger. As if just that invite was not enough, they promised a killer intro too. So, like the attention loving egotist that I am, I jumped at the chance and agreed.

So I shall run off now and get my first post up before they change their mind! Hope to see you guys around there. And as usual, do leave your comments.

Prem Panicker’s Rediff piece on the World Cup super 8 scheduling seems to have touched a nerve (going by the comments on the article). Apart from the fact that if it’s true leading to the assumption, then the ICC does not expect any upset victories (unlike the previous editions), the only thing that worries me is the prospect of India not playing enough weekend games.

Yesterday I noticed (via the schedule on my Willow.tv subscription) that if India beat Sri Lanka (and) West Indies beat Pakistan (and) there are upsets involving these teams, then India would finish B1 and Pakistan would finish D2 and their much awaited clash will be on a weekend (on April 1). (more…)

A couple of weeks ago, I had a few hours to kill at Heathrow while coming back from my India trip. After killing time at a restaurant over a lunch of pizza and coffee, I walked into a WHSmith in the Terminal four lounge and was browsing through their cricket section when I chanced upon Richie Benaud’s My Spin on Cricket. I picked it up and put it on my “to read in bed” list that I had begun as a (my only) New Year resolution.

I started on the book and during this past week, I read about the GOI’s latest ordinance forcing private broadcasters to share sports feeds with Doordarshan. I realized that their could be an Australian precedent, according to Benaud. And based on what I have read about it these past two days, it looks like the Aussie measure dates back to a time as recent as ‘04 early as 1992. (more…)

What the fuck is wrong with CNN-IBN? You think you belong to a nation of stupid cricket lovers and suddenly you get a dolt who can’t talk in camera to save his skin? So this guy, supposedly a cricket correspondent, rambled on and on and literally begged for the 30 member World Cup probable list to be shown on screen to save his posterior. I wouldn’t bat an eye-lid if it was economics or politics, but an Indian gent under 30 who can’t talk cricket? Where the fuck was the teleprompter?

I just wish to add that this sounds as surprising as my self-adopted guru doing a post last week highlighting a blog dedicated to Kamal’s career. Since he had advised me, his own protégé, “grow up or to stick to Rajini and Disney blogs and never come close to a political blog” like his, seeing that post has left me speechless. So much that a comment I put in vanished into thin air. Leaving me not just speechless, but comment less too.

Things like these only demonstrate that it is a new year after all. And that things change. WTF! Ya, go ahead and say it again for good measure.

This post has been on hibernation for at least a week now. And in the meantime a lot of water has flowed under the bridge and some familiar stories have unfolded. But I still possess some of the original excitement that prompted me to start this post in the first place.

It all started, when a couple of weeks ago, I spent parts of some three nights drifting in and out of sleep while watching live feed of the second test match between India and South Africa at Durban. While I don’t remember much about the bowling, some of the batting at Kingsmead is still fresh in my mind. And most of these memories are of Sachin’s batting in India’s first innings, and in particular, two strokes. (more…)