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Could you or your paymasters at the Incompetent Council of (insert bawdy phrase referring to people who pay attention to certain cavities of the female body with their own oral cavities) please let us all know, exactly WHAT resolved, “beyond a reasonable doubt that Harbhajan Singh directed that word at Andrew Symonds and also that he meant it to offend on the basis of Symonds’ race or ethnic origin.”. Also while we are at it, can we quit being “politically correct” and use THAT word instead of terming it “that word”. (more…)

(P.S: I am hyperventilating. No one come to me with smart ass comments. To trump all of you, I have made the most smart ass of posts. Thank you for understanding!)

I wanted to post this soon after play ended, but sleep’s something that I value more than the chance to eat humble pie, at least partially.

The thing is, the fact that we ended the day in a strong note does not change my reservations about how we got there. Sure, ends do justify the means, but in my eyes the means are nevertheless impossible. More often than not in the past, we have had not so good results on a day where the first session went the same way. (more…)

I was planning to live blog this test match, but one hour into the day’s play, a sense of déjà vu crept in. And then I realized that my time could be better off doing some long overdue cleaning with an eye on the TV.The opening bowlers actually did their part, exploiting what turned out to be, IMHO, a perfect first day pitch. Early on, the pacemen had something to bend their backs and for quite some time, Hayden and Jacques had their work cut out. Both Zaheer and RP Singh bowled their heart out and were quite unlucky. But soon it turned out to be a familiar Indian story. (more…)

… in half an hour soon and here i am, sitting in a dark living room. Nothing dramatic follows though. I am just lazy to go and put on the light.

So, the official start of the Australian summer is just a fifteen minutes away and there is some concrete news of the team composition. First, the toss, though! Looks like Dravid will have to wait to put on his pads since as Ponting seems to have won the toss and has chosen to have a bat first. (more…)

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”.