Need of hour :-)

There is always a distinct charm in an inning when a captain leads from front, takes all load on his shoulders and wins the game for his mates.

Stephen Flemming has done this many times, in fact he scored all his 8 hundreds while chasing.
Ponting/Waugh, Smith, Jayasuriya/Jayawardhane, Lara, Inzy have done this at some amazing consistency.

But in comparison, India never had one such leader, to some extent Kapil was only one in Indian History. (At least at some stage of his career, he led either by bowl or bat)

-- Under Kapil, either Vengsarkar/Azhar were mainstay of batting line-up,
-- Under Azhar, mostly Manjrekar was the main guy, later on Sachin took over forever.
-- Under Ganguly,Sehwag florished and Dravid established himself as THE WALL.
-- And now under Dravid, Yuvraj shows some glimpses of his potential.

Captains performance/form plays a huge role on the morale of a team, only a successful captain(with bat or ball) can infuse positive energy in his team, think of positive impact Ponting have on his team, likes of Clark/Symonds/Hodge/Hogg/Watson have now clearly become a better player rather than bright prospect.

On the other hand, imagine the plight of a dressing room where captain himself is struggling with his form/technique, in that frame of mind he cannot trust himself or fully trust some other guy to deliver, all that shows up in tactics in field, his bowling changes or field placements. A reluctance in approach of affairs becomes quite evident and has adverse affect on fortunes of the team.

Being captain of Indian side is not easiest of jobs, agreed, there is a hell lot of factors involved, maintaining good relations with BCCI bosses and with media are the foremost.
After all it’s the media hype which leads to public frenzy.

I feel it’s high time, BCCI decides for separate teams for ODIs and Test matches and of course with separate captains.

Tera saaya kabhi to bolega....
main suntaa raha parchaaiyaa!

Crazy or what?

Lara commited the biggent crime and took the final powerplay from 44 to 49 over, plus when Gibbs and de Villiars were well set, and later Boucher joined-in and they scored 77 in 5 overs.
Seems that WI and England are hell-bent to help SA qualify for semis despite their zero-carryover points and loss to B'desh.

Seriously, w/o India-Pak, this WC which was tipped to be most exciting or balanced, has turned out to be most boring in the history.

Except for 2 SL games, all matches are either 7 wickets or like 100 victories!

I don't know why English management is continuing with Vaughan, he is soo boring, he is not even 1% of what he was before his knee injury. Whatever, he never fitted for ODI formats, he is made for Test-matches only he should realize that and step-down, or take retirment from ODIs.

To me they look the most dis-jointed squad in this world cup,
it is hard to believe that it is the same squad which regained ashes in style, and later surrendered it in most embarrassing way.

In this WC, their problem starts from the top, both openers(Vaughan and Joyce) are worst than local club players, and that puts huge pressure on Bell/Pieterson/Collingwood.
Only its matter of time, overburden will start showing, which already has started to show its sign on Collingwood.

And another major factor in deterioration is their policy if selecting captains post-ashes, after Vaughan's injury they ignored ‘forever-vice captain’ Treschothik and appointed Strauss as captain, result - Treschothick lost interest in game, and withdrew himself.
Then they made Flintoff as captain, result Strauss's confidence and batting form bore the brunt.
And then again, re-appointment of cleary visible injured Vaughan resulted in loss of form of Flintoff.

First injuries to Simon Jones, Hoggard, Harmison and then their stupid policies in appointing captains has destroyed a well-balanced team.

Cricket...what else!

When I wrote this in May 2005, I hoped for 'beginning of golden period' of Indian Cricket, thing looked bright to begin with, but somehow script changed dramatically right after WI tour, DLF cup and Champions Trophy, and WC 07 turned out to be last nail in the coffin.

Though, it was on cards even before start of WC, and now with Tendulkar's outburst has delivered a final verdict.

Everything is in big mess; our board seems to be seriously competing with PCB in terms of generating controversies and creating uglier mess.
Every other day, one member or another is passing stupid comments and directly or indirectly blaming Chappell for WC debacle.

It all started with Ganguly's outburst against Chappell right in middle of a test-match, and Ganguly played his cards right after scoring a ton against Zimbabwe, taking cue from him Laxman also said few things, and in the end both were dropped. (But in current scene, Tendulkar's reaction to Chappell's 'alleged' resulted in opposite outcome, which clearly shows how big he is.)

Ganguly made a comeback without doing anything worth-deserving a place, he was recalled only coz Rainas/Kaifs/Raos/Mongias failed, and Yuvi got injured. Once back in team, he clearly played for himself, not for team.
If you ask me, we lost the World Cup during the phase when 'Ganguly-Tendulkar' played too defensively against Bangladesh, and set the pace and momentum of whole inning. In case of Ganguly, he played worst even against Bermuda, his inning included 70 dot balls, yes 70 i.e. almost 12 overs.

Sometimes, seems that media is driving India Cricket,

- first they published excerpts from Chappell's WC report which he'll present to BCCI in next meeting,
- and in 'leaked' report he blamed senior players for showing bad-attitude etc etc,
- in response to that Sachin made some emotional statements,
- then Chappell called all that media's imagination, and vehemently denied having written anything against anybody.
- then Chappell decides enough is enough and resign,
- now media is blaming BCCI for WC debacle.

All they care for is breaking-news or new controversy, though they are right this time but their 'timing' is as always ‘bad’.

Now question is, who is next?
No sensible foreigner will come forward, and even if one comes forward in lure of big money, let’s say King Richards, will never ever open his mouth and will end-up like a puppet in hands of BCCI.

Though dice is heavily loaded in favor of Sandip Patil as interim coach for next month's B'desh tour, anyways he is much better than Joker Amarnath the other contender.

I don't even want to talk about Rice-dealer's proposed league; he is a businessman to the core and just wants to exploit the current cricketing situation.

Bad timing everyone ‘Media/Chappell/Sachin/BCCI/Subhash Chandra’!!

After all cricket and life are all about timing.

Elephant in the way!!

Re-actions

Ganguly:: "I'm very happy with my performance, you look at my scores (so what if my strike rate was less than 50%), it did very well, my timing was excellent, I'm playing my best cricket...give me back the captaincy"

Uthapa:: "I don't know what went wrong, errr...I was asked to play my natural game, and I obeyed , they changed the rules nobody dropped my catches , I was good but my luck was bad"

Sehwag:: "I did meditation and took medication, and now it is clear that I'm better than Tendulkar; also I set-up the highest ever World Cup score"

Sachin:: "Surely this is most disappointing phase of my career I lost Airtel assignment to SRK and Chawanprash one to AB, now we have this one unplanned extra month in our hands, I'm hoping to make-up for the loses..."

Dravid:: "We played bad cricket, I mean such things happen when you play lot of cricket throughout year I means its a just a bad patch, we should focus on positives of this tournament, we achieved a world record of 413 in WC, also Sehwag is back in form, so I mean life moves on.."

Yuvraj:: "ohhh yaaar, run-out kar diya B!@#C@#$ Dravid ney, nahi SL ki to !@#$% "

Dhoni:: "We tried, I tried everybody tried, I'm devastated so is my under-construction home"

Agarkar:: "Ya, ya, I was selected as bowling all-rounder, but later I realized I'm selected as a batman who can bowl...I'm still confused..., my bowling suffered, my batting suffered, and whole team suffered......, I lasted three full matches without breaking down, and now I bowl just one wide and one buffet bowl per over..."

Harbhajan:: "Sab wrong hai, asaan match mein Anil bhai ko khilatey hai, mushkil mein mujhe aagey kar detey hai, even after playing 200 matches I'm learning to cope with pressure. Doosra daalne ke chakkker mein Pehla bhi bhool gaya...., koi nahi ji, we will win World Cup NEXT YEAR.

Zaheer :: "I'm very badly hurt, I was doing good whole team was doing good, I tried my best, but it was not enough, so I'm back, so at least Isha is happy....."

Patel :: "No comments"

Pathan:: "Thank God, my fitness saved me..."

Sreesanth:: "Dhin-chak..dhin chak....main bach gaya"

Karthik:: ".....please don't sack me...please....."

Sharad Pawar :: “We are happy our team followed the good-old Indian tradition of promoting peace and brotherhood…..Our this loss will help in improving our relationship with Pakistan, SL and Bangladesh which is a good sign for this region”

Chappel :: "When is the next flight to Melbourne dude?"

:-(

hmmm...if I say I'm not hurt then I'd be plain lying, It hurts and badly too.
But at the same time, this time there are no excuses at all, few days back I read some article on cricinfo , it was about 're-building' inning after early loses, Australia topped that list whereas India was in 9th position, that clearly shows irrespective of 'high-power' middle order we simply do not have in us to counter-attack.

If one observes, South Africa or Australia, these team never go into shell after early loses, at most they play it safe for a couple of overs and after that they start counter-attacking. No matter what the scorecard reads like Ponting or Greame Smith or any other player they just counter attack, but in case of India, batsmen make mountains out of moles, they all gooooo in deep slumber, they treat rookies as worldclass performers. Too much of defensive mould, sets the tone and they actually never recover from early setbacks.

Game against B'desh was another classic example of same, I think we lost the game during Ganguly-Tendulkar partnership, they were soooo slow and defensive in mindset that affected whole team.

I'm not a Ganguly fan, never was one; and will never be one either.
I still feel that he is just playing for himself, his big scores after his comeback do not affect the outcome of game, in wins it is always some-else's contribution. Ganguly is proving just a point to media/Chappel/More etc but he is not helping the team. He has been painfully slow, he started the rot in B'desh game, and even against Bermuda he was slow.

I'm sure, after world cup he'll blow his own trumpet and ask the media to check his averages and blah blah...

I always questioned the role of minnows in world, I always thought the only purpose of having them was to::

1) Players getting freak-injuries while playin against them jeopardizing their rest of tournament or
2) India losing a point against coz of rain-washouts :-(

This time Ireland, and B'desh has turned the tables much in favor other Super-8 teams, and I still stand by my words, its going to SL-NZ final, and NZ winning in a tight game.