Simplifying The Daily Existence

There are two ongoing test matches and both have them proved that no matter how flat the wickets are, no matter how inventive the batsmen have become and no matter how enterprising shot-making has become, one simple, fact cannot be altered — most contemporary sides cannot handle even average-quality spin bowling if it is dished out on a sustained basis.


Just look at the Pakistani side. They were supposed to struggle against the fast, Aussie bowlers but they have fallen prey to a fiver from Hauritz. No disrespect towards Nathan Hauritz, but by no means is he a match-winning Tweaker. By no means Hauritz can be described as a big spinner of the ball. He is simply a line and length, off-spinner who has the ability to stick to a line and wait for the batsmen to commit a folly and usually that doesn’t work since the pitches are so flat these days that all sorts of strange, counter strokes can be played to negate whatever little spin he is able to generate. The same applied to Kumble for a long time when he could take buckets of wicket at home because the pitches were up and down but was redundant in overseas conditions because simply pitching the ball between the stumps didn’t make an impact. The same applies to South Africa. Graeme Swann does have the talent to make the ball dip in the air but he cannot spin it an impressive extent even if his own life dependent upon it. He simply owes his wickets against South Africa to the Proteas batsmen being apprehensive on the slight indications of some, meagre turn on a wicket that is slowly wearing out.
The final result — two average spin bowlers have delivered what are potentially match-winning spells.

Pakistan had an excellent opportunity to dent Australia's batting confidence in the first test matched but as it turns out, their bowlers just weren't up to the mark when it come to bowling, actually, wicket-taking deliveries. Most of the bowling was just too short. It seemed that the Pakistani bowlers got too excited by the lure of bowling on a bouncy track and kept on pitching it
so short that the ball just didn't make the kind of impact most experts were believing it would make. Nearly every bowler seemed obsessed with trying to bounce out the Aussie batsmen, ignoring the fact that these batsmen are more equipped than most to play the short ball and bouncers don't work if you keep bowling them with mundane regularity. I believe the real ace with the Pakistanis lies in their ability to swing the new and the old ball and that is what they should be concentrating upon rather than trying to further their speed-guns or trying to hit the helmets of the batsmen. Rauf hasn't played much cricket but he does look like a good, line & length type bowling if he can just pitch the ball, a bit further up. Even Ajmal was guilt of not floating the ball - something that has given him bucketful of wickets. The fact that even Nathan Hauritz got stuck into the Pak bowling underlines the fact that the bowlers weren't threatening. Pakistan can still bail themselves out, they do have the firepower, it just needs to get on the right radar.

This may seem too trivial to point out right now, but this question had been raised by some journalists at Kirsten, the Indian coach, and it seems that the answer to the question is a big, Yes. The thing is that Tendulkar had been plagued by many back and shoulder injuries in the last two-to-three years and many experts believed that his extremely thick bat, given his size and height limitation combined with the amount of cricket he was playing was a major reason for this. However, Tendulkar always refuted such theories and the runs kept coming-off his heavyweight bat carrying the MRF signature. It was during 2009 that Tendu had a change of sponsors and MRF exited and may be this was the reason that prompted Tendu to change his bat. He is now batting with an Adidas bat and it seems that this piece of lumber is much lighter than what he was using before. The results are evident in the way he is approaching the short-pitched ball, overcoming it with tender footwork and just dabbing upon it rather than playing those cracking, lifted off-drives. In fact, he seems to be getting more comfortable with merely pushing at the ball in vacant spots on the field and taking twos and threes, not that his boundary-scoring ability has suffered in any way, but his entire body language is more fluent than before, particularly the way he is playing delicate late-cuts around the third-man region. I feel that if he could replace those century-old pads of his, more weight would be lifted off his body, adding to his overall durability...now that such questions are bound to arise. I know, this sounds a bit too intrusive and talking about things that may seem insignificant but then cricket is 50% Tendulkar to me so obsessing over him is beyond my control.

The Indian team’s ODI performance hasn’t been the greatest in recent months and despite that the team is in reckoning to win the numero uno ranking profile, courtesy of the present point-based ICC calculation system and India’s decent performances during the first half of 2009. It should be highlighted that this recent dip in performance is deeply disturbing considering that India have been facing under-strength teams. First Australia and now SL are here without many of their star players being left due to form-based issues or due to injuries. Further, these are home series and ideally, India should be winning the series quite comfortably. However, that is not the case.
They struggled a lot against the limited bowling resources of Australia and their own bowling attack has been repeatedly put to the sword by a Sri Lankan batting line-up wherein only the top four batsman can be considered regular members and potential match-winners and among that too, Mahela Jayewardene is desperately out-of-form. So what does this say about Dhoni’s men? They are vying hard for the top ranking status but where are the ODI performances to back the claim? If the bowling cannot hold its own in a home series with nearly a full-bench with most of the regular bowlers bowling, what does this indicate for the future? Secondly, the Indian batsmen are doing pretty good but usually when they are setting-up targets. They failed miserably when trying to chase reasonable targets and it seems that if the captain, Dhoni, doesn’t fire in the middle-order, it does seem to collapse against sustained short-pitched bowling.

The first test match between Australia and Pakistan is upon us and to me, it seems that Pakistan does have the resources to beat Australia in the Aussie backyard. For starters, their bowling line-up is the most penetrative, even more than that of South Africa and marginally better balanced that Australia’s bowling resources. Pakistan bowling has benefited from the return of some former players who had wandered away into the ICL and those who have made decent comebacks. With Mohammed Sami being added to the mix of Mohammed Asif, Umar Gul and Sohail Tanveer, along with the every-improving Mohammed Aamer, Pakistan’s arsenal is varied and penetrative if you consider that Saeed Ajmal is a very decent off-spinner. It should be noted that Australia would be missing the services of an injured Ponting and Michael Clarke too may not play all the matches. These are unarguably two of their best spin counterattacking batsmen and without them, the side would have to come to terms with the guile of Ajmal. The big concern lies with Pakistan's unreliable batting line-up that is known to crumble at the slightest hint of sustained, short-pitched bowling. None of their openers has overseas credibility and with Younis Khan unavailable due to some strange personal issues, the middle-order is very vulnerable to collapsing within 70-80 overs. With Peter Siddle and Bollinger in top bowling form, it would be difficult for the sub-continental batsmen to keep the balls out of their rib-cages and none of them are decent pullers of the short ball.

To some extent, the fact that Pakistan are coming off from a decent tour of New Zealand should help them get quickly familiarized with the kind of bowling that awaits them but then, the Kiwi bowling attack doesn’t match the Aussie bench in terms of pure aggression and horse-power. Still if one chooses to be optimistic, Pakistan's bowling alone can win them the series, provided internal issues are sidelined and cricket becomes the only focus for the team… otherwise, we are all too familiar with how crazy things can go with this team but yes, their uncertainty may well become their biggest weapon.

This may sound a bit biased to some but the fact remains that the ugliest of on-field cricketing confrontations have involved Aussies over the last decade. They call it ‘ruthless aggression’, Down Under but it seems more like staged, stereotype acts of verbal abuse that are now getting ridiculously, repetitive… and I say this in reference to the latest to victim to the Australia’s cricketing abusing tradition — Suleiman Benn, the West Indian spinner, in the ongoing test match between the two nations.
Mitchell Johnson had absolutely no reason to get so physical with Benn over something so trivial as accidental contact between the two. Johnson’s actions seemed to be directed at up-keeping the Australian habit of being ‘sour losers’. However, this time they hadn’t even lost. It is just that during the second test of the series, for the first time in a long time, the WI had put up some sort of a resistance. It is obvious that this mere semblance of some resistance among the opposition team members and the fiery innings played by Chris Gayle during the WI reply in the ongoing test match rattled the Australians. This time Brad Haddin too joined in the confrontation with Benn, though there was absolutely no need for his opinion, since the controversial proceedings had little to do with him…but then, it wouldn’t have been a typically Aussie thing to do, i.e. stepping-in in and getting physical without any reasoning whatsoever. When your captain, Mr. Ponting himself, is looked upon as someone dishonest enough to claim ‘grounded’ catches (remember the test match against the Indians last year and Ponting’s sullen face when he was asked about the same during a post-match conference?), you cannot expect anything better from the men that he commands.

The last of the three test matches between Pak and NZ had tilted seriously in favour of the Pakistani team with Kaneria having taken a five-wicket haul when no one was expecting the ball to turn. Well, to be honest, most of the wickets were handed out to him due to the inability of the Kiwis to come forward and meet the ball before it gained that decisive curve.
However, Vettori has delivered once again, augmenting and cementing his position as a contemporary all-rounder and not just another handy, low-order contributor with runs. His batting was simply awesome in terms of being choosy about his strokes. I cannot recall Vettori having made a more crucial century in his entire test cricket history. And now it seems that another comeback man in the series, Tuffey, has taken a liking to Vettori's mold and probably for the first time he contributed handsomely with a well-made 80. With a total of 450+ runs on the board, it will take some doing for the Pakistanis to turn the match around as they have to counters Vettori's bowling on a slowing pitch and overcome the first innings lead before even imagining of bowling-out the Kiwis on the final day. For now, it seems like a 2-1 result in favour of New Zealand unless they do something drastic to undermine their chances in this match.

Please understand that this is not a knee-jerk reaction to India’s defeat in the first T20 match against SL. This has been happening over the last two seasons. For some strange reason, the selectors and the likes of Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri seem to be very vocal about the abilities of Rohit Sharma and Yusuf Pathan.
The elder Pathan for one is touted as the missing all-rounder that the team needs though he has never done anything even close to substantial to justify this faith. Similar is the case with Rohit Sharma who despite a string of failures, now combined with injury-enforced breaks and an average domestic season is back in the reckoning though he has never actually delivered when it mattered the most — so why are these two players being imposed upon us as the ‘young’ stars of the team that ‘will’ win the 2011 World Cup for India? Ravi Shastri seems to have a blind faith in Pathan’s ability to score match-winning innings, though every time he comes out to bat, an average, ridiculous dismissal is always guaranteed and he isn't a spinner by any measure — when is the last time you saw Yusuf turn the ball in any imaginable way?? Even when playing for the Rajasthan Royals, Yusuf has not been the greatest of performers considering that that his team depends a lot on his batting, often looking up to to finish the matches, but he has done that very, very seldom.

Ian Chappell recently said that he wanted test cricket to be formatted in a style wherein only three days of cricket would be played, with nearly seven hrs of cricket every day. Yes, he did make sense in saying that the matches should be scheduled over the weekend, from Friday to Sunday, but does this assure of better viewership in a substantial manner?
I mean, the game is suffering more from boredom induced by dead pitches rather than lack of crowds in the stadium and I don't agree that stretching proceedings beyond 100 overs is an actual solution. Yes, day and night test matches do make sense and are needed but the more critical need is to ensure that test matches are played on result-oriented pitches with some breathing game in the cricketing calendar. Test matches are played on slow, turning Lankan wickets wherein the chances of the Lankan side winning are always high and matches are often scheduled on weekends, but the attendance is stadiums is not every average, why? simply because the pitches are such that the day's proceedings can be foretold to a large extent, taking out the surprise element from the game and as a result, the crowd's attention cannot be engaged. Weekend cricket just doesn't seem like a very effective solution Mr. Chapell.

The Indian team for the upcoming ODI Series against Sri Lanka 2009 has been announced and it seems that the selectors and Dhoni have put their faith in the all-round capabilities of Jadeja. The lef-arm spinner from Saurashtra has been in the frame for some time, and has been promoted as the solution to India's inability to find a genuine all-rounder.
However, I don't believe that he has the makings of being such an effective player unless he is tried out at the top of the batting order since he simply cannot pulverize the bowling towards the end of the innings. Yes, his bowling is pretty useful on most pitches as containing runs is the foremost parameter for bowlers these days but then it is his batting during crucial stages that has come for some criticism in the recent past. I just don't see him developing into a good finisher like Bevan, but he could be more useful at number 3-4. Then again, a problem crops-up, since India has a long list of strokemakers who want to bat up the order and there is just no way that Yuvraj Singh can be demoted in terms of being the preferred number four Indian bastman.

Such regional sentiments have also seeped into the players who are assembled and are a big threat to the team's unity. Further, the pay issues with the WICB has continued with too long and the world body of cricket should try and help and resolve the issue in some way. Now, it seems that Chris Gayle, the current skipper of the team is reluctant to even play test cricket and he has voiced his opinions openly in the media. For me, this is blatant indiscipline. Yes, speaking your mind should be encouraged but not in a way that is damaging to the team's reputation. The West Indies are now being described as a team that is just waiting for the test series to get wrapped-up so the more easier format of the game, i.e. the T20s and then the ODIs can begin. Plz understand that the WI is composed of players from many small island nations, some of which are progressing steadily in terms of economic recovery and now want a separate cricketing identity by launching their own, national teams. Thanks to the increasing number of T20 domestic games, the support and the loyalties for small island teams has grown much stronger - something like the club obsession that is found in the English and European soccer leagues.