Now if you have seen Tendulkar’s and Ganguly’s batting yesterday, you might believe that the 2nd test match at Trent Bridge turns India’s way. But then…but then…we have two great teams here. Two teams have their set of woes, but India’s woes are old!
I’m not sure how this match is gonna end… but India will need lot of scope to beat a team comfortably, without banking on the other teams’ worst performance!When will that happen? I’m not sure, but I’m sure this will not happen with the oldies that we have in the team…that includes Sachin Tendulkar whose batting can be counted only in one inning; Saurav Ganguly whose batting reminds me of batting greats like Muttaiah Muralitharan, Courtney Walsh and Harbhajan Singh. Kumble and Dravid…they have to accept … that a team like India right now can afford only TWO oldies! Lets not compare Indian greats with Australia. They are in a different league!

ONLY TWO will do and probably that is one of the reasons why not many coaching people are interested in dealing with India!

And about the Match happening at Trent Bridge:

England has a captain whose last great captaincy was …err…I’m not sure when! And then there is another captain whose brilliant thinking on the field is yet to be seen. Whats worse about this match is…not that one team might win here. But the team that performs WORSE looses the match here.

India are in a situation where they seem like great batting team… Just imagine if India needs to score 120 runs to win with 20-25 overs to go. You already know who you can rely on…and how much you can rely on..especially in 4th innings. We will also get to see how the first INNINGS high scorers perform!

BCCI… the Board for Cricket Control in India is upto what it surely knows how to do - Scaring Broadcasters away! The Supreme Court of India had already stated that cricket needs to be a national show - meaning all the matches played by India be broadcasted in India! 25% revenue by the National Telecasters Doordarshan (DD) will be given to the international broadcasters.

But then this time it was ZEE Television. The same Corporate House which challenged BCCI to start off a new Committee for cricket! So BCCI have stopped discussing the rebate terms with Zee and zee has simply stated “NO Telecast”. Huh…that means Zee’s loss will be Nimbus’ gains!

Looks all fun here… but it is the cricket lovers who will lose the fun. And importantly Indians…who are already down (forget their Bangladesh stint) who could have used it as a practice tour for England!

Looks like bad days for everybody going around with BCCI - players (no new contracts), viewers (cancelled tours) & broadcasters (share revenues…or whatever)!

Rahul Dravid said it right on why he thought the tour to Bangladesh was tough: “Had we not done well, people would have said, ‘What’s happening?’ Had we won, it’s not a big deal. So it was tough in that sense.”
But in the end India won both the Test series and ODI series, more than comfortably and they were tested ONCE - that not too Bangladesh, but by Rain!

Forget if Sachin Tendulkar made back to back centuries (after a long time) or if first four batsmen  made centuries in an innings. What was good to see was Zaheer Khan taking wickets with the first ball in both the innings of the second test match.

Ravi Shastri, Robin Singh, & Venkatesh Prasad seemed to have made no difference, as players dropped catches after catch, but it was only Bangladesh’s inept batting effort both the times, that made sure that they surrendered meekly.

Ashraful, Mortaza (again!) made a bit of entertaining effort, but they never threatened! It was just as if they thought lets make something out of all this fuss!

In the meanwhile, Ravi Shastri is going to back to ESPN-Star studios. One wonders, what difference did he tried to make in his stint. May be he was appointed as the spy to see some differences, yet ordered to keep telling to the media that there were no differences!

And then Dave Whatmore - He will be looking forward to coach the India…the announcement is soon to be made!

In the meanwhile Rahul Dravid & his mates will try going home and get some good sleep. They might have missed some good sleep after that pathetic performance in the World Cup. It is much better they sleep now. Because England & Ireland conditions are sure going to stress them!

Now that India has won the series over Bangladesh, the Indian Captain thinks that he will experiment. I’m not sure what is his meaning for ‘Experimentation’.

Good that India has won over Bangladesh, especially after the hiatus at the World Cup. But one has to keep in mind that it is after all Bangladesh (though it still needs to be beaten) and that India couldn’t pick all the wickets - that means it is a mental win for Bangladesh.

For someone like Dhoni and Gambhir, it was not much of great news! Why? Because they are good in Sub-continent conditions and it has been proven. And yet, Dinesh Mongia didn’t do much and Rahul himself couldn’t hit fours freely in the second match. Except Piyush Chawla’s googly, there was nothing much India should be proud of!
So Rahul Dravid should explain his term ‘Experimentation’ here. Does it mean he wants to open, or give chance to youngsters. Who will he ask to sit out? Sehwag, who plays as if to say who care and falls - his wicket is lost without building a partnership! Or will Dravid will sit out…he has to learn captaining a team. Or Yuvaraj - he can be stupid than Sehwag sometimes - he needs practice. Funnily, that means Dhoni, Karthik & Mongia need to be replaced…but while Dhoni and Karthik are in form…Mongia is looking for it!

So what will Dravid do…replace bowlers, yes I think that’s the only option. But that wouldn’t be called experiment - after all his bowlers didnt pick up 10 wickets!

A so called sting operation from a news channel reveals that there was and is a huge problem in amongst Sachin Saurav and Dravid. While Dravid was the thorough professional, Sachin wanted to be a captain again, knowing that he had more chances now. Saurav, always wanted to come back as captain, but that didn’t happen. But in the meantime, then Coach Greg Chappell was reportedly embarrassing Sachin (and the board was enjoying it).

Somebody atlast was telling Sachin that he was no great player if he kept failing at crucial times. But that did no good to the Team as Saurav had his how group - Viru, Bhajji, Yuvi and Sachin had the mumbaikars - Zaheer, Agarkar! That was too huge a gap to come up with. With Greg busy pointing out the negatives, it was chaos.

Funny thing is Greg understood this(or not) and resigned.  But Sachin and Saurav, it seems have been given a warning by not being included in ODI team. But that doesn’t mean that there will be any more Rifts.
It will be more fun to watch the fate of test matches that are going to happen in Bangladesh. Because while India is trying to comeback against Bangladesh, it will also have the rifted and gifted players aka Sachin and Saurav.

Only if India wins the two test matches within 4 days will one believe that India is making a comeback. Otherwise…forget words like Team India, Blue Billion, etc.

It was the kick-out from the World Cup 2007 that Indian Cricketer’s woes for the summer of 2007 started. And then came the poor decision from BCCI to have ‘maximum 3′ ads per player.

But all in all it was just about getting better. But no. After Sachin Tendulkar twisted his ankle everyone thought that this gentleman is getting too weak for Cricket. But then VVS Laxman came out with something of his own - Gastroenteritis.

Then everyone thought it is all over. Players will make a come back now. But the injury scare is not over for the poor injured cats…errr tigers of India. This time it is the Captain Rahul Dravid who tried to hook a rising delivery from RP Singh.

Though it personally makes me sad, because these injuries and troubles reflect the kind of injured energy these poor guys are carrying, but because they still cant get their act right. One is too heavy for their legs…and one is too heavy for a delivery from an average fast bowler.

Can we expect something positive from these guys? Yes you can. But I tell India and its populace no to fee excited if India turns out as a winner in Bangladesh.

Was it the clause that payment was related to performance or was it that the payment was too less, no one knows. But all in all, the Indian Cricket Players including big names like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid etc have refused to sign the new contract.

Previously the senior players got Rs.1,60,000 per ODI and Rs.2,50,000 for every test match. However, now the board says that it is going to give Rs.1,00,000 for every ODI and linked performance to more pay.

The fact that the presented payment is not very far from the reach of how much Domestic Cricketers earn per match must have also hurt the sentiments of the players. One cannot forget how BCCI (Board for Cricket Control of India) has restricted the number of  ad campaigns after world cup debacle is also an issue.

But now, it looks like the Cricketer’s want to do something about all this fuss. It is going to be interesting to see how the ‘tiff’ turns out to be.

It was not as what the Cricketing Pundits Predicted, but what happened was far from a Great Competition
Forget patriotism, forget heroism. Ladies and Gentleman, here is what you will call full fledged Hammering. Or in other words Professionalism! The Australians, following in on Adam Gilchrist’s ‘Invasion’, proved why they are actually called ‘Mighty’. They’ve got class alright, but when the rains came down at Barbados in the World Cup 2007 final, they knew they’ve got the extreme factors of the game coming into light.

Add to this the roughage of Adam Gilchrist, with a bit of luck. That means in a 38 over match an individual gets a score of 149(129 balls). So how many have done that until now. And then in a 38 over match, Sri Lanka, who had never chased a score successfully at a rate more than 6.5 had to do it now with 7.38. Well that could have been possible. But against Australians, you need luck, talent and prayers. Sir Lankans had prayers, but talent and luck…well those two factors left them when Gilly was playing his stupendous shots.

The Farce:

The farce that happened in the final was a correct ending for a World Cup that was too long, shrouded with too many mystery, had India and Pakistan out, where there were too many one sided matches, where there too many teams, and a Murder Mystery.To play spoilsport it was rains first. So there were 38 overs a side match. And another interruption in the Sri Lankan innings bought the Duckworth/Lewis method with 36 overs max.

At the end of the 33rd over, Umpire Aleem Dar offered light to Sri Lankan Batsmen, who were then at 260/7. The batsmen took the light, and the Australian’s started celebrating. In the mean time, the stadium management thought it was time for ceremony, and brought the podium in the middle of the ground.

Mr.Aleem Dar, then came out and told Ricky Ponting that the match wasn’t over yet. And they had to play it, tomorrow. And then SENSE prevailed as Mahela Jayawardane came out and told the umpires and his other counterpart that they would like to PLAY!

As Ian Chappel put it was a Fitting Finish for a World Cup, that was a doom from the beginning. And the fact that this was a major tournament with in six months after Champions Trophy, meant that the height of expectation wasn’t quite there.
But in the mean while the Astrological and Cricketing Pundits who thought Australia was finished, didn’t know that professionalism, supported by an excellent Cricketing system, made the impossible Possible.

And like India last time, Sri Lankans have to be contended that they are the second best team. And for all their heroism, it inspired LTTE to keep peace for quite some time. But then their failure probably drove LTTE nuts. They bombed Colombo, and now half of the city is in Darkness!

Farce or no matter what the Australians rule. In the mean time, McGrath who was ruled Player of the Tournament, played his last match. May be Gilly will be gone soon too. Whatever. World Cup is over for now!

I cant wait…it is getting on my nerves. Though in my previous blog I wrote how Australians have been professionally killing, it is indeed a great feeling that I can see in the Sri Lankans!

Everybody knows that Australians of 2007 today are a better cricketing unit than those of 2003, who were better than 1999 unit (who again were better than 1996 unit; all these units played Final matches). But what is more than interesting, is the fact that Sri Lankans not only beat their 1996 unit in terms of quality and sportive spirit, they also beat the teams of Pakistan (1999) and India (2003) in terms of variety. Add to this a special thing called Muttaiah Muralitharan, you will easily forget Inzys, Sachins, Wasim Akrams, Waqar Younis’.

And that is why they are great. They only have few stars (namely Sanath and Murali) but all others can build around in a great fashion. But one big big problem about Sri Lankans is that they have successfully chased a score of 300 only TWICE, one of which was against Zimbabwe.

So one already knows what Sri Lanka will do in case of winning a toss or what Australia will make them do if they win the toss. Otherwise you know that both Australia and Sri Lanka have got similar opening batsmen, similar opening bowling plans, one important spinner each. That makes it sound EVEN, while though it isn’t.

Sri Lanka will give it anything to win… because it will help the morale of people back home which is quite low after the LTTE attacks and the TSUNAMI. Is this the edge that they’ve got over Australia? Well I think it is. But if I were an Australian how would I think - “Lets finish the job mate”

So…well…I can’t really wait.

It is fourth time in a row that the final fight is going to be between an Asian team and Australia. In 1999 it was Pakistan who were bundled out for just 132 and in 2003 India were routed when the Kangaroos hit 359/2. Will the lankans be able to break the jinx?

The way they played so far, says they should be able to do it, but with some sort of pressure. Sri Lanka have been beaten in the world cup only twice. Australia beat them once. But a little heroic by Lasith Malinga, stole the limelight while South Africa struggled to beat them. And that says all about Sri Lanka. They’ve got loads of variety in bowling and are extremely quick with fielding.

Batting is a problem, but just imagine if Jayasuriya gets in. Though this Sri Lankan team looks the best team so far amongst the team that reached the finals, one still cannot take Aussies easy.

Martina Navratilova once said, “That greatness is not how you play when you are at your best, but you play when you are at your worst”. Australian’s well they seemed to have shaped themselves around exactly these words.

Hayden has been doing extremely good, and the tougher the situation, the tougher he gets. Gilly is not at  his best, but with a touch of luck he will spell doom for Sri Lanka. Ponting… is slowly charting his way to be the best ODI batsmen, with loads of success rate. Clarke and Hussey - my oh my these five are enough. But then there is Watson or Symonds or both to handle. It is just too much. And you have Bracken and Hogg who can bat, and are extremely good with ball as well. Not to forget the youngster Tait, who can be the only weakling. But to cover him up there is the one and only McGrath. If any of the two names mention above gets going, then all…and I mean that…ALL the 11 members of SL should give in their best.  Add to this that SIX of Aussie team played the last big final only makes the task too hard for SL.
I would say chances are Aus - Sl : 90 - 10. But then, remember SL gave a shot to Australia in 1996 in almost home conditions. And that is what the Lankans will like to take advantage of - the conditions that are similar to home.

All said, Cricket is a wonderful game - it is not just about physique, or character, it is more than that. It is slowing down, when some fails, and picking up once settled. It is not to be bash some one else’s weaknesses, but to bring out the best in a person all the time. One mistake you are gone.

This is Cricket at its best. Don’t be doing too many things on Saturday!