May, Sat 10 - Chennai Super Kings v Kings XI Punjab MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chepauk, Chennai
May, Sun 11 - Deccan Chargers v Kolkata Knight Riders Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Uppal, Hyderabad
May, Sun 11 - Rajasthan Royals v Delhi Daredevils Sawai Mansingh Stadium, Jaipur

Take it away!!

Yesterday was like watching back to back thriller movies helmed by directors who, while competent at their craft, were not quite the finished articles yet—the odd misstep here and there in the narrative, but interesting plots, compelling casts, gee-whiz moments, some spectacular stunt work [When last did you see this many mind-blowing run outs in the space of some six hours of cricket? Seriously, one plus point for the IPL is that it is showcasing spectacular skills, which are clearly the result of considerable practice, and which hopefully will inspire emulation at the domestic level], some emotion [Sourav enjoyed doing Rahul, didn’t he? And on the assimilation front, in continuance of what Mathew Hayden was talking of the other day about learning, in a mixed-cultural team, to empathize, check out Glenn McGrath’s expressions, and evident distress, when the game began slipping out of Delhi’s grasp at the last post]. At the end of it all, Bangalore remains at the bottom of the table, seemingly unable yet to reach out and snatch a win that is within grasp; Chennai does Delhi and in the process, moves to number three on the table though Delhi has played a game less. It’s all good.

It’s Friday, so as per usual I’m going to leave you guys to your own devices. To keep you going, first, Harsha Bhogle’s latest, a piece that makes the case for bowlers being the sleeper hits of this tournament. Harsha has the job of traveling with the Mumbai squad, and keeping an eye out for talent to poach in the next season; from that vantage point, he writes of the Mumbai outfit and its leader du jour, and also of the ongoing Harbhajan inquiry which comes to a head today with the designated magistrate meeting the two principals:

And in his wonderful, cultured, understated way, Shaun Pollock is emerging as one of the personalities of the tournament. Pollock is a more studied cricketer than Warne is, more process driven and yet, is starting to have a huge impact on a young team too. He was a reluctant captain for he didn’t know the younger players in the team too well but after the Harbhajan incident when it became clear that either he or the wonderfully bubbly Sanath Jayasuriya, would have to lead the side, he put his hand up. And he has been wonderful with the younger players, often reminding them that they must not be obsessed with the outcome but should concentrate more on the process. You can see he has been that kind of cricketer himself and he has led from the front.

Around him there is a nice bunch of young cricketers and for two in particular, Dhawal Kulkarni and Rohan Raje, this must be a dream come true. Pollock and Glenn McGrath have been the two great method bowlers of our times, two completely contrasting personalities on the field but alike in their adherence to the timeless qualities of line and length. They are great role models as bowlers and it is fantastic for the young men in Delhi and Mumbai to be learning from such masters.

Soon, even the Harbhajan-Sreesanth episode will come to an end. Some of us, who were shown the video of the incident as part of the hearing, and were rightfully asked to keep the contents of the footage confidential, are feeling very disappointed that those that are meant to investigate do not feel a similar need. And even though I am part of the industry, I cannot understand the urgency with which everyone feels the need to be seen on the small screen. Sometimes we need to get our priorities right.

If Harsha lauds the bowlers, S Rajesh on Cricinfo points to the vital nature of good openers, and combinations [Bangalore, incidentally, could just set a record for the most combinations tried in course of a single tournament, and this is clearly one of the main problems for a squad that is not exactly electric in the middle]. His main premise:

Almost invariably, a good start has led to victory. Only once has a team gone on to lose after putting together a half-century opening stand, but the circumstances then were exceptional - Punjab were up against a target of 241 against Chennai, and it was largely thanks to the 56 that Karan Goel and James Hopes added in 5.5 overs that Punjab managed to get to 207.

In yesterday’s post, I had linked to a Jayaditya Gupta article on how market forces are impacting on the IPL, in ways not always good. Texas-based Aditya Ramgopal, who follows professional soccer obsessively, picks up the argument, here.

That said, my point is this: football clubs in England and Spain are in the results business whether they are owned by billionaire owners or not. All clubs have strong fan bases that demand a certain level of success. Barcelona, for example, is not owned by an entity but by the 100,000 member fans that elect presidents to run their club — they are currently undergoing a major upheaval in key personnel that run their club, are most certainly going to ship Ronaldinho out of the club. No mad billionaire owners making rash decisions here. Not even sympathy for a former FIFA player of the year. Just a mix of common sense, results and a need to stem the rot.

Getting back to the IPL and the franchises, it is actually good for a fan to see proactive action being taken to improve results and, consequently, the quality of cricket on offer for the team one supports. How many years have we spent waiting for a world cup debacle for a change in personnel in the national team?

Market forces will allow players to give a hundred percent due to the stakes involved. How often do you get to see an Ashish Nehra dive full stretch at the straight boundary to save a certain four? Yes, the IPL and the pressure has made such wondrous sights possible. So let’s give it a chance, shall we?

A few interesting reads: Peter English on swimming as it relates to cricket, physically and mentally; Andy Bull returns to a theme that has appeared on this blog before: sabermetrics, and its potential to do for cricket what it has done for baseball; a few months after Cricket Australia spoke of moves to create/harness technology that will permit a batsman awaiting his turn to go into a room, where video screens throw up the on-field action life size, and shadow-practice against the bowlers out there in the middle. Fox reports on another innovation:

AUSTRALIA skipper Ricky Ponting has turned to high-tech plasma screen gadgetry in a private batting tutorial to help snap his form slump before Australia’s tour of the West Indies this month.

In fascinating scenes at Brisbane’s Allan Border Field, an enormous plasma screen television was hauled into the practice net next to Ponting as he was video-taped facing deliveries from a bowling machine.

The video footage was fed through the plasma screen, on a five-second delay, enabling Ponting to play a stroke and then watch it replayed immediately on TV.

Ponting, who endured a run of low scores in last summer’s one-day series and then failed to fire for Kolkata in the Indian Premier League, emerged delighted and declaring it as possibly the most valuable net session ever.

And when you are done reading, start playing. Alan Drummond, of Melbourne, tipped me off in email about ’Think Googly‘, a new game he has developed, and which he hopes could be an engaging, and different, experience from what exists out there. Fridays are for me not good days for goofing off, so haven’t given this thing a whirl—but that shouldn’t stop you; check it out, see what you make of it, and I’ll get back to this after doing a test run sometime this weekend, to compare my thoughts with yours.

Right, over and out—here’s to good cricket over the weekend; enjoy.

Later today Bangalore, the team that tops the table in the Kingfisher fairplay rating, will take on Kolkata, which is rock bottom on that chart—ooo, what a match up that is going to be! But levity aside, the IPL appears to have entered an interesting phase. Teams that spent the first half of the league phase discovering themselves and establishing their authority are now discovering their hidden vulnerabilities and tasting defeat; simultaneously, franchises that appeared unable to gel as a unit are now discovering their own forms of superglue, and causing headaches for the table toppers.

At the same time, the game on the ground appears to be changing too, and the trick going forward will likely be how quickly you can adapt to that change, reformat your game and find the right equations. Pitches prepared for this competition are aging—and under the baking heat, losing incremental amounts of initial life; teams that relied on batting strength to take the game away from the opposition are getting bundled out for ridiculous scores, making life easier for lower-ranked teams on the chase. 200-plus scores and fours and sixes by the bakers’ dozen are getting to be things of the past—and interestingly, as the bowlers gradually gain primacy, the fielders—who earlier had merely to stand on the boundary and watch the ball sail over their heads—are coming into their own; the good fielding sides are discovering that this skill gives them an added edge.

Great fun, all of it—and all those facets were in view in yesterday’s game between Mumbai and table-toppers Rajasthan. The eye-catching elements were Mumbai’s bowling and fielding—and within that, what interested me was growing evidence that Ashish Nehra is getting his mojo back. Pace-wise, he is not yet up there where he used to be, but the control is coming back, the ball is increasingly doing what he wants it to, and most importantly, his fitness is clearly nearing peak [as exemplified even in his fielding, which has been an eye opener]. Take that in tandem with some interesting new talent being showcased—Manpreet Gony; Siddharth Trivedi, who has been quietly impressive; Dhawal Kulkarni ditto… Couple that with interesting young batsmen showing glimpses of ability, and you have to reckon the IPL is doing the national team a big favor by showcasing alternate talent to call on, and increasing the pool.

On the Bangalore front, Charu Sharma confirms he was sacked even as the UB group insists he wasn’t.  Not that you needed the confirmation—when a top official quits midway through an assignment for “personal reasons”, you can be sure the “personal reason” is he was told he doesn’t have a job any more. Does he deserve the axe? Maybe, if he was vitally involved in deciding the composition and character of his side. The interesting thing is the accompanying buzz: that Venkatesh Prasad, for instance, has had his wings trimmed and will not henceforth play a part in the selection of the playing XI. And the larger story that franchises might look to rid themselves of non-performers, including ‘icons’.

That whole ‘icon’ business was tailored to protect the egos and business interests of senior Indian players—the BCCI clearly didn’t want a situation where foreign players walked away with all the money and various Indian ‘stars’ were reduced to also-ran status in the bidding. Trouble with the set up always was that it is the franchises that have to pay the bill for such artificial ego-stoking, and apparently some franchises are now asking themselves whether some of these icons are worth the trouble. Lalit Modi, again, to the rescue—published reports suggest that if franchises want to get rid of their icons, that is fine with the IPL commissioner, but either (a) the franchise will have to pay the full three year salary at the contracted price [which in the case of the icons are obligatorily larger than the costliest hire] or (b) find some other franchise who will buy their reject and undertake to pay him for the remaining part of the three-year contract, at the stipulated price. Fast forward to February, when the transfer windows will open and players, who have thus far seen their high salaries as the true index of market worth, find out for the first time what happens when market forces come into play. Should be eye-opening.

Talking of market forces, here is Jayaditya Gupta drawing on the soccer model to show how the days of tolerance in the face of defeat could be ending, as owners get increasingly restless, and proactive.  It doesn’t rank among Jayaditya’s better efforts, tending to begin at one point of the compass and veer off in the opposite direction, but as a starting point for thought, it works.

Right, in keeping with the sort of week it has been, only the one entry today—consider this an open thread, folks; be back on here tomorrow, and get back to regular blogging next week.

The WTF news of the day has been the sacking of Charu Sharma, CEO of the Bangalore franchise.

Sharma was not available for comment but it’s learnt he was told categorically on Tuesday afternoon that he would have to leave. “Charu can’t go out to bat or bowl for the team so, obviously, the owner wants to send a strong message after the string of defeats. This is clearly a symbolic gesture but unfortunately, the CEO has been made the scapegoat,” the sources said.

The news seemed to have surprised many of the players in the Bangalore team, who reached Kolkata on Tuesday night. “It’s been shocking, and so early in the tournament,” a senior player told Cricinfo. “There are still seven matches to go, and we could have clawed back. I just hope this doesn’t put additional pressure on the team now because the first question a team-mate asked on hearing about this development was: Who’s next?”

Reminds you of that old joke: Concerned parent takes his son to school, and tells the class teacher: My son is very sensitive. If he does something wrong, just beat the boy next to him, and he will get the message!

So Vijay Mallya, concerned that his franchise, the second most expensive in the competition, is not batting well, its bowlers are bowling the wrong lines and its fielders have raised benevolence to festive season heights, beats ‘the boy next to him’ and hopes the message will get across? It likely will—a message of an unhappy owner, ergo a threat to the bucketfuls of cash various players have been carting away to the bank; and with that message, its concomitant—the fear of who gets the axe next, which is not calculated to sharpen your focus on the game itself. As Siddhartha Vaidyanathan points out in his analysis, it’s the cricket, stupid. Sacking Charu Sharma is not going to do it; bringing in Brijesh Patel won’t do it either. From that piece:

“After the first round of auction in Mumbai, a few friends congratulated me on my Test team,” Vijay Mallya, the franchise owner, said before the IPL. “I mentioned this to our captain Dravid and he laughed it off and told me that Test cricket is the ultimate test for any cricketer and if a player can do well in that format, then he can do well in all other formats, be it one-day matches or Twenty20.”

....Dravid had hoped his experienced internationals could deliver under pressure but what’s actually happened is the converse: their lack of Twenty20 experience is hurting. Jaffer started the tournament without a single Twenty20 game; Dravid and Anil Kumble had only experienced two apiece; and Mark Boucher, the most experienced, could still be termed callow with 16 matches. Compare that to the Rajasthan Royals, who chose Dimitri Mascarenhas (31), Graeme Smith (27) and Shane Watson (17).

“Everyone thinks Twenty20 is hit and miss but experience actually counts for a lot,” Jeremy Snape, Rajasthan’s mental-conditioning coach, told Cricinfo. “It’s tough to react under pressure if you haven’t felt the intensity and pressure earlier. That’s the reason we chose players who had Twenty20 games under their belt.”

Martin Crowe, the director of operations, conceded as much. “Take out Misbah [ul-Haq] and we don’t have a specialist Twenty20 player,” he told Cricinfo. “We don’t have a specialist Twenty20 opener (even Shivnarine Chanderpaul is a converted opener).”

In its next outing, Bangalore travels to the Eden Gardens to take on Kolkata [tomorrow’s papers should be fun—how much money would you place on the possibility that someone will frame this as a battle between a captain who kept faith with his deputy in trying times, and a deputy who at the first available opportunity dumped that captain?]. It will be Kolkata’s seventh game—and a win will take it to six points, still two below the fourth ranked Chennai, from the same number of games. Against that, Bangalore will play its eighth, and with just four points on the table and six more games to go, it is a cert that the franchise is effectively out of the semifinals [What, win all seven here on? Not this outfit, not if all the commentators in the world go “Stranger things have happened in cricket"]. So, for all we know, late tomorrow night we will hear that Katrina Kaif has been sacked as the team’s mascot. Hey, stranger things have happened in cricket. But levity aside, at some point the team—more particularly, its management—will take a good, hard look at its components, pick on the basis not of ‘reputation’ but of effectiveness, stop putting all its gameplan eggs in leaky baskets, and focus on the way it is playing its cricket.

Turn the focus, now, to Mahendra Singh Dhoni. His CV thus far as captain has been a dream: a T20 win and a win in the tri-nation CB Series in Australia being the crown jewels. When the Chennai franchise cruised through its initial games, the mystique of Captain Cool got an added sheen. Now, following a dramatic slump from number one to number four in the points table [a slide coinciding with the exit of Matthew Hayden and Michael Hussey, and the realization that the franchise doesn’t have equivalent firepower in reserve], Dhoni’s leadership will be really tested, for perhaps the first time in his career at the helm. The key problem for Dhoni, currently struggling to find ways to stabilize the top order, is that he doesn’t have breathing space to get his sums right—Chennai’s next two games are against Delhi at the Kotla tomorrow, and against Punjab at home over the weekend; both good teams with stable lineups and a certain buzz about them. To make things just a little trickier, wickets across the country are slowing down as the tournament gets to the halfway stage, naturally enough. This forces teams to revise the 200-par they had set for themselves in the early stages of the tournament, when wickets were fresh, and rethink their batting targets. All of which, cumulatively, makes for the kind of test that, if he can cope with it, will probably be the making of Dhoni—be interesting to see how he responds. Hyderabad, meanwhile, looked far more committed and focussed last evening than it has in the tournament thus far; it is probably unfair to put that down to Gilchrist assuming the leadership, but the comparison will certainly be drawn when Laxman returns to the helm. Oh, and a player I’d pointed at earlier in this competition continues to impress with his consistency [No, not Rohit Sharma, whose class in any case was evident before the IPL began], and the way he seems to be improving with every outing: Manpreet Gony.

In other reading, the New York Times bureau chief in New Delhi, Somini Sengupta translates the IPL for a baseball-loving audience; Soumya Bhattacharya—and his daughter—can’t quite figure out which team to back now that nationalism has been taken out of the equation; Mathew Hayden has a zen experience at the IPL, to the point where you can now hear the milk of human kindness and understanding sloshing around inside of him.

“I think as a player, my view on IPL cricket and Twenty-20 cricket as a whole is that it’s an incredible experience and one that has broken down a lot of the cultural barriers that perhaps existed throughout the course of this summer,” Hayden said.

“We left last summer feeling a bit hollow about the whole experience. As a cricket team in general we felt that we loved to play the game in a way that’s hard we love to win.

“That’s very important in our culture and it’s certainly important for this cricket team.

“And I think just the fact we could get together and see some of the subtle variations and differences between an Indian side - as a player within an Indian side - was just an incredible experience and one I think changed my viewpoint, moving forward.”

Finally, keep an eye on this: the ICC contemplates trialling some changes to the way cricket is played and refereed.

The committee recommended that players “should be permitted to ask the on-field umpire to review any aspect of any other decision in consultation with the third umpire”, and that Hawkeye should be used - but only to determine the path of the ball, up to the point that it struck the batsman.

In addition, the committee cast its eye over a number of playing conditions, notably the so-called “comfort break” which fielding teams increasingly use. It was the committee’s recommendation that substitute fielders “should only be permitted in cases of injury, illness or other wholly acceptable reasons”.

There’s more in the story—and this is now an open thread.

Over the last two days, two games offered up an interesting study in contrasts; more marked, because the two teams central to the storyline were in identical positions. On Sunday, a hitherto unimpressive Mumbai beat a strong, successful, confident Delhi side by 29 runs. A day later, an equally unimpressive Bangalore side lost to the strong, successful Punjab by the sizable margin of six wickets.

Mumbai and Bangalore both put below par scores on the board, batting first—Bangalore’s par being set lower because the wicket and conditions at the Chinnaswamy Stadium were not as conducive to strokeplay as the one at the DY Patil Stadium in Nerul, Mumbai. The difference was, Mumbai defended its score with style; Bangalore made a mess of its defense [and just to even the comparison out even further, both teams were playing at home]. And what stood out between the two sides, as the key differentiator, was self-belief, and energy: Mumbai, on the field that day, oozed belief, commitment, focus, energy; Bangalore, in the field yesterday, lacked every single one of these characteristics. Repeatedly yesterday, Bangalore leaked runs: the fielders were slow to the ball, misfields proliferated, angry bowlers and embarrassed fielders avoided each other’s eyes. Against that, one magic moment from a magical fielding display in Sunday’s game stands out in memory: with the game poised to go either way, a fielder raced around the boundary line, starting at a wide long on and, with one final headlong dive near the ropes behind the bowler’s back, palming away a straight hit that seemed a cert to cross the ropes. Another fielder raced across from an equally wide long off, collected the ball and fired the throw in, converting a certain four into a fraught second run. The remarkable thing was not the diving save—the likes of Abhishek Nayar, Robin Uthappa and Dwayne Bravo had already demonstrated considerable skill and verve in that department—but in the identity of the fielder: Ashish Nehra, who during his appearances for India has been a positive embarrassment in the field.

I’m not suggesting that superior fielding made the difference in the two games [though, in fact, it did]; my point is that the contrasting fielding displays are the visible manifestations of the state of mind of the two sides. Mumbai has spent the first half of the competition waiting for Sachin Tendulkar to do a Phoenix and come to their rescue; on Sunday, yet again deprived of that hope, the team found inspiration within themselves, and played out of their skins. Bangalore, in contrast, has gone through this tournament waiting, seemingly, for some divine light to shine on them. It hasn’t—and the response from the team has been not to dig deep inside of themselves for inspiration, but to chop and to change, to fiddle with the batting lineup. Increasingly, you need an excel sheet and some expertise in accounting to keep track of the various combinations, especially at the top of the order, that the team has fielded—and every time the team management shuffles the lineup, it only reinforces—to the players, and the viewers—that the team has no collective sense of its individual abilities and of each player’s place in the larger scheme of things.

At this moment, Bangalore has completed half its fixtures, and has five defeats from seven games, and the lowest net run rate, to show for its efforts. Some recent turnarounds—Rajasthan and Punjab moving ahead of Chennai and Delhi at the top of the points table—should indicate that it is too early to write teams off in such an extended format—even so, damned if I can see any sign that Bangalore—at $111.6 million the second most expensive team, behind only Mukesh Ambani’s Mumbai at $111.9 million—can, through the remaining seven fixtures, climb into the top four. The performance will prompt questions—and much of the questions are going to be delivered to the address of the franchise skipper, Rahul Dravid. Should be interesting; meanwhile, share your thoughts on why Bangalore and Hyderabad in particular are failing. What are the problems as you see them: wrong choice of personnel, less than inspirational leadership, what?

Busy day [actually, an incredibly busy week] so this will likely be the only post for today. Will leave you with some related reading matter: A day after Ian Chappell wrote of him as the best captain Australia never had, Sambit Bal picks up the thread. The set up, to an interesting piece on Warne as captain-coach [Incidentally, does Warne’s performance warrant a re-think, some serious consideration of a more general move towards concentrating both roles in one person?]

We often see gestures like it on the field, but only occasionally get to hear the tales behind them. Here is one. When Yusuf Pathan tempted Adam Gilchrist out of his crease and had him stranded in only the third over of Rajasthan Royals’ match against the Deccan Chargers, no one was more animated than Shane Warne. While his team-mates were still celebrating, he turned towards the Rajasthan dugout and made a little gesture that said: “I told you so.”

“We knew it was coming,” said Jeremy Snape, who is part of Rajasthan’s support staff as performance coach. It had been Warne’s idea to throw in Pathan’s offspin early against Gilchrist and he had been certain Pathan would get Gilchrist out. “It took us a long time to discuss the machinations of this strategy,” Snape said. “When something like that happens, it’s brilliant.”

Elsewhere, the MCC moots a re-framing of the rules governing cricket bats, to restore the balance between bat and ball. The underlying intent—to ensure that bowlers are not reduced to supernumeraries—is in itself laudable, but I am not so sure this is the way to accomplish that objective, or at least, that this move alone will do it for you, when the laws of cricket are all increasingly weighed against bowlers. Batsmen were given license to hunt bowlers to extinction not when some bat-maker began toying with strips of graphite, but when the governing body changed the rules, one little winkle at a time, to cumulatively reduce the bowler’s options. And you don’t hear of any review of the laws.

Finally, Harsha’s brother, Dr Srinivas Bhogle, and his team came up for Rediff with something he is calling the Paisa Vasool Index—be glad to have your thoughts on how well it works, or doesn’t.

Apologies for the downtime, folks, and thanks for all the concerned mails [No, I am *not* in financial difficulties and do *not* need a rapid cash transfusion, though I seriously appreciate all those who were concerned enough to ask]. Just bad organization—forgot the damn domain name was up for renewal, is all. That is done now, but the confusion cued me into the thought that it is getting on for one year since the site started—time for an overhaul. Will do some behind the scenes work on things today [the weekend produced some interesting cricket—both the play itself, and the larger canvas against which the individual games played out, but most of that can wait till I get back], back on regular blog tomorrow.

Modi circa May 3rd, 2008 admonished: “in the interests of international discipline” IPL will not allow Akhtar to join IPL.Now suddenly the ban is suspended and this report Cricinfo quotes Modi:

“I am going to call him immediately and invite him to come to Kolkata tonight or tomorrow morning.”

So wtf is this latest deal all about, does a suspended sentence mean that Akhtar is not in violation of “international discipline” for a month? More indigestible is PCB’s stance in this matter. For starters it imposes a ban on Akthar for all the wrong reasons, then Nasim Ashraf, who has actually filled a defamation lawsuit against Akhtar, pleads to Modi and Pawar for allowing Akhtar to play in the league. What do the PCB and IPL take us for, monkeys?
For whatever he is worth, I dont think we have seen the last of Akhtar and his antics on the cricket field. Ashraf might be saving his arse by going lenient on the ban or whatever, but show some spine for chrissakes.

Billed as the match between the top contenders - OPEN thread!!
Chennai is at 37/1 in 5 overs ...Lets see what chennai can do in the remaining 15 overs.
Take it away!!

Games of cricket—most team sports, for that matter—don’t really need a framing device. But we use them anyway, setting up Batsman A versus Bowler B ‘contests’ within the larger game. When Kolkata took on Rajasthan, Warne versus Ganguly was supposed to be one of them.

In my book, though, the ‘contest’, if there was any such, was played out elsewhere. Warne has made no secret that John Buchanan is not among his favorite people – ‘gasbag’ and ‘verbal diarrhoea’ are among phrases the spinner has employed to describe his one-time national coach. If you frame this game as a battle of the coaches, Warne wins hands down: where Kolkata for large segments of the game seemed to be playing without even a Plan A, Rajasthan appeared at all times to be on top of things.

With the bat, their game was fashioned not so much around spurts of frenetic hitting but a controlled, more evenly paced progression towards the 200 Warne identified as his target at the toss. Within that, Swapnil Asnodkar stood out [after Ishant Sharma, for the second time in two games, had used pace and direction to knock over the stumps of a high quality international opener]—the youngster married flair with a sense of calm assurance belying his lack of experience at this level.

With the ball, it was even simpler – Warne appears to have reduced T20 to an exercise in geometry. Every one of the Rajasthan bowlers bowled to one simple plan: As often as possible, from a touch wide of the stumps; angling very sharply in to the stumps; on the fullest possible length – a line of attack that pretty much negates the additional leverage a batsman needs to power the ball away. Square fielders were set to stop the singles; the only option left for batsmen was to go straight, since the premium on making room and hitting square, or even looking to hit against the line off the pads, is way too high. Batsmen who do hit straight, as the only game in town, find deep fielders placed in the V to ensure that most times, all you get is a single.

It is not the first time Jaipur has relied on that strategy – but noticeably, in every successive outing they are getting better and better at implementing it, which speaks of focused drilling during the practice sessions. Munaf Patel’s series of yorkers that tied up Ganguly is one example; an even better one is the 17th over, from young Sidharth Trivedi, where the bowler used a stream of deliveries on the fullest of lengths to effectively end the game. Couple that with a young, quick-moving fielding outfit and increasingly Rajasthan, the ‘cheapest’ [hence, in early perception, weakest] team in the competition has suddenly become the side to beat.

The other game followed a more predictable path. Hyderabad has—barring the occasional blue moon in the form of an Adam Gilchrist—seemed insipid in its play, despite its lineup of power-packed hitters. The batting has been sluggish, the bowling a mix of the good and the bad, and the fielding ordinary at most times, embarrassing on occasion. Piyush Chawla’s bowling for Punjab; another sampling of Rohit Sharma’s brilliance with the bat [the youngster has used this tournament to rapidly advance his reputation as one of India’s brightest batting prospects]; Shaun Marsh’s impressive debut at the top of the order as replacement for Simon Katich, that was signposted by some of the most elegant leg side play seen till date; and Mahela Jayawardene’s deceptively casual cameo that sealed the end game, were the watchable highlights.

The holiday double-bill featured two knocks by senior Indian stars that suggested a narrative; I notice Sambit Bal has done it quicker, and better, so will leave you with his thoughts on the knocks of Ganguly and Laxman, and by extension the performance of Rahul Dravid in this tournament.

Outside of the games themselves, Ganguly’s habit of keeping the opposition waiting on his will, that had got under Steve Waugh’s skin during the ‘Last Frontier’ tour, has now riled Shane Warne; Ganguly’s response is characteristically dismissive. I’ll leave the commentary, on this incident, to you guys—personally, I think Warne should have known better [he was, after all, part of the Steve Waugh-led team on that famous tour] than to let the stage wait get noticeably under his skin; and equally, that Ganguly as a batsman had no business asking for third umpire adjudication on the Graeme Smith catch [ironically, said official added insult to the incident by getting it dead wrong after watching endless replays].

Friday—hence, India Abroad, hence off blog till much later.

Condy Rice trying to explain the reason of food shortage

“Now, some of that is not so much declining production as apparently improvement in the diets of people, for instance, in China and India, and then pressures to keep food inside the country. So, thats another element that we have to look at,” she said.
Yeah right, now Rice has to tell India & China how much they need to eat - of what they produce.

And look at what is more WTF’er
The fourth factor was the one relating to “biofuels”, which was “not a large part of the problem, but it may, in fact, be a part of the problem,” she added.

Ask once Mr.Manmohan Singh - and see if he agrees with it.

Peter Roebuck, writing on Cricinfo, says that that the IPL has been a success.

He makes some valid points, but this section struck a jarring note -

Supposedly, ten nations play the game to a high standard. Among them, West Indian cricket is in freefall, Zimbabwe reels under appalling governance, South Africa is trying to recover from the past without destroying the future, Pakistan is beset by political complications, Bangladesh is fighting to escape from the poverty trap, and New Zealand thinks mostly about rugby. Oh yes, and India has not produced a high-class batsman for a decade. The IPL will bring untold wealth. The next step will be to invest it wisely.

I dont know how anyone can claim that India has not produced a high class batsman in a decade. From a purely pedantic stand point, a decade back takes us to 1998, which predates the emergence of Laxman, Sehwag, and Yuvraj (I would also be tempted to add Rohit Sharma to this list, but its a little early for that).

More to the point, I am a bit perplexed by the whole Australia-is-the-game’s-cricketing-powerhouse while India-is-the-financial-powerhouse theme adopted by non-Indian journalists. No one would dispute that Australia have reigned dominant for close to a decade now, but India, post 2001, have with minor dips in 2004-05 and 06-07, also played some outstanding cricket. As per Cricinfo itself, India, after Australia, have had the most test wins away this decade (with series wins in Pak, Eng and WI), and been runner up in the WC ‘03. Add to that the T20 World Championship and the Champions Trophy, and India has certainly been a decent cricketing force for the past seven years, and not just a financial powerhouse.

A double holiday for us in Mumbai—May Day, plus Maharashtra Day. Which, in practical terms, means beer, food, and two potentially interesting games to follow. About the games, and all else, tomorrow—today, you guys get a holiday from me.

Open thread, people: Rajasthan plays Kolkatta, Deccan plays Punjab, much of interest in both clashes, so take it away. Reviews, and other news and views, tomorrow.

The film is set in India circa 2008. It opens with a young couple – the woman obviously pregnant – walking through a park, hand in hand, smiling as they talk of their hopes, their dreams for the future.

He dreams of a lifetime of productive work in the Ministry of Health and Human Resources, where he will work on sanitizing all forms of performing arts for public consumption, and tells his wife that he would rather do something for the betterment of the country, and be content with the occasional 200 rupee hikes doled out by the pay commission, than sell his soul to the corporate devil.
The wife smilingly applauds her husband’s virtue, and in turn tells him of her dreams of making a nice home for him and their children – who, in due time, are born, one of each sex. At which the couple promptly visits the nearest family planning clinic to, you know, make sure no ‘accidents’ happen in future.

The film takes you through this family’s life, as the children grow, enter school, earn the plaudits of their teachers for impeccable behaviour, get home and sit down immediately to their homework, break off in between to shower and say their evening prayers, and finally, when all the work is done, sit docilely beside their parents to watch television – which is permanently tuned to the Aastha channel.

They top their school finals, graduate with honors. The son follows in his father’s footsteps, writing the civil services exam and opting, as his first preference, to join the Ministry of Health. The daughter, meanwhile, learns from her mother the wifely arts – cooking, sewing, keeping the house tidy, managing the household budget...

In due time, the parents find a nice, virginal girl for their son, and a nice, virginal, non-smoking, non-drinking boy for their daughter. The two dutifully marry per the dictates of their parents, and as the film closes, the two young couples are seen walking in the park, the women visibly pregnant, telling each other of their hopes and dreams.

The film is scripted and directed by Dr [while on this, do they hand out doctorates for stupidity?] Anbumani Ramadoss—and the target audience is the village idiot of which, in the minister’s world, there are sufficient to fill a multiplex. [Link on GTalk via Arjun Swarup].

PS: If the bloke wants various lobbies to fund his re-election campaign/beef up his party’s war chest, why not just go up to them and beg ask?

Yesterday’s game was probably one of the less interesting ones in the IPL.  There was nothing spectacular in the match be it with the bat or the ball.  The Knight Riders perished trying to go for the runs too soon and the Mumbai team just had to bat sensibly to win the game.  Prem has an excellent account of Ishant Sharma’s bowling, the lone highlight of the game, below.

Today’s game is between the Daredevils - who last lost to the Punjab King’s XI - and the Royal Challengers who seem to be struggling to get a combination that can produce results. 

I made a call yesterday on who would win the game and was wrong.  I will still stick my neck out today and bet that the Daredevils will win this game.  They have a good bowling attack that exploit the pace and bounce on the Bangalore wicket and they also have a good top order that can tear any bowling apart.  It will be interesting to see what combination Dravid goes in for today.  Will he open?  Will he bat at number 7?  Will Kumble get another game?

I will watch the game just to watch McGrath and Asif bowl in tandem.  I will also want to see Steyn bowling to Sehwag!

Open thread guys - post your comments before and during the game.  Hoping for a good game and not like the scrap that we witnessed yesterday.

Kolkatta versus Mumbai was not so much a magical match, as a scrappy affair between two nervy teams that produced occasionally vignettes for the memory bank. And in the final analysis, an under-confident Kolkata missed a bet, a chance: Given the revolving door installed in most team dressing rooms, with players leaving to fulfill other international commitments, the key in the early stage had to be to notch up the maximum number of wins to take advantage of the presence of high-value internationals. With two defeats in two games, and with the latest one marking the valedictory performances of Ricky Ponting and David Hussey, Kolkata missed out on that chance, and now faces a far harder task.

Mercifully, the wicket did not repeat the horror story of the inaugural match at the venue; the BCCI’s chief curator Daljit Singh managed to tamp down the demons, and rid the surface of uneven bounce. The result was a wicket on the slower side, with potential for turn—and strangely, the home side was the one that didn’t revise its gameplan; through its innings, Kolkata seemed to be trying for a 200-plus score on a track where anything between 160-170 would have been par.

The first moment of magic came during the Kolkata innings, when Sanath Jayasuriya turned the clock back with a game-defining spell after another veteran, Shaun Pollock, got rid of Sourav Ganguly through some lazy batsmanship, and Brendon McCullum thanks to that batsman’s attempt to play across the line before he had properly figured out the pitch. Jayasuriya counter-intuitively tossed the ball up above the eyeline, invited the batsmen to go for broke, and left the slowish track to do the bulk of his work.

Outside of that, the Kolkata innings was devoid of moments of charm; the final total, thanks largely to Laxmi Shukla, a good 30 runs below what the home side wanted.

That set up the other magical moment: Over number four, Ishant Sharma versus Jayasuriya. The batsman had pushed a four through the straight field and then carved a six off the bowler’s opening over; the first ball of his second over saw Ishant really hit his straps, beating Sanath for pace and bounce. The second ball was equally quick, but just that fraction wide; Jayasuriya got his bat to it for the trademark carve over cover. Ball three was just back of length, it reared up at pace, forcing the batsman into an ungainly last minute duck, took the involuntary edge and raced through for four behind the keeper. And then the piece de resistance—a delivery of blinding pace, that hit length, hurried onto the batsman with just enough incut, hit the bat before Jayasuriya was ready for it, and sent the stump cartwheeling all the way back to the keeper. The bowler then sent down two deliveries to incoming batsman Robin Uthappa that, in succession, thudded into the defensive bat before it was properly in position. Blinding pace, great accuracy, fire and intent in approach, delivery and follow through—and not a yip out of the bowler, just that smile wide as all outdoors.

During the third Test of the recent series in Australia, Ishant had in a magical burst managed to make Ricky Ponting look like a novice; here, when Jayasuriya fell, Ponting raced up to high five his erstwhile tormentor, and make a mess of his wild mane. Interesting, how quickly loyalties dissolve and are re-built around the uniform du jour—grist perhaps for Ram Guha’s mill.

Once that over was done—and Robin Uthappa, in Ishant’s next, played an extraordinary front foot drive through the covers on the up—the spell was broken, and when Dwayne Bravo [whose display of grace and timing especially off the back foot was the stand out performance on the day] played a scarcely credible back foot punch, both feet in the air, past point also off Sharma; the game was as good as over. Mumbai, the only team to have played five games, finally has points on the board; Kolkata, after four games, has slipped from the top of the table to number four [at three is Delhi, which has only played three, and is at home to Bangalore today].

In passing, a blast from the past; remember this moment?

In other IPL-related news, South African coach Mickey Arthur talks of Sreesanth and Harbhajan as serial offenders, and indicates that the two bowlers, whose ‘volatility’ has been celebrated where it should have been condemned, are disasters waiting to happen. And the BCCI, typically, takes issue with an official who seems to have said nothing but the truth—umpire Amiesh Saheba is benched for two games for saying that Sreesanth’s behavior during the Punjab-Mumbai game at Mohali the other day was less than exemplary. Apparently the BCCI has ‘asked Saheba for an explanation’; be nice if it could now ask its match referee to explain why umpires, the go-to source for on-field issues, were not heard during the inquiry into the Harbhajan-Sreesanth spat.

On a personal note, a day of mostly outdoor work; will likely be off blog for most of it, hence.