Different Strokes (old)
Abid Nabi and Muslims in Indian Cricket
When Abid Nabi plays for India(people who have seen him bowl assure me he will) against Pakistan, I can not begin to imagine the historical baggage he will be carrying
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
The optimistic buzz surrounding Abid Nabi, the young paceman from Jammu & Kashmir set me thinking about a topic not many are comfortable discussing - Indian Muslims and Indian cricket.
A few weeks back, when demands were made from certain quarters that a survey be carried out to ascertain the percentage of Muslims in the Indian Army, there was a lot of dust kicked up. Some said any such survey would be tantamount to colouring the Army communally. Others said such a survey would be very important in showing how well or poorly represented Muslims are in one of India's most respected institutions.
In general, it is observed that the representation of several underprivileged communities and castes in all walks of life in India is not even close to being proportional to their population. The reasons for this can be manifold, with the main one probably being a lack of access to resources. Another reason, a more sinister one, is stated to be discrimination. Some feel that Indian muslims are discriminated against, at least while being admitted to the army, because of the tumultous history India shares with Pakistan, the Muslim majority part of the former undivided India that broke away.
In a country like India where most institutions are seen as rickety and untrustworthy, very few command respect and admiration. The army is one. The film industry is another. And of course the Indian cricket team is the third. It would be interesting to see how Indian Muslims have been treated in the world of cricket.
Full postFamiliar Words
"We are not going to play names anymore."
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
"We are not going to play names anymore."
"We are going to play to a plan. We are going to have positions. We going to have requirements to those positions, and it doesn't matter who it is..."
"If these positions are being fulfilled in the way that we like these players are going to have the opportunity to continue within the team."
"Right now, we are unsettled in terms of the order, but in our minds we have settled on what the exact positions they need to be, and we are working our way to find the right players in the right position."
Full postSub-continent get the World Cup in 2011, Aus-NZ in 2015, Eng 2019
No I'm not posing as Nostradamus, nor am I busting some secret tournament fixing by ICC
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
No I'm not posing as Nostradamus, nor am I busting some secret tournament fixing by ICC. That is not a take on possible World Cup winning teams from the future. It's just the distribution of future Cup hosting rights as announced by the ICC today.
Hold on mates - look who all are missing out on a home World Cup! Bad luck Punter, Straussie and Fleming but you do not get to play a World Cup at home.
Oh! What about Jammy? Rahul Dravid made his ODI debut in the Singer Cup Tourney at Singapore in India's first match following that Eden 1996 semi-final defeat to Sri Lanka. After his 1st two matches I faintly recall a friend getting amused at this new player who "keeps batting rock solid before getting out for these 3's and 4's".
It's been 10 years of 'wall'ing since narrowly missing out on a home World Cup. So what are his chances of featuring in the 2011 World Cup as a player?
If you ask me the chances are bleak, real bleak.....
In case he does not qualify in the national side in 2011, Dravid will forever rue his first ball duck to a snorter from his regional mate Srinath in a Challenger trophy match preceding the 1996 world cup, the first such tournament to be held in India for picking the national squad from 40 odd probables.
Full postCheck up on that notion with stats
Stephen Fleming scores a big Test double in the ongoing Test series
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
Stephen Fleming scores a big Test double in the ongoing Test series. Fleming’s 99 from his last Test tour in SA and that one-day ton against the South Africans in the last World Cup immediately spring to mind. This man loves scoring against South Africa. I run the Cricinfo stats filter to confirm, and am promptly told that I drew a blank there. For someone with an overall career batting average approaching 39, Fleming fared a meagre 30.15 runs (573 aggregate) against South Africans prior to this match and the 262 at Capetown stands out like Table Mountains in the Newlands stadium backdrop.
I turn to his ODI stats in desperation. Fleming averages only a point and a half more than his career average (32.07) against his imagined ‘bunnies’, and that World Cup century remains by far his best score playing South Africa. Just two filtering exercises on Cricinfo’s statsguru and ‘pop’ goes a confidently held notion.
What went wrong there? I regroup from the statistical pasting after a while and sit back recalling the circumstances of the three Fleming innings mentioned above. The nature and background of those knocks went into creating that ‘SA-basher’ image of the NZ skipper. I realised I had jumped to a certain general conclusion based on a few specific samples. But isn’t that the method we often apply while judging sportspersons in any field?
We, the sports viewing people, are often reasonably correct in our judgement of players and teams we follow on a regular basis, even without going into stats filters. The samples (live player performances, say) are gathered aplenty and fed into that processor residing above our eyes. Our mind does a decent job at creating ‘impressions’. It is better than most computers at our disposal in filling up the odd missing input data all by itself. Those unique add-on tools named ‘perception’ (P) and ‘interpolation’ (I) never cease to amaze us in the way they keep functioning without our realising it. (Remember the optical illusion test your friend emailed you the other day?)
Full postSome thoughts on playing cricket at the Oval
A few days ago I was at morning cricket nets at the Oval Maidan in Bombay, a weekly affair where we exercise our two-bit skills with high seriousness and fidelity to ritual
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
A few days ago I was at morning cricket nets at the Oval Maidan in Bombay, a weekly affair where we exercise our two-bit skills with high seriousness and fidelity to ritual. Not far from where we were playing a bespectacled young man, clad in a tracksuit and a cap, was conducting some summer cricket coaching with a dozen boys in whites.
Caught up in the mechanics of bowling that outswinger that looks so simple but proves so vexing, I soon became oblivious to them. But a little later, while chasing down a hit, I happened to witness a little scene - a standard fielding drill. The man had lined all his wards up, and was hitting balls towards them; they were supposed to run up one by one, field the ball and throw it back, and return to the back of the line.
Unsurprisingly it was the coach himself who seemed most enthusiastic. He hit the ball and shouted, in a tone meant to gee up the kid, "Come on, get it, it's yours!" But the boy running towards it seemed unable to turn his speed up a notch; in fact he had a struggling, striving air, like a butterfly fighting against a breeze.
And the things that was slowing him down were his shoes, which were clearly two or three sizes too big for him - perhaps hand-me-downs from an older brother or cousin. As he ran in they seemed somehow to have a life of their own, independent of the feet inside them. He stopped the ball, returned it, and ran back, a little sheepish. But no great tragedy need be read into all this. If he was slightly embarrassed, he was still enthusiastic and "switched-on", pursuing his dream, even if in shoes two sizes too big.
Full postThe 15 day retirement
“ Blink and you’ll miss it ,” went Cricinfo’s "All Today’s Yesterdays" column today
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
“Blink and you’ll miss it,” went Cricinfo’s "All Today’s Yesterdays" column today. For a moment I mistook it for a reference to Shahid Afridi’s 15 day old retirement that got reversed today. It seems only a few hundred left-button clicks since I read Osman Samiuddin’s breaking news about Afridi withdrawing himself from Test matches. The wise man that he is, Osman remembered to add these last moment prophetic words before rounding off his article:
“Given the sudden timing of his announcement, however, and the fierce speculation now surrounding the circumstances of his axing from the last Test, it is unlikely that we have heard the last of this.”
Bukhari, secretary of Afridi’s home association KCCA, hints at a disappointment at being an in-and-out member for too long. "It was unfortunate that Shahid was sidelined from the Pakistan team for quite some time before he staged an exciting comeback. He appears to be upset after being dropped in the recent Kandy Test against Sri Lanka.”
A few days back we also had this stereotypical ‘unnamed’ official (there are millions of them crowding the corridors in the subcontinent) throwing his unstated weight in by confirming Afridi’s reasons of retirement:
Full postMiandad's at it again
Shahid Afridi has had no shortage of people urging him to come back from his “retirement”
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
Shahid Afridi has had no shortage of people urging him to come back from his “retirement”. Because of the sort of player Afridi is his fan following has traditionally been very large so such a response was always on the cards. Shehrayar Khan, PCB’s top man, has like most other people in Pakistan, been amongst those countless others who have tried to persuade Afridi to change his mind, but the other day he did not let this general good natured "please don't go" mood of the reaction to Afridi's retirement stop him from letting Afridi know in a clear cut way that he ought to be prepared for repercussions if he decided to stick to his plan.
"He is a very good player and we want him for both forms of the game" Shehrayar started off diplomatically, "but we can't have players picking and choosing when and what they want to play, if he wants to skip Test matches then we have to see what sort of contract he should be given" he concluded logically. Afridi currently has a Category A central contract that entitles him to a monthly allowance of Rs 200,000 (£ 1800 approximately). This puts him along side the highest paid cricketers in Pakistan. Contracts are reviewed coming July.
I see nothing wrong in this; I don't see how this indicates an application of "pressure" on Afridi as Jawed Miandad insists in his customary horses for courses reaction to the remarks but then again, I’m not in the Legendary Ex-Player Turned Hopeless Commentator Society so I doubt I will. You'd expect that with the hiring of Jonty Rhodes as a temporary fielding coach the "former player vs. Bobby Woolmer" tirade will regain momentum and you'd hear quite a lot from Miandad and co. (have I mentioned Imran Khan's latest declaration of love for Sami as yet?) but this is all getting incredibly silly now, too silly if I may say so.
Now please don't get me wrong, I have the out most amount of respect for Miandad, he was tough competitor in his playing days and one of our best players ever, but I really find it difficult to not be seriously irritated at his so-called expert analysis, especially the bits he's been doing since being sacked as coach in favor of Bobby Woolmer. Ever since Woolmer has been hired Javed's done nothing but criticise the PCB for one thing or another, one day he's on GEO ranting about the batting order, next day he's telling The News how useless Bobby Woolmer is.
Full postForm is temporary.....
…and who better than a South African named Herschelle Gibbs to testify for its quirks
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
…and who better than a South African named Herschelle Gibbs to testify for its quirks? Ask him about his last one-day innings; chances are you will notice the old sparkle come back to his eyes. It was that scarcely believable knock of 175 out of 438, a sublime innings that orchestrated the greatest one-day chase against the topmost ODI team in the world.
The downward spiral of Gibbs' form that followed the innings of his life was once again scarcely believable. In the 4 tests he played since that 5th one-dayer against Australia Gibbs has eked out a dismal 121 runs - less than what he got in that one innings - over 8 completed innings at an average of 15.12. This, on top of a meagre average of 25.70 over his last 10 Tests, has left the selectors with little option but to drop him from South African Test squad after the 1st of 3 Tests that the home team are scheduled to play against New Zealand. Suddenly that innings seems like a thing of the distant past!
The game sure is full of uncertainties, many of them far from glorious to the players.
Full postThoughts on Malcolm Speed
I read the other day that ICC CEO Malcolm Speed was vigorously defending his new Future Tours Program against criticism
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
I read the other day that ICC CEO Malcolm Speed was vigorously defending his new Future Tours Program against criticism. Like many parents, he’s been most protective of his offspring. He made his remarks in context of recent Australian complaints of exhaustion at the end of their recent heavy schedule.
Since the Australian cricketers are labouring under tours scheduled under the old five-year cycle of the Future Tours Program, (FTP) rather then the new one, Mr Speed completely missed the point; rather, the Australian player complaints merely underlined the unsuitability of the old FTP. There were many critics of the old FTP, for many reasons. I was one of them and I outlined them in this blog back in January.
There still are many reasons to criticise the FTP, even in its new and improved form. It is important at this stage to recall the problem for which the FTP was created. It was that the ‘senior’ Test nations, by which we perhaps mean in this context, the more commercially lucrative, were not playing the less commercially lucrative nations enough. In particular the introduction of Bangladesh to the playing schedule had complicated things, as there was a widespread view that Bangladesh were not strong enough to justify full Test status.
This was a legitimate problem, and one that the FTP is designed to solve. However, the problem is that it is over prescriptive. Malcolm Speed himself describes the work that went into it:
Full postIt was no simple task to put it together as it involved two years of analysis and ten different drafts but at the end of the process we believe this new FTP will play a crucial role in management of player workloads.
How do we judge the number one batsman?
I like Mahendra Singh Dhoni much, and wish him the very best in life and career
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
I like Mahendra Singh Dhoni much, and wish him the very best in life and career. In fact I am a fan of him. If I were to be sealed off in a remote island for 3 months and then be asked to guess ‘the world’s best ODI batsman now’, Adam Gilchrist and Dhoni must be two of the first names that would occur to me. The ICC ODI world #1 ranking for his batting, as such, is an expected return that no one should grudge him.
But incidentally I have been watching cricket for the last three months, and there are two one-day players today who seem to be batting on the 3rd floor while all others, Dhoni included, are fighting it out on the 1st to win a ticket to the 2nd. The Australian skipper and #2 batsman Ricky Ponting is one. The other is Dhoni’s team mate and winner of three consecutive man-of-the-series awards, Yuvraj Singh. He is ranked number 10 though.
In the 2nd of the two-match DLF Cup series versus Pakistan at Abu Dhabi, everyone except Yuvraj in either team had a struggle during their respective stays at the crease. Dravid played more than 100 balls and yet never looked entirely comfortable with the stroke making. It would be ditto with Inzamam in their innings. The older ball was clearly causing problems.
India’s nemesis Mohammad Asif returned with Rana Naved during Indian ‘slog overs’ to strangulate the Indian innings and the two were largely successful at that. Exit set batsmen Dravid and Dhoni and enter new player Yuvraj Singh, coming in at twilight, starting his innings against two very accurate seamers bowling in a groove with the virtually unhittable old ball. He plays a few deliveries in typical fashion and then breezes 18 runs from 4 balls in an Asif over.
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