Different Strokes (old)
Irfan, Kevin and Clarke: The Rising Stars
A toddler wobbles his way into the large room with big, soft settees
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
A toddler wobbles his way into the large room with big, soft settees. Papa is perched on one of them with a crunchy pack of edibles, gaze lost in that peculiar rectangle of radiance. Moving images keep leaping out of it. Our Tom Thumb ambles up unnoticed to a chin-high centre table and forgets the need of his unaccustomed limbs to be rested after every little exertion. Holding on to the prop he looks on intently, trying to figure out that ball game played by little men inside the box.
This might well have been the introduction to this addictive game for some of the present stars of international cricket. They would live up to a dream and achieve the glory of representing their nations at the highest level. A new chapter is inserted in their budding career book as they walk into the field of play, first international caps clutched firmly.
That first opportunity to play at the top level, however, is seldom the one-way ticket into that level. Rather it is an invitation to take the leap of faith and make that grade. The best of the lot generally complete the leap in success, announcing their arrival with initial spurts of success. It is but the slimy-n-slippery lowest step of a whole new stairway leading to the top. The world of admirers and opponents watches him now. Every step hereon will ask questions of skill, tenacity and adaptability that no lesson learnt as a kid could prepare him for. And the climb up this first step often proves to be the decisive one. Numerous promising careers are bid harsh good-byes here and few, if any, can ever cross it without a fumble or two. Here we take a look at some of our youngest superstars and single out this particular phase of their brief careers through their averages.
Irfan Pathan played his first international match in December 2003. He played 26 ODI matches till September 2004, averaging 25 with the ball and a handy 17 with bat. Anyone would gratefully take that for a start. The next 12 months of injury, resulting from stresses of top-flight cricket, saw him play a bare 12 matches. His bowling average dipped to nearly 31 in spite of very good returns against weaker teams. His batting average though started looking up – he averaged 40 even during this phase. Pathan won that fitmess battle and banked on his all-round abilities to come back and take his rightful place under the sun. In his last 10 one-dayers since October 2005 (excluding the ongoing Indo-Pak series) he has averaged 24 with the ball and 33 with the bat. Irfan's curve in the 5-day format also generated a coincident pattern.
Full postWhat Statsguru can tell us about the first final between Australia and Sri Lanka
Thanks to today’s result , we now know that Sri Lanka will play Australia in the finals of the VB series
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
Thanks to today’s result, we now know that Sri Lanka will play Australia in the finals of the VB series. This is good for the series, because in my opinion, Sri Lanka are better equipped then South Africa are to cause an upset win in at least one of the fixtures and push the series into a third final. Which is something that has not happened for twelve seasons. The trend strongly is that the team that wins the first final goes onto win.
So for Sri Lanka, to win the first final is very important indeed. If they can somehow conjure up a win in Adelaide on Friday night, they will have a great fillip and the second final is on their favourite Australian ground, Sydney. Between now and Friday, Sri Lanka’s coach Tom Moody will be working on a game plan to surprise the Australians, and he’ll probably use Cricinfo’s Statsguru program. Let’s see what Statsguru says.
The variations of scheduling help here, since these sides have met 15 times since 2002/03. This gives us a good sample to work with, and from these results, certain trends can be inferred.
Australia has dominated recent meetings between the sides, winning eleven and losing only four. The alarming figure for Sri Lanka is that Australia have batted first seven times in the fifteen, and won six out of the seven. Whereas, Sri Lanka have batted first eight times, and won three of those matches.
Full postThe perils of procrastination
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
This man is lucky, not everyone was able to get a ticket for Monday’s upcoming first one-day international between Pakistan and India. Instead, as Ashfaq Yusufzai pointed out in Dawn yesterday, some people ended up on the receiving end of a lathi charge by the local police. This is nothing unusual or new of course. Close followers of the game in the sub-continent can associate such incidents with ticket sales for most international games.
Ticket sales always begin before hand online, and the PCB likes to point that out whenever anyone criticises their ways in these matters, but this argument is hopelessly flawed. Truth is that the overwhelming majority of people who seek tickets have little or close to no online access, and even if they do, some of them, like me, prefer to buy them off line, in real life.
Given the knowledge that any tickets for any matches will always be high in demand, especially for ODIs, and even more so when a match is being held in a city like Peshawar, which doesn’t usually get a lot of cricket, why on earth would you want to wait till the very last minute to begin ticket sales?
Full postIs Silence golden?
Then shut it away in the locker with priceless jewellery and read on.
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
Then shut it away in the locker with priceless jewellery and read on.
"You owe me a beer."-Andrew Symonds to Michael Clarke as he left the field after he had been caught via a deflection off Clarke's boot
Lesson learnt: Playing supersub for the opposition can be doubly expensive.
"They have changed the whole way spin bowling will be coached. Anybody with half a brain will push it to the limits."-Dr Paul Hurrion, one of the ICC's expert panel of human-movement specialists, on the limits of legality
Full postThis goose looks sickly
As the interminable VB series finally comes to a conclusion, one has to say that this tired old format is starting to wear off on the Australian public
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
As the interminable VB series finally comes to a conclusion, one has to say that this tired old format is starting to wear off on the Australian public. In the bigger cities of Melbourne and Sydney, which get to see plenty of international cricket each year, the attraction of paying to see Australia take on South Africa or Sri Lanka in a series that leads to a best of three finals is limited.
Friday’s fixture between Australia and South Africa only drew 26,000 to the indoor stadium; for most cities this is a fair turnout, but there was a time when at the MCG over 60,000 would regularly turn out to see the Australians mete it out to whoever the opposition was. And while I was watching Friday’s play on television I noticed that Channel Nine said that tickets were still available for Sunday’s return fixture. These tidings should be of concern to Cricket Australia.
The problem is that there is just too much cricket on for the Australian spectator to digest. The ill-conceived ICC ‘super series’ started the Australian summer in October, and since then we’ve had six Tests between Australia and West Indies and South Africa. This comes on top of a very busy 2005, where the national team was pitted in an epic battle against England. So the passionate cricket lovers of Melbourne have half their attention turned to the return bout against England, which is only nine months away now, and the rest of Melbourne is waiting for the AFL football season to start.
So to make an ODI fixture attractive to the paying public, it has to have some meaning in the greater scheme of things. A preliminary round of the VB series, in the greater scheme of things, means…
Full postOverheard at the team hotel
Date & Time: 29th Jan 2006, 8 pm PST Location: Inside an elevator of the team hotel at Karachi
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
Date & Time: 29th Jan 2006, 8 pm PST
Location: Inside an elevator of the team hotel at Karachi
We step into the elevator and find two familiar personalities conversing.
S: "...I am a former cricket captain, numerically the most successful one for my country in this sport. People say I have led my national side with distinction and the team treaded uncharted territories of achievement with me in command. I used to be a more-than-handy batsman too. Then I had a prolonged lapse of form with the bat. At around the same time I also stumbled with the captaincy and code of conduct. All hell broke loose and suddenly I was out of the one-day side, by all indications for good. Ever since that, any official declaration regarding me or my selection is invariably stripped of all transparency. Sometimes I feel there is one set of rules for judging the others and another unstated set for me."
I: "Hmmmm..."
Full postTapping into Generation X-box
Raise the subject of Twenty20 cricket and you will inevitably witness a polarisation of opinion on the scale of the Red Sea parting.
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
Raise the subject of Twenty20 cricket and you will inevitably witness a polarisation of opinion on the scale of the Red Sea parting.
To the left hand of Moses is “Team Purist” consisting of those avid followers of the longer version of the game who immerse themselves in statistics and history and are usually fiercely protective of the years of invested time it requires to accumulate such a profound knowledge of ‘proper’ cricket.
To Moses’ right stand “Team Instant Gratification” whose members thirst for a shot of tequila in preference to a slow, warm pint of dark ale. The group who fidget at the movies and get rowdy if there is more than one person ahead of them in the kebab shop queue.
“Team Purist” may well be dominated by children of the last generation. Children that were transfixed with getting dirty. Where mud was a toy, dirt a magnet and open fields were the Playstations of the day. If these children had dextrous thumbs it was likely from climbing trees or squashing frogs but not from tapping on a game controller.
Full postWelcome to the new world order!
Ladies and Gentlemen: For those of you, who are wondering what all this ruckus about India’s new found importance in the Cricket world and its consequences are, this is what it translates into: As soon as the news was out, Kevin Pietersen applied for
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
Ladies and Gentlemen: For those of you, who are wondering what all this ruckus about India’s new found importance in the Cricket world and its consequences are, this is what it translates into: As soon as the news was out, Kevin Pietersen applied for an Indian citizenship!, not to be left behind his Hampshire teammate & captain, Shane Warne was asking around for the mobile number of an Indian nurse!, The South African cricket board approached the Indian high commission and offered to turn over Gibbs & Boje if India included them in the cartel! And and…after the win over Sri Lanka today, Graeme Smith without battling an eyelid said “India is a one man team & that the pressure is on India”!
;-)
Welcome, welcome to the new world order! The order that everyone knew, but didn’t call it out loud, the order that will either spell boom or bust for cricket boards around the world.
To be fair to the Indian cricket board, for all its accusations it has acted very very maturely. What they said was, “Listen guys, the calendar that you have for scheduling tournaments is outdated. Its due an update, we will update the calendar and then you can fit your schedule according to that. If it means that the champion’s trophy cannot be accommodated, then so be it”. (though not exactly in these words) For a Board that makes 60-80% of the world money, what they said was not a sin; this is just to be expected. I am only wondering, why it took them so long to call the ICC bluff. India is not ICC to keep everyone’s interest in mind when they plan tours. It’s up to ICC to make sure that India toes the line
Full postK-mystery: the little-known apparition
On my way to work I was self-exploring for a suitable New Year’s mantra
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
On my way to work I was self-exploring for a suitable New Year’s mantra. It was already the 2nd of January in 2006 and I simply could not delay it any further. I reached office toying with a few flamboyant options. A look at my table promptly evoked a largely acceptable though less romantic one: tidiness.
Half an hour later I was sitting at a somewhat cleaner desk (it took longer, to be honest). Now came the digital housekeeping; mostly the two and a half million e-mails. Shift-deleting through some age-old folders with scarce discretion I chanced upon this freak e-discussion about an Indo-Australian Test match at Mumbai in 2004, the one of pitch-controversy fame. The curious coincidence discussed in that string looked a bit creepier in retrospect of the horrors (on-field ones) that these Ashes held in store for the Aussies. I attempted to recompile the multiple bit contributions from participants. It shapes up roughly like this:
Rahul Dravid, the stop-gap Indian skipper for the 4th and concluding Test, was not one to waste precious time and energy in brooding over lessons learnt from the series already lost or theorising about the possible impact of being shot out for 104 in the first innings after winning the toss. It was time to salvage some pride. India came out with a positive outlook after the changeover and made a strong comeback into the game through a clinical field performance. Klinical rather – because they were aided by an inexplicable consonant in the Australian innings.
The Australians were sewn up for 203 in their first essay and the ‘k’ in that knockout was far from silent, as the scorecard here suggests.
Full postMove over or I’ll wag my tail
That Malcolm Speed should be compared to Kofi Annan surprises me little
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
That Malcolm Speed should be compared to Kofi Annan surprises me little. Both are front men for organisations intent on managing perceptions rather than outcomes. That Michael Atherton has written an unyielding article identifying the similarities between the UN and the ICC comes as little surprise either. Athers has for a long time been an astute and poignant observer of the game.
What does surprise me is some of the support the BCCI is getting outside of its own boundaries for flexing its elbow well beyond an acceptable fifteen degrees. There is a bigger picture to the BCCI exercising its muscles and reshaping its itineraries beyond analysing the merit of the tours and competitions the Indians have excluded themselves from. I sense that when Michael Atherton speaks of the “big beast” he understands these all too well.
Allowing a single cricket board, any board, to selectively brush aside aspects of its schedule that it has deemed unsuitable, for whatever reason, hugely undermines the already shaky status of a governing body apparently uncertain of its own capabilities and jurisdiction.
A process was followed to initiate the Future Tours Program. A process that all the Test playing nations quite literally signed up to. A process culminating in a written agreement that contained defined dispute resolution guidelines that seem to be have been ignored or at the least not enforced by the ICC.
Full post