The Surfer

There was a clear preference for a more balanced portfolio this year. A strong second rung is always needed in case of injuries or bad form from the stars. So while the bidding for the stars always attracts the most media attention, the strategic actions taken to build the entire team is not always adequately appreciated. IPL team owners have clearly shifted their preference from highly skewed to more balanced player portfolios. These strategic dilemmas are a bit similar to what a mutual fund manager grapples with when designing his equity portfolio.

In fact T20 is the source of Australia’s problems. For a start the two most potent bowlers in Australia, Shaun Tait and Dirk Nannes, only play T20 cricket having declared themselves unavailable for Test cricket. In Tait’s case he has cited injury problems as his reason.

Just look at the facts and figures: MI retained Tendulkar, Harbhajan, Pollard and Malinga for $4.5 mn, while Kolkata Knight Riders had to shell out exactly the same amount, $4.5 mn, for just two players: Gambhir and Yusuf Pathan. If all the players had been thrown into the auction pool, as ideally should have been done, how much do you think MI would have had to shell out for Sachin, Pollard, Bhajji and Malinga? Or CSK for Dhoni, Raina, Vijay and Albie Morkel?

The buzz is that franchise owners were seriously miffed over Srinivasan sitting in on the auction while it was in progress. Friends in some of the franchises pointed out, through SMS and calls, that this was just one hat too many, one conflict of interest too much to stomach. First, they point out, he almost single-handedly rammed in the player retention clause when, besides CSK and Mumbai, all other franchises were against it. ‘If the IPL is democratically run, how come decisions are taken just because it suits one or two franchises?’ one person closely connected with an under-rated franchise asked on phone. Further, Srinivasan set the norms for the auction, decided which player would go in which category, and when each name would come up for auction — which is just dandy since, as a team-owner, he could in advance plan the CSK strategy, then tailor the auction process to suit his team.

There's almost no need to belittle them, because the second innings batting figures do that all on their own. New Zealand test history is littered with collapses of a similar magnitude, but rarely against an opposition team of such dubious quality.

The fact that the Black Caps are the eighth ranked, of nine, test nations indicates that they do lose more matches than they win. But this one will be harder to recover from than most.

A sportsman described as the Michael Jordan of his sport sticks an arrow into the Indian quiver that has been missing thus far. True world-dominating sporting power in the new liberalised era is foreign to Indians; to trade in the currency of its attainment, to speak of an Indian at the top of the heap in a game, to speak of the physical skill of an Indian, is a heady experience. Sachin brings instant admission to a world long denied to Indians; he does it by enabling a conception of us that is still exhilaratingly new. The nationalistic pride that he enables is of a qualitatively different nature.

To go back to Sourav, I still believe he would have had a productive IPL 4. There’s no way to prove this but if you have followed his career closely, you would understand why I say so. You see the scene is again set for him. Sourav thrives on a challenge. He is a fighter who loves to prove people wrong. That’s the man, his essence. One doesn’t know if at 38, he still has the energy to prove himself once again. But, perhaps the unkind outcome of the bidding would have rekindled that fire. The rejection and the humiliation was just the spark he needed. With Sourav Ganguly, you never know.

In 1990 Kumble had to miss a considerable portion of his semester because of his debut tour to England. On his return, he was asked by the head of the department why he had missed so many days of college.

This was a baffling question in itself - since almost the whole college knew about Kumble's entry into the Indian team - but nobody was prepared for the answer that was to follow. Kumble's succinct reply: "I was away for sports."

Overall, Clarke has met the challenge. Certainly, he has displayed the ability to think on his feet that eludes his predecessor. He set astute fields and tried to attack. He demonstrated his faith in Mitchell Johnson by giving him the new ball and made Michael Beer feel at home. Both responded. At last, too, Clarke instructed a paceman to go around the wicket to Strauss, a tactic that has often worked.

But if it was praise for Clarke it was also indeed a thrusting of the knife into Ponting. The virtues of Clarke, Warne made himself clear, were the vices of the man who now seems likely to be supplanted by a batsman of talent, who is currently at sea when he walks to the wicket and whose disapproval ratings would scarcely be higher if he was the leading suspect in a serial murder hunt.

Predictably, Grant feels that the greatest individual performance of his long career – he made his first-class debut in March 1990 – was his double-century against Pakistan in 1995, which included a partnership of 269 with his brother Andy. On the first morning at Harare Sports Club the Pakistan bowlers, spearheaded by Wasim Akram, were almost making the ball talk and reduced Zimbabwe’s top order to 42 for three. But Grant hung in there until he was joined by his brother Andy, who started to counter-attack as the ball lost its shine. Andy made 156, while Grant was still there when the declaration came at 544 for four, having scored 201 in almost eleven hours. This paved the way for Zimbabwe’s magnificent innings victory.