The Surfer
Sponsors run Indian cricket: Pawar
In an interview to CNN-IBN, Pawar said companies which sign on a large number of cricketers for endorsements try and use undue influence to keep them in the team
Sriram Veera
25-Feb-2013
In an interview to CNN-IBN, Pawar said companies which sign on a large number of cricketers for endorsements try and use undue influence to keep them in the team. Read the extracts in the Hindustan Times.
We had received a complaint that a player's contract had a clause that said, more incentives for more time he spent at the crease. It’s an unofficial complaint and if found to be correct, the system needs to be strengthened. So I have asked the players to submit copies of their old contract.
But it seems you are targeting the players and preventing them from doing ads.
Well, there is one more issue. If eight or nine players sign a contract with XYZ company, the companies always want the players to be in the team. It is not an official complaint but on the surface it looks like one. There is a feeling like this amongst the younger players.
Full postCoach not the problem
Kanishkaa Balachandran
25-Feb-2013
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The blame for New Zealand's disappointing exit from the semi-finals shouldn't rest on the coach John Bracewell, writes Richard Boock in the New Zealand Herald. He says that naming individuals as scapegoats isn't going to help as it's the entire squad which should be made accountable.
New Zealand bombed out in the Caribbean because the individual players, when presented with the equivalent of a rigged draw to see them through to the semifinals, choked like a chihuahua on a chicken bone. Remember the old saying about a champion team always beating a team of champions? Utter rubbish. Romantic bollocks.
Writing in the same paper, Adam Parore has a different opinion and feels that Bracewell hasn't done enough to warrant a second term. He also pushes for John Wright as a worthy replacement.
Full postA bloated non-event leaves an empty feeling
The World Cup might be about to finish, and Malcolm Speed is engaged in a positive-spin initiative that would make Alastair Campbell glow with pride, but the all-out assaults on the way it has been run continue unabated
Martin Williamson
25-Feb-2013
The World Cup might be about to finish, and Malcolm Speed is engaged in a positive-spin initiative that would make Alastair Campbell glow with pride, but the all-out assaults on the way it has been run continue unabated. In The Daily Telegraph, Michael Henderson warms to the task, explaining why there will be a rare sell-out for the final:
Embarrassed by their mismanagement of the World Cup, which has not posted a 'house full' notice until now, the International Cricket Council have rounded up corporate guests from every nook and cranny, and distributed tickets to anybody sound of mind and body who will have them.
This has been the worst tournament imaginable; short of spectators and memorable games, it has also been far too long.
The ICC have had to 'paper the house' time and again because the tickets have been prohibitively expensive for the locals. In St Lucia on Wednesday, more than 6,000 tickets were given away so that television viewers would not see a half-empty ground for the Australia-South Africa semi-final. Also, those grounds have been zealously policed by killjoys instructed to ban anything and everything that is not officially endorsed by the sponsors.
Full postMcGrath a champion till the end
Peter English
25-Feb-2013
Robert Craddock writes in The Australian Glenn McGrath has proved us all wrong.
Hands up if you are a cricket fan and did not have doubts over whether McGrath should be in Australia's World Cup squad. If both hands are by your side, congratulations. You are a member of a very small club. In the dying stages of the summer, McGrath looked a fading force. The speedometer was sagging below 130km/h and vengeful batsmen, stirred by years of torment, were charging him at every opportunity.
Cricket dictionary for mobiles
I think we can assume that the vast majority of Cricinfo's readers have a degree of knowledge about the game (and, in some cases, an actual degree )
Will Luke
25-Feb-2013
I think we can assume that the vast majority of Cricinfo's readers have a degree of knowledge about the game (and, in some cases, an actual degree). But your friends might not, so why not buy them a cricket dictionary for their mobile phone?
Full postSpeed plans 40 days of feast for 2011 World Cup
Malcolm Speed, the ICC chief executive, is interviewed by Robert Craddock in The Australian and says he would like the next World Cup trimmed to 40 days
Peter English
25-Feb-2013
Malcolm Speed, the ICC chief executive, is interviewed by Robert Craddock in The Australian and says he would like the next World Cup trimmed to 40 days. He also talks about ticket prices and one-sided games, but starts with the length of the event.
Do you agree it is too long? “I take a different view. I think it is a positive for the game that cricket is on the back pages while the World Cup is on rather than have an abbreviated schedule. This format with four groups of four going into eight teams and a round robin then a semi-final and a final is a good mix. It gives the associate nations a chance to make their mark and then the round robin works well.”
Waugh backs Australia but tips Gibbs 'moment'
Peter English
25-Feb-2013
Steve Waugh, writing in the Courier-Mail, says Australia should be confident of victory against South Africa, but like all the teams they are only ten overs of poor play away from the exit.
Australia must continue to allow the process to lead to the end result and not focus on the actual winning of the World Cup, for the only way it can lose is to defeat itself by looking too far ahead.
Turn-off in 2011 awaits unless ICC has rethink
Christopher Martin-Jenkins in The Times warns that despite widespread criticism at the bloated nature of the current World Cup, things could get worse in 2011
Martin Williamson
25-Feb-2013
Christopher Martin-Jenkins in The Times warns that despite widespread criticism at the bloated nature of the current World Cup, things could get worse in 2011. He explains that suggestions that the number of teams should be reduced have already been bypassed by the ICC, which has agreed it will again feature 16, and, furthermore, there will an extra two matches, taking the total to 53.
He says while the tournament may have been slammed, it has made large sums of money.
All this, however, has been gained at a high cost if the “product” is seen to be less attractive than it should be. The best cricketers in the world need a proper framework to display their skill but to those following from afar, the tournament has seemed interminable. And for interminable read, alas, boring.
All concerned with the tournament in the West Indies and certainly those watching at home are agreed on one thing: a seven-week tournament is too long. The commercial success of the world’s governing body is not in doubt. The snag is that it tends to put the cart before the horse: to consider the bottom line financially before looking after the attraction of the game itself.
Full postSabina Park nightmare still fresh for Braces
New Zealand play the first semi-final at Sabina Park in Kingston, the venue of coach John Bracewell's only Test for New Zealand
Kanishkaa Balachandran
25-Feb-2013
New Zealand play the first semi-final at Sabina Park in Kingston, the venue of coach John Bracewell's only Test for New Zealand. As he recalls, it was a game best remembered for Richard Hadlee's six bouncers in an over to Joel Garner, and the Big Bird's not-so-generous return gift. Bracewell also recounts the power of the feared West Indies fast bowlers.
"I can remember Ian Smith coming off (Bourda) looking reasonably white. He'd got 50 and said 'Malcolm Marshall's just told me that when we get to Barbados he's going to kill me'."
Read the full piece in Stuff.co.nz
Full postBrown, bearded and terror-struck
It's been a bizarre World Cup for plenty covering the event but two innocent Indian journalists had another bizarre story to write home about - being nabbed for arousing suspicion in Barbados, of all places, based on the colour of their skin
Kanishkaa Balachandran
25-Feb-2013
It's been a bizarre World Cup for plenty covering the event but two innocent Indian journalists had another bizarre story to write home about - being nabbed for arousing suspicion in Barbados, of all places, based on the colour of their skin . Read Atreyo Mukhopadhyay's first-hand account of the incident in Hindustan Times.
But even in my nightmares, I had not imagined I would ever be unceremoniously bundled into a police car and interrogated at a police station for an hour, being treated all the time like a criminal.