11/21/07

The fun starts at Kotla

Mr. “Roll the ball my brother” is on news again, beloved EX- Indian cricket team coach, who is notorious for showing middle and other fingers to spectators says that he knew it well before hand that India will lose in the early stages of the world cup. Duh! I wish he had told this useful message before the incident. Here is a guy who managed to gobble costly golf games and other richness provided by BCCI and went on to enjoy them all to its maximum but failed in his job, as soon as the media questioned him for his impotent coaching abilities and teams performance, he quits his job and now goes on trashing about his former employer, but it did not stop there, He also blamed Indian spectators as “Racial” and it seems he was victim of it, what a load of crap? An Australian branding an Indian - Racial;

Here is one more incident about Australian “double tongue”, I hope everyone remembers Ricky Pointing’s free advice to Murli Karthik during the final one day game which India won. Murli Karthik was a beneficiary of a bad decision by the umpire, he was ruled "not out" during a crucial juncture of the game that did help to win the game. Later during press conference MK was magnanimous to confess that he was out. Ponting at once pounced on it and threw in a truck load of advice about sportsmanship and other crap, wished that Murli had walked out. In the recently concluded one sided test match against SL, Sangakkara was denied his third double-century when he tried to hook Stuart Clark and the ball flew off his shoulder to Ricky Ponting at slip. Rudi Koertzen agreed with the Australians that there was some bat involved but Sangakkara, and the replays knew that was not the case. Ricky Ponting could have recalled him. It is already a dead one sided match, what happened to the so called “sportsmanship” crap that he expected from Murli Karthik? I suppose the advices are only to others. I hope Cricket Australia gifts Ponting a mirror for Xmas.

Sri Lankans were flattened by Australian bull dozers, by this I wish Mahila’s yaps are now under control. At times his lectures too much and shows nothing in action. Any Trash Talking has to be supported by good performance, if not - Silence is golden. This applies to Srisanth too. He managed to get 3 wickets in the final one day, but his initial spell was pathetic. He is injured and will be sitting out for the test.

India is all set to take on Pakistan, 1st TEST - The fun starts at Kotla in about 48hours.

Conundrums:
1. Yuvraj Singh, top scored with 279 runs, (+3 wickets), a class act, but has NO room in the test side.
2. Harbajan Singh, concluded one day series - (O:40 R:178 W:4 Best:2/65 Avg:44.50 ER: 4.45) , The above performance looks mediocre when compared to his previous appearance for India. West Indies series [2005-2006] where he played 2 tests – his stats - 0:71.3, R: 264 W: 11; 5/13 Avg: 24.00 - 5 WICKETS twice. But he was promptly dropped for [next] series against England

A point to note here:During the same West Indies test series, Anil Kumble played all the four test matches and was asked to bowl (around) three times than Harbajan [thanks to the captain Dravid]. Kumble managed to pick twice the number of wickets than Harbajan giving a gowdown full of runs.

Indian team selection process - a Conundrum

and Finally,
"Tendulkar";
(I did not quote his name even once today, just to keep up to my tradition I made sure I quoted him at least once)

Have a great thanks giving weekend.

ps: last week suntv aired Star, just thought you would be interested to read my
Old Review

11/7/07

I smelling “fish" do you?

Sachin’s decision not to accept captaincy makes me think that he is preparing us for the inevitable –Indian team after Tendulkar. I feel his decision is clearly in this direction. And we can expect him to call it is day very soon.

On pondering more [what else to do?], I smell “fish”; there is something wrong with selection committee and its chairman Mr. Dilip “Vengsarkar. 1st an Indian cricketing icon takes a tough decision, a decision that would jeopardize his entire carrier , Dravid steps down from captaincy. Now, another Indian icon says “no thanks” when the same portfolio was offered to him.

CNN-IBN adds that Sachin Tendulkar has mentioned "that the selection policies are not just, and the seniors have not been treated properly", this clearly shows Tendul is not happy how Dravid was treated. Here is my conspiracy theory: when we go by numbers it is absolutely impossible for the selection committee to drop Tendulkar. He is the top run getter in all recent series. The only method they could get him his load him with captaincy burden and then there would be better chance for Tendul to fail against Australia, finally send him home unceremoniously. , just my theory don’t go too much into it.

Here is my deal, clean the Indian cricket selection process. First, to become a selector one should have good qualifications and good cricketing history . VB Chandrasekar from Tamil Nadu calls himself an ex-selector. His performance which is mediocre clearly questions his qualifications for being a selector. People who have made considerable contributions to Indian cricket prefer to stay away from this selection politics. Eg. Syed Kirmani or Srikkanth etc.

In the corporate world when a company produces something, the “buyer” or the purchase manager should be well qualified and most of all should not be corrupt or have any kind of favoritism. He or she should be well qualified to pick raw material so that the final product is of some quality. More than the selection process being transparent, I wish BCCI is more transparent when picking selectors.

On selection process of players, a new player selection should have published documents supporting the selection. Currently the selectors have eyewash called as press meet in which they evade questions if grinded. I am still baffled by Virendar Sehwag selection. There is no evidence anywhere to prove that he is playing well, other a picture taken when he was talking to the selection committee chairmen and the board president. How about this idea? We don’t mind a foreign coach then, we don’t mind to have foreign Physiotherapist, now why not a foreign selection committee?

As if this was not enough, self proclaimed experts like Sanjay "who changes colors quicker than a chameleon" Manjerakar picks Anil Kumble to carry the mantle. Yep, just 2 weeks ago he wanted youngsters to be given more responsibility in order to improve Indian cricket, but today he wants a veteran who is all set to with draw money from PF or 401K plans. The plight of Indian cricket is quite pathetic. Adding to the confusion they have something called “the rotation policy. What is this rotation policy? Ans: bunch of stupid decisions that keeps changing until the head rotates.

A Week ago world was blaming seniors for not giving room for the juniors, but when seniors make fair decisions in this direction - they are questioned for it. WTF