Life Etc Etc

India wins another Test and wraps up another series. With the series score line reading 3-1 , I was wondering how fortunate we are today to be watching Test matches which actually produce a result. This was really not the case when I was a kid with many Tests ending in a stalemate. A draw, back then was considered to be an acceptable result and in many cases also treated on par with a victory. Those were the days when neither sporting declarations nor spirited chases were in vogue. A Test match on the 5th day would typically meander meaninglessly allowing those playing to get to some personal milestones and thankfully end before the scheduled close with the customary handshakes of opposing teams. That's probably the reason why I don't remember too many drawn test matches from that era. The only memorable draw that comes to my mind was the one in Sydney where Vihari and Ashwin stalled Australia's charge . Since a draw has become somewhat of a rarity these days, I wanted to

It took me sometime to collect my thoughts after the utterly disappointing World Cup final on Sunday. I needed this break to objectively wrap my head around what might have happened and also listen to the analyses from various sources before writing this piece. Within the last week, I've seen  several experts  claim that a slow track was intentionally prepared to provide an outside advantage to India with that strategy ultimately backfiring on the hosts. I don't know how true these allegations are but more than the pitch I single out the team's performance as the primary reason we lost that day . Here are three things which our team could have done better.  1. Firstly, we did not read the pitch as well as the Australian team did . Rohit Sharma revealed that he would have batted first had he won the toss on a surface which played better in the second innings. Considering the fact that we played more international matches than any other team at the venue we should have had a

India have finally recorded a victory against New Zealand in a ICC Championship tournament but here are three frustrating things (ordered from the most frustrating to the least) which I observed in our victory: 1. Throwing away starts: Shubman Gill's unnecessary swipe at a wide delivery, Shreyas Iyer's mistimed pull and Suryakumar Yadav's frantic runout could have cost us this match if New Zealand had more runs on the board. Team management should urge players to put a higher price on their wickets. Just forsake the sizzle for the substance and don't throw away a solid platform at the cost of making a statement. 2. Bumrah's fielding: Bumrah's bowling is world class but his fielding left a lot to be desired today. The dropped catch of Daryl Mitchell  might have cost us at least 50 runs. That coupled with the fact that he was always one step slower on the field makes me wonder about his fitness and his presence of mind. The fielding coach needs to have a c

It's unfair to talk about someone when they are not doing well. Therefore the intention of this blog is not rant on KL Rahul or his performances of late but to lend some statistical evidence as to why ordinary cricket fans like me are pining for a change at the top of India's batting order. I will also urge my readers to look up Jarrod Kimber's video  which presents a very interesting take on KL Rahul's performances. In order to help my analysis, I visited Cricinfo to garner some vital stats about Rahul's career.  I looked at his overall numbers and came up with a scatter plot of his batting performances in tests.  Rahul's test career average from 2014-2023 Scatter Plot of KL Rahul's test performances from 2014-2023 When I analyzed Rahul's entire test career, 64% of his innings yielded less than 30 runs. 86% of these innings produced 20 runs or less.   Rahul's test scores' breakdown When I confined my examination to his 3rd and 4th innings'

Yet another loss to New Zealand in an ICC tournament but this didn't sting as much . Probably because we were outplayed the moment we picked two spinners on a green pitch under overcast conditions or was it when Indian batsmen lost their sense of purpose when all they had to do was bat for time on the all important final day. No that's not it, what beat us was our scheduling! We didn't even have a practice match while New Zealand was preparing itself for the WTC Final with a series against England . That's not it too, we picked three guys who hadn't bowled together as a unit for the past one year and left out the in-form Siraj. That's it, that's the reason we lost.  Mace of the champions (Courtesy: Free Press Journal ) The reasons could be many but the fact is we lost to a better side. Through all the rain and numerous interruptions one side never lost its focus and that side won. This is an undeniable fact and unlike the 2019 semi-final we were never c

I woke up to a morning which no other Indian fan would have liked to wake up to . Chasing a modest total India were 100-odd for six wickets. There was a faint ray of hope however in the form of Jadeja and Dhoni. An hour later when I reached the office that ray of hope burnt like a flame when the partnership brought the target down to about 40 runs. But it didn't last much longer when everything was snuffed out in the matter of a few deliveries. 2019 World Cup Semifinal: When Jadeja and Dhoni kept us in the hunt <Courtesy: ICC > The first thing I did after the match was to attend my morning meeting, thinking that only some positivity in the form of work would allow me to drown the negativity of this defeat. The next thing I did was to reach out to my brother whom I knew had watched the match in its entirety. I also tried to console my best friend who was disconsolate that India had come so close only to lose the match. I  naturally felt bad for the disappointment they experi

We won...! We won...! We won...!  For kids like me who grew up in the 90s the thought of India beating Australia in Australia was as inconceivable as dating a Ms. World or a Ms. Universe (but yours truly did think of... ahem! ahem! let's not go there). Yeah, stars have to be seriously aligned for a victory such as this to happen and stars were indeed aligned when Warner, Cameron and Steve were all sent off on a vacation for playing around with a certain  tape . That vacation helped the Indian Team succeed in their triennial vocation. Mantra for Steve / Warner / Cameron : If you use tape your team will scrape . The above mantra was just the beginning, I set out on a journey where I personally uncovered several such lessons while watching this coma inducing, patience numbing, sometimes nerve wracking but ultimately gratifying series. Let's take a look at all the lessons I've grasped one by one: Players with rock solid and dependable techniques don't get IPL contracts

It's IPL time, the time of the year where cricket turns from a gentleman's game into a three ringed circus for the stars, the people and the players. It's hard to believe that it's been 10 long years since the IPL started but I just seem to remember it like yesterday. As soon I thought about the first IPL I remembered some tight finishes, some great performances, raw emotion, glamour that was on display and some utterly forgettable moments. So here are 10 random things I remember about the first IPL: Teams of the first IPL <Courtesy: Reddit > Akshay Kumar , the brand ambassador (Oh! the brand ambassadors was one way franchises burnt their hard earned money during the first IPL) for Delhi Daredevils (DD) zip-lined his way into the ground for an IPL match. DD followed his example of daredevilry all throughout the league phase before their stunt went all wrong crashing them into the ground in the semis .            Ricky Ponting (yes he played in the

It's hard to be a casual cricket fan, there are so many things you don't know when you don't watch cricket regularly. I watched a grand total of half a cricket match in the last one year ( the Indian Chase in the ICC Cricket World Cup for Women ) before watching the last three overs of today's final . The last ball six revived my interest in the game and here are some of the most important things I've learnt about today's cricket in the last few hours since the final: Washington and Sundar are one and the same person . Suresh Raina has not retired and still plays occasionally for India.  ' DK ' is the superhuman alter ego of mild mannered Indian wicket-keeper batsman Dinesh Karthik and when he's in full flow he can hit sixes about as easily as Vijay Shankar can miss them. Vijay Shankar is not a relative of Indian sitar stalwart Ravi Shankar even though I almost felt he was using a sitar to bat after missing the number of balls he d

As a sports fan, I have endured countless debacles over the last few decades. I still remember the Indian Cricket Team collapsing like a pack of cards in the 96' World Cup semi-final , can recall Dhanraj Pillay's tears when India lost a medal chance by a whisker in the 2000 Olympics, still dwell upon what would have happened if Saurav Ganguly elected to bat first instead of putting Australia in on a flat track in the 2003 Final and still find it hard to digest Andy Roddick's  ultra narrow loss to Roger Federer in the 2009 Wimbledon Final . Every hurt is different, some fade away with time and some live on, only to flare up every time a similar incident happens. A devasted Mithali Raj along with Harmanpreet Kaur  Today those hurts of the past flared up again when an inexperienced but talented Indian team lost to an English team resembling a well oiled machinery. This was not just any match it was the World Cup Final and it was a final we were winning. As someone

India's whitewash of Australia in the recently concluded T20 series was built on some strikingly brilliant individual performances.The victory obviously left me elated but also took me down the memory lane of some singularly awe inspiring performances in Cricket. Now a lot of these performances may not be not well known but inspiration in life comes from quality and not popularity. So without any further delay lets look at three ' stand and deliver'  performances from the 90s, a decade that revolutionized Cricket. WV Raman anchors : WV Raman's stay at the top was very brief but no body could deny his talent and ice cool temperament. Both of these skills were on display when India took on South Africa in the 3rd ODI of a series which was rapidly going down hill. South Africa batted first and set a target of 215 for India. The modest target looked unattainable considering the fact that India hadn't crossed 200 even once in the first two one day interna

The time has come to induct another class of cricketers into the most meaningless hall of fame of them all. I was planning to postpone this induction to the new year but South Africa's epic blockathon  a few weeks ago triggered some painful memories. So without any further ado here are certain performances which will definitely up your BP levels and go down in the history of cricket as some of the most disgusting sporting fails . Kris Sricant : Before Sanath Jayasuriya and Virender Sehwag destroyed bowlers,  Kris Srikkanth  walloped them with the sort of a brutality that was never seen before. So complete was his mastery that even the most fearsome bowlers didn't escape the brunt of his bat. Who can forget the six he hooked of Andy Roberts  in the most important final of them all. But even greatness can wane with time, come 1992 the hero of 1983 was a pale shadow of himself. The confidence was absent, the technique was inconsistent and the reflexes were non-existent. Sr

Two teams punch their way into the Most Painful Performances in Cricket Hall of Fame  with their sheer misjudgment and lack of direction. Our dual inductees into the Hall of Fame share many similarities and their rivalry goes a long way back. These teams are guilty of burdening us (the fans) with two embarrassing sporting fails on the World Cup Stage. Without any further ado lets talk about the back story which intertwines these Hall of Fame inductions. The year was 1996, school was just about to finish when news arrived that Sri Lanka were 1/2 (read that as two wickets for one run) in the all important World Cup Semi-Final against India. That news was like nectar to my ears, I immediately rushed home, only to find that  Aravinda de Silva  had steadied the ship with a magical innings . Aravinda's fearless stroke play along with Roshan Mahanama's  resilience set India a testing but perfectly attainable target of 252 runs. Flashback India lost Sidhu's wicket quite early