sports

Cricketing Bits: MFN UK, Ranji , Hyderabad Test and Gary Kirsten

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The UK has acquired most favoured nation status among asylum seekers —at least among cricketing ones. Pakistani cricketer and wicket-keeper Pakistan wicketkeeper Zulqarnain Haider has sought safety there following threats from match-fixers. The 24 year old hit the winning run in the fourth one-dayer against the Proteas in the five match series in Dubai.

Haider alleged that he was approached to fix the fourth and fifth ODIs. Pakistani cricket continues to shrivel under the shadow of the recent spot-fixing scandal.

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Of Sania, Somdev , Federer’s run and Nadal’s tendinitis

Sania Mirza’s comeback to the WTA tour may not have quite taken off on the singles circuit but she’s certainly holding her end up in doubles.

Sania failed to secure a second doubles title this season . She and her partner Hsieh Su-wei lost 2-6 4-6 to third seeds Chang Kai-Chen and Chuang Chia-Jung in the summit clash of the ITF $ 1,00,000 tournament in Taipei.

Sania also missed out on the gold medal at the CommonWealth Games in New Delhi in the singles draw — battling all the way.

Somdev Devvarman will be representing India at the Guangzhou Asian Games from November 12 to 27,2010. Somdev was top seeded at the recently concluded CommonWealth Games and was one of the few elite Indian athletes who fulfilled expectations by clinching gold.

Roger Federer is enjoying a good run following his failed bid at a 17th Slam at the US Open. Two tournament victories in quick succession and a red-hot Federer jets into Paris seeking his 18th Masters hoping to equal Rafael Nadal’s record.

"I’m a bit worn-out, I’ve had a lot of matches, I’m hoping my mind and body hold up. But I don’t play until Wednesday and there will be time to recover. I’m confident that my form will carry me through."  said the champion.

Nadal, his nemesis, has pulled out citing shoulder tendinitis. But he hopes to be ready for the season-ending World Tour Final in London.

Nadal had a fantastic 2010 reeling off three Grand Slams in quick succession to bring his haul to nine. This includes a Career Slam.

The World Tour Finals will be eagerly awaited; the only possibility of the two great champions facing off once more this year comes at this premier event.

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering – because you can’t take it in all at once. Audrey Hepburn

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The IPL Lull: Sunny still simmers, Chahar heads the domestic signup roster

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The IPL saga saw a lull in the proceedings because of the Diwali holidays. Indian fans were quite content enjoying the fireworks on display at Motera with Sehwag and Bhajji eking out explosive knocks.

But the IPL has not quite escaped the news. The side actors have played their part.

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Laxman and Bhajji hold the fort: First Test against Kiwis peters to a draw

The first Test match between the Black Caps and India petered out to a tame draw.The great escape was engineered by two intrepid saviours,VVS Laxman and Harbhajan Singh.

The New Zealanders would surely have hoped to end the Indian innings early this morning but much as Vettori and Martin tried, the experienced duo of Laxman and Harbhajan would not let anything get past them.

The Black Caps, however, let a couple of half-chances go a-begging.

Once the first session was seen through without further loss of wickets, it was a matter for conjecture if Dhoni’s men would choose to continue batting or declare early to try and force a win.The Indian think-tank decided against an early declaration; discretion is the better part of valour.

Laxman and Harbhajan rode into the 90’s in contrasting styles; Laxman —calm and self-assured— radiating confidence and Harbhajan treating his time in the middle as a lark in the park ,with mighty swipes at the spinners.

Both batters looked good for tons but Laxman was undone by a terrible decision by umpire Davis given out leg before off an inside edge. Zaheer followed him back to the pavilion — out off the next ball — and the Kiwi captain was on a hat-trick that was not to be.

Indian cricket: Same old story of batting collapse against Black Caps

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The second innings collapse of the famed Indian batting line-up in the first Test against a weak New Zealand side supports my theory that Indians are notoriously poor starters. The first Test against the Australians in the recent home series too could have easily gone the other way but a fantabulous fight-back by a bravura Laxman snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

India finished at 82-6 at the end of the fourth day at Motera. Chris Martin’s five wicket haul was the highlight of the day. Sehwag was run out.

With Harbhajan and Laxman —the last of the recognised batsmen at the crease — it will be only be about survival on the final day.

India piled up 487 in its first innings essay powered by Sehwag’s bellicose 173 and Dravid’s sedate 104. New Zealand replied strongly with 459 ; debutant Kane Williamson registered his maiden century and talented Jesse Ryder hit a ton as well.

Can India save the match? Will Laxman ride to the rescue once more?

The fifth day will be engrossing.

Full marks to the Black Caps. Few gave them a semblance of a chance following their 4-0 whitewash at the hands of the Bangladeshis.

Pride and over-confidence lulled the No.1 team into a false sense of security. The New Zealanders’ ego had been hurt. No way would they roll over, not even for an Indian side boasting a rampant Sehwag and a resurgent Tendulkar.

Wins have to be earned!

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Why The IPL Is More Soapy Than A Soap Opera (Satire)

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Think of soap operas and you recollect Santa Barbara and The Bold And The Beautiful.These two television sagas defined the term soaps for an Indian audience used to the humdrum dished out by the national television channel, Doordarshan.SB and The B & The B enthralled Westernised Indian audiences.

For the Hindi speaking public and those who still stuck to Doordarshan, Hum Log and Buniyaad were always available as TV dinner fare.

But for those who were suddenly exposed to choice, there was no turning back from the influence of MTV and Star TV. Jaded television audiences were suddenly invigorated.

Santa Barbara and The Bold And The Beautiful worked with a tried and tested formula :Money, sex and power in a potent mix.

The recent goings-on in and around the IPL have all the classic makings of a soap.Drama and pathos , joy and pain, glory and ignominy — it has it all.

Money, glamour ,sex appeal , a decamping honcho, exotic locations, politics, the mafia and more twists and turns than a pot-boiler — these have the audience on tenterhooks.Once you hook them, they just keep coming back for more. They just can’t get enough.

A much desired look at the elements that make the IPL a favourite with the Indian news channels:

1> Money

Does the IPL have money? Yes, and how!

The IPL is a huge pot of money, and the lure of lucre draws participants from all the Test playing entities. It has also acquired its own share of imitators; the least, the very own Maharashtra Premier League and now the Australian Big Bash. It has become a huge success; a showcasing of Indian organizational capabilities , management, marketing and branding.

The IPL is reputed to be the second highest paid league (on a pro-rata basis) , second only to the NBA.

(The NBA may no longer retain that sobriquet if the NBA team owners have their way. Negotiations are sought to control player wages.But that’s another story altogether.)

The first three editions of the IPL consisted of eight teams — each playing each other twice in home and away games. The top four teams qualified for the knockout phase.

Listed below are the acquisition prices paid by the owners for each team:

In March 2010, an auction for two additional teams was conducted by the BCCI.The auction was a huge success with a record amount garnered by the BCCI.

The Sahara Group won the Pune Warriors franchise for the astronomical sum of $ 370 million and the Kochi franchise cost the Rendezvous Group and its partners the princely sum of $ 333 million.

Yes, it’s about the money, honey! Make no mistake about it! The IPL’s unofficial theme song is : “Money, money, money! It’s a rich man’s world!”

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2> Glamour

The IPL has its own share of glamour. Owners of three franchisees, Rajasthan Royals, Kolkatta KnightRiders and Kings XI Punjab happen to be film stars — Shilpa Shetty, Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta. Shah Rukh is acknowledged as the unofficial czar of Bollywood.

The IPL would have always have its share of the limelight but the presence of movie stars and the attendant publicity boosted the glamour quotient to Himalayan heights.

The liquor baron , Vijay Mallya who incidentally co-owns the Force India F1 team brings his own heady brand of glamour to the IPL.  The Kingfisher logo is visible everywhere the IPL goes.

Nita Ambani stepped out of the shadow of her more glamorous sister-in-law, Tina, to head the Mumbai Indians show. She displayed a level of business and cricketing acumen rarely associated with boardroom wives.

The mix of foreign players and domestic aspirants was another novelty experienced for the first time in Indian cricket stadia.

(The Indian football clubs may have had a few foreign recruits—second string Nigerian and Brazilian peddlers but nothing on this scale had ever been attempted in the annals of Indian sport.)

Cheerleaders for each team to keep the crowd entertained and energised was another concept borrowed from the NBA and the NFL.The first season of the IPL had Vijay Mallya rope in the Washington Redskins of the NFL to root for his side. The Bangalore outfit’s female squad are now known as the White Mischief girls.

The 3rd season of the IPL was even more hedonistic than the preceding ones. Private parties followed each game — cricketers,cheerleaders, owners and their entourage all conjoined together to have a ball off the field. The players were soon complaining of fatigue during IPL 3. It wasn’t the games that wore them down; it was the non-stop partying and the traveling!

3> Exotic Locations

The IPL is about home and away matches.Some teams have just one home stadium to boast of; others like the Mumbai Indians can choose from up to four venues.

Playing the games involves traveling the length and breadth of the country.From Mumbai to Jaipur to Kolkata to Mohali to Bengaluru to Hyderabad to Chennai to Delhi.

It’s just one distant destination to another, sampling the culinary delights across the length and breadth of the vast country.

The clash with the general elections in April-May 2009 forced the IPL to be played on foreign shores.Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth , Johannesburg were ports of call for our young aspiring Indian stars fortunate to be part of the IPL.

4> The Mafia

It would be foolish to think the IPL untouched and unsullied by the illegal betting syndicate.

If Test matches are subject to spot-fixing , then T20 games are even more susceptible to rigging given that every ball is significant.T20 is eminently suited to ‘matka’ dealings precisely because of its format.

No evidence of match or spot-fixing has ever surfaced though. Perhaps, the ICC Anti-Corruption Board has had a salutary effect.

The Indian underground , however, hit the headlines with regards to the threats made to Lalit Modi’s life.The ex-IPL honcho is currently in London surrounded by bodyguards fearing for his safety. A letter from the Mumbai Police detailing the danger has been provided to the Enforcement Directorate as proof of genuineness.

And here , you and I believed that it was the Sopranos that was about the Mafia!

5> Politics

The BCCI is a political (oops, I mean politicised) organization. Curry favour with the state cricket associations and you can get your cronies elected to the BCCI chair.The IPL could not avoid it’s politicisation even though it tried.

For a while, it seemed that the IPL would be run like a truly professional business organisation but that was not to be.Nepotism raised its evil head.Lalit Modi was discovered to have a hand in the pie; not in one , but two IPL teams.The term ‘conflict of interest’ was obviously not in his dictionary.

To his credit or discredit, N Srinivasan of Chennai Super Kings too did not appear to suffer any qualms when confronted with the term.

The politics of it all had External Affairs minister Shashi Tharoor defend himself and his then fiancée Sunanda Pushkar on the floor of Indian parliament. Tharoor’s twittering critics were not to be silenced though. The suave minister lost his portfolio but not before the aspersions cast on the IPL honcho brought the heavy hand of the Income Tax department and the Enforcement Directorate down on the IPL constituents. The well-knit web began to unravel; the BCCI found itself at the receiving end of adverse publicity. Lalit Modi presided over the third season of IPL3 only to be summarily stripped of his powers the very next day.

Since then the IPL ,the BCCI and Lalit Modi have provided additional grist to the rumour mill.The other minor participants have not failed to add their little salacious  bits and pieces as well.

The television channels have no complaints; whenever a story regarding the IPL breaks out, they can parade a few experts who will ramble on about the shady goings-on in the IPL. It wouldn’t surprise you to find the very same experts on ano
ther channel within the next half-hour!

A full hour dedicated to the ‘new’ story and cricket fans (and non-fans) can never get enough of the sordid drama played out.

6> Twists and Turns

But for a soap opera to hold its viewers’ interests, it should be unpredictable, it should have many side-shows, the gelling of protagonists in alternate dramas to finally culminate for a pulsating finish.

The IPL i.e. the tournament is all about drama.

It starts off slowly and seductively like a slow dance; the initial league phase, the first round of matches is just a warming up for the second part of the season when the return games provide most of the drama.

Many is the time when it has come down to just one match that would decide which team goes into the final four playoffs.

And then there’s the nail-biting tension of the Super Over, heaven forbid it , if the scores are tied.

Before the season begins , the player auctions are a source of suspense as well.

Which team will acquire which player? What will the price tag be?

The player auctions resemble the slave markets of yore — which teams will get the gladiators they need or deserve?

Will the purse strings come undone? Or will there still be some to go around?

The curtain-raiser to IPL4 witnessed the tendering process for two new franchises.

Who would win? Did anyone foresee the success of the Kochi bid?

The Shashi Tharoor-Lalit Modi spat, the consequent resignation of the External Affairs minister and the final denouement — the sacking of the man who could do not put a foot wrong, Lalit Modi — who could have predicted or envisaged the turn of events?

Throw in the expulsion of the two teams Kings Punjab XI and Rajasthan Royals, the termination notice to the still-born Kochi franchise, and there’s humour and catastrophe in the same act — a comedy for some, a tragedy for others. In retrospect it might all seem farcical but what an expensive, costly burlesque! Are the actors but marionettes and puppets?

Season 4 of the IPL is in danger; the director and the guiding crew are embroiled in a controversy of gargantuan proportions.

To add to the masala, a competing soap opera on another channel — The Big Bash— Down Under threatens to steal some of the limelight , the glory and the action stars.

The twists and turns in this narrative are hairy indeed!

7> The Season Finale

What will the season finale bring? Who will come out victors? Who will have cake on their face?

Is the IPL sustainable? What are the lessons that can be learnt? Can the Big Bash and the IPL exist complementarily?

Is it only about Big Bucks? Is there a moral lesson for fans somewhere? For anyone, anywhere?

Will the pioneering spirit trump? Or will conservatism strangle the grandest show to hit the stage of Indian sport?

We all await the epilogue to this extravaganza with bated breath. Will we be disappointed or sated?

That’s what soap is about. Don’t  you agree?

I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.Herbert Bayard Swope

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Cricket Bytes: UDRS, Hot Spot,‘To The Point’ and Chahar, the new kid on the block

The mystery behind the non-adoption of the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS) by the BCCI has been resolved.

It is the skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni who  is sceptical of the system’s merits. Dhoni believes that the system has had mixed results. Sehwag, in a recent interview, strongly supported adoption of UDRS. Rahul Dravid too has thrown his weight behind the review arrangement.

But the man whose word carries the most weight Sachin Tendulkar has not backed off from his opposition to the technology. Tendulkar prefers the competing technology —Hot Spot— that uses infra-red cameras to decide whether the ball has struck bat, pad or the batsman.

The basic UDRS system, currently in use, uses only the Hawk-Eye technology besides super slow-motion cameras and an audio feed from the stump microphone.

The Hawk-Eye is the same technology used in tennis to decide if the ball has struck the line.

Hot Spot is an improvement that is seldom used.

The ICC hope to make the UDRS mandatory for all Test series in the near future.

The Proteas  wish to use the system during the upcoming tour by India but are being pressurised  by the BCCI to stick to the tried-and-tested arbitration via manual umpiring.

When the top two cricketing heroes in the team put their foot down, the BCCI is bound to follow their lead.

Herschelle Gibbs has crawled out of the woodwork and into the limelight — albeit a controversial and notorious one with the release of his autobiography ‘To The Point’.

The opener has made some stunning revelations about his tenure with the South African team , rambled on about sex orgies, his relationship with his former captain Hansie Cronje, and threats from the Delhi police when cross-questioned by them about the match-fixing scandal. Though the sex-laced chapter has hit the headlines more often than not, Gibbs has been hugely critical of the cliquish South African team and current captain Graeme Smith in the remainder of the book.

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Federer Versus Nadal: The War Of The Report Cards

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I have shied away from tackling the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT) debate for some time because:

1> I think it’s been done to death.

2> It’s gotten to be tiresome; there’s little new under the sun to be said about the great Federer – Nadal rivalry.

3> It’s the season end and just as the players will be taking a well-deserved break , so should B/R writers take a rest from this acrimonious topic.

4> I feel the other players deserve some space and time devoted to them.

But since there seems to be no abatement of interest in the subject , I will have another dekko at the risk of seeming repetitive.

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IPL makes no news, can mum make a difference to CA fortunes?

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The news channels have been handed a respite  by the 30 day extension (or notice) to the Kochi franchisee.

Kings XI Punjab will join the Rajasthan Royals by filing a petition against the BCCI for terminating their franchise.

Rajasthan Royals are embroiled in a court hearing that will happen after the Diwali vacation.

Gavaskar has slammed the press for subjecting him to a “trial by media” and said “In the eyes of the Indian media you are guilty till you are proved innocent”.

One man happy with the IPL —specifically Chennai Super Kings— is former New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming. The New Zealander has renewed his contract with the current IPL champions for another three years. Fleming guided CSK to the IPL trophy and the Champions League title.

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Indian cricket: Of multi-crore deals, consistency and Ranji Kings Mumbai

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Dhoni may be the Indian cricketer with the most endorsements but Tendulkar makes more money per deal than the Indian captain. Dhoni boasts of a Rs. 180 crore deal and has over 20 brands in his portfolio.

Tendulkar has fourteen endorsements and charges around Rs. 6 – Rs. 7 crores per client. Tendulkar has always been selective about his clientele — the number of brands endorsed hovers around twelve to fifteen at a time.

Contrast this to Saina Nehwal’s recent hike in her price from Rs. 50 lakhs to a high of a crore and you can see the yawning difference in how other sports stars are treated in this country.

Keep in mind that cricket has just ten Test playing nations. It’s not quite cricket, is it?

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