Some random thoughts on India’s mesmerising loss to South Africa on a Saturday evening:
The word is mesmerising because that’s exactly what it was. Despite a feeling of deja vu—the Indian fan felt that it was the same old story—that it was the same old capitulation of a much-vaunted batting line-up in the face of disciplined bowling.
Yet, the South African attack was disciplined, not hostile.
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Cricket fans across India are left aghast and appalled by the CWC ticketing fiasco that culminated in a lathi-charge on eager fans at the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore on the 24th of February, 2011
Over 30,000 fans queued up to snap up 7000 tickets for the India-England tie scheduled for Sunday, the 27th of February.
My dog, Bolshoi The Boxer, wants me to buy him a plane ticket to South Africa.
Bolshoi is a huge cricket fan and the performance of the Indian cricket team in the first Test at the Centurion has him worried.
“How can the No. 1 Test team in the world stutter to 136-9? And none of the batsmen could score a fifty?”
“That’s easy to answer. They were Morkeled and Steyned.” I reply.
Dhoni’s troubles
On Saturday, the 14th of August, 2010 , Dhoni walked out of a practice session when Dinesh Karthik was struck on the thumb by a nastily bouncing ball. The excuse given was that the practice facilities were inadequate; the pitch was underprepared and dangerous to use.
On Sunday, the 15th of August, Dhoni sought to underline his independence from the BCCI requesting that the Indian bowlers be rotated more often to allow them more rest and time to recover from their many niggles.
So what gives? Is the pressure of arguably the hottest seat in the country getting too much for Mahendra Singh Dhoni to handle?
The weight of a billion expectations is overwhelming. Is Dhoni finding the captain’s kitchen too warm for comfort?
Or is Dhoni trying to cut manic expectations of his young, troubled side?
Is he beseeching the Indian cricket fan to be more understanding, more kind, more real?
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With India’s 2 matches of the Super 8 match over and with them effectively India’s hopes of qualifying for the semis, it is time to make a couple of points about India’s no-show at this tourney.
1> The standard of cricket exhibited at the IPL and the World T20 are reams apart. In the latter, we have the best teams representing their country, whereas the IPL teams are constrained to having just 4 foreign internationals representing them and at the same time they need to ensure that deserving youngsters (read youngsters with potential) are given a chance to ware their talents. So suddenly we have our IPL heroes peppered with short-pitched balls and when you are a team batting second and chasing a large total, you have to try and hit every ball and the proclivity to succumb to the short-pitched variety is both exposed and exploited. Besides, since when have Indian batsmen known to be masters of the short ball?