kangaroos

Cricket: Musings on WI-Pak,SL Premier League and IPL rumbles

Another batch of random thoughts, in no particular order (are random thoughts ever sequenced?):

West Indies beat Pakistan in the first Test match. The most laughable captain in world cricket, Darren Sammy, comes up trumps claiming a fifer as the Caribbean side wins an encounter between unpredictable “a-bit-more-than-minnows”.

Devendra Bishoo and Saeed Ajmal impress. Ajmal gets eleven but ends up on the losing side.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul lets his bat do the talking. Walking the talk? Certainly.

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Ashes 2010: Ramblings, Rumblings and Grumblings (Satire)

Some ramblings,rumblings and grumblings on the current Ashes series :

There’s a lot of Strauss on Ricky Ponting to pull up his socks and make a contribution.

The press-hounds are Ponting out scapegoats — Ricky is first among equals.

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More thoughts on the Mohali cracker!

To put it succinctly: India won a match they should have lost. Australia lost a game they should have won.

Neither team deserved to lose and it was a great advertisement for Test cricket. That’s what Test cricket is all about. It’s not over until it’s truly over!

The difference was that man VVS Laxman, who reserves his best for the kangaroos.

The Aussies kept digging into their marsupial pockets for ways to counter the Hyderabadi’s merry march to victory but there were just no tricks up their sleeves.

Ricky Ponting, unlike his predecessor, Steve Waugh, seems to ,more often than not, let the game drift and that was to be the case once more when the Aussies, by rights, should have gone in for the kayo.

No discredit to the fighting qualities exhibited by Laxman, Sharma and Ojha but Ponting needs a new thinking cap and soon!

In the end, it was yet another famous victory for the No. 1 Test team and Dhoni must thank his stars that he can call upon players of the calibre of Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman to do yeoman service without throwing any starry tantrums.

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Very, Very Special Laxman does an encore

On Laxman

Cometh the hour, cometh the man!

How trite it sounds, how repetitive , how boring.

But there is nothing trite about VVS Laxman,nothing monotonous and his sublime touch has cricket fans transfixed and spellbound.

He has always seemed the bridesmaid,never the bride.

Even though he has that very,very special 281 and that blinding, blistering 167, both against the Aussies, one at Kolkata, the other at Sydney in 2000 when he opened the innings at the outset of his career.The 167 denotes a period when the selectors persisted and insisted that he take up the opener’s role.

This at a time when although the Indian team had a multitude of contenders to the middle order , finding a regular opener to see off the new ball was an exercise in futility. Laxman, however, put his foot down and signaled his intention to stake a place in the middle or not play at all. For a lesser light it would have meant a premature eclipse to a budding career, but neither Laxman nor his claim to greatness could be denied, would be denied.

The 2001 home series against the Aussies cemented his place in the pantheon of cricketing greats. Laxman will always be identified by that defining, unbelievable, edifying knock against an Aussie side that seemed nigh invincible.

Steve Waugh’s kangaroos were made to bleed from a thousand cuts by a cavalier Laxman; the Eden loss also ended the Australian team’s run of sixteen victories on the trot. Interestingly, Australia’s world record of sixteen consecutive victories , was ended by India twice over. There really is something about an Aussie-India series; it brings out the best and sometimes the worst in both sides. A rivalry to match and perhaps surpass the Ashes.

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