west indians

Cricket:Mamparas,”hee for chasey” and natural replacements

Cricket lovers have Graeme Smith to thank for enriching their vocabulary last weekend.

The South African Test skipper was “Mampara Of the Week”—selected by the nation’s leading daily, The Sunday Times. It is a moniker reserved for politicians and businessmen but ‘Biff’ trumped all contenders last week with his “wishy-washy apology” to the South African public for his side’s early exit at this year’s ODI World Cup in India.

Mamapara roughly translates to “idiot”. I must admit—“You b****y Mampara” has a nice ring to it.

Sachin Tendulkar—in the sunset of his career—is an inspiration to older cricketers. Simon Katich is the latest to pay obeisance. The West Australian cricketer—in his press conference—slammed Greg Chappell ,rightly questioning his credentials as a selector as he pointed out his inability to predict the master bat’s recent heights.

“Elder cricketers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but bad selectors.”

Rushing to Katich’s defence  was minister of defence for the realm, Stephen Smith. Australian politicians love their cricket and their cricketers.

“If he’s not in the top 25 Australian cricketers – and I can’t find one better opener than him on that list, let alone two – then I’ll go hee for chasey.” said the minister. An Aussie phrase learned here—take note,English language lovers.

The West Indians have been shafted once more. Zaheer Khan and S Sreesanth have opted out of the India-WI Test series citing injuries. Indian fans don’t seem to care. The boys in blue have ratcheted up wins—rising to the occasion. Who’s to say that Praveen Kumar and Abhimanyu Mithun won’t?

The trio of Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina and Virat Kohli seem natural replacements for RahulDravid,Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman.

There’s oft a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip, though.

Remember the dynamic duo of Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif?

Kaif languishes in the minor leagues of domestic cricket whereas Yuvraj "blundered" from strength to strength.

ODI success does not instinctively translate to Test level. Yuvraj Singh will testify.

Quote of the day:
Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well. Think about it. – Elias Schwartz

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Club Over Country:Insular Indians wake up to dangers of IPL

Let’s go ahead and admit it.

India, as a cricketing nation, is insular.

In the great ‘club versus country’ debate, Indian fans did not blink an eye when Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard figuratively gave the West Indian Cricket Board (WICB) the finger and plonked themselves at the IPL in the furnace-like heat of an Indian summer.

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Random cricketing thoughts on the IPL and beyond

The Ducksworth-Lewis method of calculating second-innings totals has come under the scanner.Mahela Jayawardene and Stephen Fleming criticised the system as being ‘unfair’ and not really suited to T20 cricket.

Brickbats are justified since T20 is a racier, pacier form of cricket compared to ODIs, which are in comparison relatively sedate.

Franchise owners, at the IPL auctions, took player availability into account while making their selections. No team wished to have key players missing during the critical part of the tournament.

Sunil Gavaskar: A Contradiction In Terms, From Calypso King To IPL Flop

Gavaskar , The Original Little Master

I have always been a huge fan of Sunil “Sunny” Gavaskar, the cricketer — the original Little Master.

When the rest of the world cowered under the barrage of bouncers and intimidating pace bowling unleashed by the marauding, rampaging Windies side of the late 70’s , 80’s and early 90’s, one man stood firm amidst the ruins.

That man was Sunil Manohar Gavaskar; thirteen of his 34 hundreds were against the mighty West Indians.

Another eight were belted against the Australians.

Whenever India played a series against the West Indians, we knew that as long as Gavaskar occupied the crease we were safe.

When the ace batter succumbed, the Indian team surrendered weakly as well.

At a time when India were making the transition from being mostly a spin bowling side to a pace bowling attack (thanks to another all-time great, Kapil Dev), we depended on the batsmen to save Test matches.

Bowlers win matches, batsmen save them.

This was a time in Indian cricket when a draw was always a noteworthy achievement; Indian sides rarely had the bowling strength to bowl out a team twice.

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