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McCullum keeps India at bay with classy double: Second Test drawn
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The second Test match at Hyderabad ended as a damp squib as well.
There were many who considered the tourists easy meat coming into the Test series. The New Zealand batsmen obviously had other thoughts.
Except for the first innings here when they collapsed after a healthy start, they have made the Indian bowlers labour hard for their wickets. They have not let the home side buy their wickets cheap.
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.
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.
7000: Sehwag crosses another Rubicon
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Virender Sehwag keeps marching to a different beat, massacring pace and spin alike.
The Sri Lankans are at the receiving end this time around and they aren’t happy recipients.
After the exit of Adam Gilchrist from the hallowed sport , Sehwag is dreaded most by bowlers around the world.
It is not that he simply dominates the bowling; he takes the match by the scruff of its neck and turns it inside out.
Bowlers are said to win games. But Sehwag is a match-winner, in every sense of the term. He is a captain’s delight and when on song is a treat to watch. He is unorthodox but it is this very trait that makes his batting a thing of beauty forever.
He is belligerent,in the Richards mold. But he is ever humble; not for him the swagger and bravado of the West Indian legend.
Quote of the day:
Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin. – Stanislaw J. Lec
Disastrous run at World T20!
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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?
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