That’s not funny, MS

Not much to say at this point.

Contributed by DHCF Rishabh Bablani
Rishabh’s personal blog

  

Some Reasons for Defeat in England

Some reasons that I have shortlisted for India’s defeat

1) Selection: The selection of the playing XI has been a bit tricky, India have not picked horses for courses…Selecting Raina ahead of Yuvi in 1st test was baffling and more so baffling by picking raina for 3rs test, after a poor 2nd test Raina should have been replaced. Virat Kohli could have been given chance and he would also have added more value by his medium pace bowling which would have come handy in English conditions and we have been missing a handy 4th medium pace(slow) bowler.Picking Mishra for 3rd test was more surprising, the wicket was very green; on the 1st day of the test it was difficult to find a difference between the wicket and the outfield. India should have gone with all 4 pace attack. Picking Mishra confused me no end because England had 4 left handed batsmen in top 7, hitting with the spin made their life easy.

2) Initiatives: India have failed to grab the initiatives, they made chances but was not able to convert it into something big. India were able to land light punches on England but was not able to give the killer blow on England which was very important. Chances were made like in 2nd test India had England on the mat but still they made a strong come back through broad and swann, which in the end resulted in India’s loss. Even the batsmen have failed to make an impact someone like Gautam Gambhir made a very good 38 in 3rd test but failed to make a big one, some like Abhinav Mukund failed to convert a good start to match winning innings. This is where England have made a big impact, there have been 2 double centuries and 3 100s so far in 3 test matches.

3) Patience: Indian batsmen have not been patient enough to fight it out in the middle. Players like Abhinav Mukund and Raina have given away their wicket too early. They should learn something from players like Kevin Pietersen, Rahul Dravid, and Ali Cook. KP was struggling for form before India series and even during the 1st test where he scored an unbeaten 200, he was struggling for the first 100 runs but he didn’t throw it away, in fact made a fight back against the India. Even Ali Cook had a very poor series till the 3rd test but he made a grand comeback with a double in 3rd test. The impact of the comeback innings shows your real character, it isn’t easy to come back fighting all odds. Someone like Raina is always seen committing same mistake, he should certainly take Cook as an example of how to make the comeback when going gets tough.

4) Runs: I just feel India have not been able to rotate the strike that often easily; they have kind of stuck at one end. Rotating strike regularly disturbs the line and length of the bowlers which India have failed to do it and neither have they taken the attack on English bowlers. Whenever Indian has taken attack on the English bowlers their line and length have been wayward. In 3rd test when MS took an attack on them in both the innings they were found wanting and they were clueless. Indian batsmen have been stuck at same end for long time which leads to pressure, which in turn leads to a wicket. Blaming on the bowlers would be very wrong as batsmen have failed to put up a score on the board. If India would have been able to make a big score in 1st innings, there would have been spring in the stride of bowlers, you would have seen more catching and attacking positions, the bowlers and the captain would have enjoyed the luxury of runs, more pressure would have been created on England batsmen, and more importantly the wicket/pitch would have detoriated which would have benefited the Indian bowlers and spinners specially, India have bowled on fresh wickets which have made batting a bit easy for their batsmen. India has failed to score a 300 in this series so far.

5) Margin of defeats: The margins of defeats in 1st two tests and the way India have lost in this series that is having a huge effect, and coming back from such defeats is never easy. The morale in the dressing must be very low after such huge defeats especially when you are the number 1 team in tests. There was only one man who could have raised the morale of the team, but that man himself has not been able to score a big one. Sachin Tendulkar is the only man who could have raised the morale of the team very easily by scoring a big one, if Sachin was able to score a big 100 then that would have given some thing for the team to cheer about, not only it would have made India make a big total but also made all other players feel happy and good about something. We have had almost nothing to cheer about in this series, other than a few handful performances, we have been poor in this series.

6) Lower Middle order batsmen of England have made a huge impact in this series, someone like Broad, Bresnan, Swann and Prior have added more runs that the top order of India. England have also made comebacks from poor positions, when a team makes a comeback from loosing or poor position it actually raises the morale of the team no end. England would have loved the way Swann and Broad made a comeback in 1st Innings of 2nd test; it would have given them a lot of confidence. Whereas Indian lower middle order like Bhajji, MS have not been able to make a big contribution.
The morale of the team has gone from bad to worse and there has been dropping shoulders too early in the match.

Reasons like No Practice Games, not going to WI, injury to Zaheer Khan and other players actually don’t hold any truth because If you take the reason of Not enough warm up games but then after playing 2 tests and 2 warm up games what has India done in 3rd test, playing 2 test matches and 2 warm up games actually didn’t improve our performance. Reason like not going to WI, we need to consider that WI team was a 2nd string team, and players who went there like MS, Raina have also failed to make an impact in this series. Injury is part and parcel of the game, what happened to Zak was unfortunate it could have happened to anyone at any time you can’t blame excess or lack of cricket to it and since we were the number one team in tests how could we just hope on one bowler to take all the wickets. Even someone like England have faced injuries in this series Tremlett was injured and was replaced by Bresnan who has performed brilliantly with both bat and ball, even their best bat Trott got injured but then Bell has taken his place with utmost responsibility. So players who replace the injured players should be good enough to fill that void in the team to benefit the team.

To end I would say this series have been disappointing but still as a cricket lover winning and losing is part and parcel of the game, sometimes we lose and most often we win. We should stand by the team rather than being critical of the performance. We have been number one for around 20 months which has been a good journey and let’s hope we would reach there once again very soon.
We should accept that England has played well in this series and they deserve to be number 1 but let’s see how long they be number 1.

Ricky Singh for DieHard Cricket Fans

Dear Ravi Shastri, Please Shut Up

With the Indian team crumbling into a miserable heap at the hands of the English seamers, perhaps the time was ripe for an off-field battle between some of the big heads from either camp. But before we get to that, lets make a few things clear about the status quo:

India have no excuses. Losing Zaheer Khan is probably the only piece of bad luck they may rue. Apart from that this is (more or less) a full strength Indian line-up.

1. India are not number one. And in fact they never were, they only ended up there as a temporary place holder in the lack of a true champion team.
2. England could be the real deal. The England’s of the past would flatter to deceive, winning an important series before falling flat in those that follow. Not this one it seems, and once they get their ODI game in order, who knows… the next Australia?

But now to the point of the article.
The Bombing of Pearl Harbor

Nasser Hussain, renowned for having a rather big mouth, made it clear what he thought when Harbhajan was unfairly given out lbw with a big inside edge. His two cents worth included “using incomplete DRS is disgraceful by BCCI”, as he correctly said that Harbhajan could have been there if complete DRS was allowed, and that hotspot is in fact less accurate than the ball tracking system, and yet India have opted for that.

Granted the choice of words are not politically correct, Hussain is more or less right. But this is a very unflattering stick thrust smartly into the BCCI bee hive. How dare he criticize the big shots of India!

The Atomic Bomb

The rebuttal, came from Mr Ravi Shastri. He struck back with this:

“They are jealous about the way the Indian Premier League is going. They are jealous about where India is in world cricket.

“They are jealous about the fact that India are world champions. They are jealous because of the money being made by the Indian cricket board.
“The bottom line is that they have never been bloody No 1 in the world in Test cricket.
“So don’t criticise unless you have been there and know.”

Do you Mr Shastri really think that India is *that* good? That they can flat out accuse someone of being jealous of their cricketing abilities, their money and even more laughably, the IPL? Take a good look at how this series is going sir, and learn some humility and respect. It is 2-0 and looking like 3-0 at the moment. Your commentary sounded like you were at a funeral as it was so depressing to see your beloved team being so soundly trounced. Tim Bresnan, the England number 9, is straight driving your best bowlers like they are club level rookies.

Your “bloody no 1 in the world” are playing like the no 1 joke. Beating a few teams on flat decks by out-batting them does NOT make a world number one team, and you will find out in due course don’t you worry about that. Here’s a fact, if it weren’t for the soon-to-retire VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid, India would be third at best. They would have lost to the West Indies.

I used to think you were one of the few grounded and well informed Indian commentators, how wrong I was. You are just as delusional and arrogant as the rest of the muppets you are surrounded by. Funnily enough, as arrogant as they were, did you see the Australian commentators openly brag about how good they are? No. They only beat teams to a pulp and let the scoreboard talk.

Ravi Shastri, grow up and shut up.

Contributed by : Varun Prasad
Original Post : The Cricket Musings

Edgbaston: England vs India Day One

If this really is a contest between the top two sides in test cricket right now, India have got a funny way of showing it!

Expectations were high as Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir, the touring sides premier opening batsmen both returned from injury at a newly developed Edgbaston for the 3rd test of this series. However, as has tended to be the case so far this summer, India were again bowled out cheaply, for just 224. On a slow Edgbaston wicket, patience was the requisite virtue, a quality few of their batsmen were able to show.

Apart from Rahul Dravid, who to be fair got an absolute jaffer from Tim Bresnan, this was a story of India gifting their wickets away, unable to resist temptation and going after balls they really ought to have left the hell alone. Gambhir and Laxman both succumbed cheaply after promising starts, Gambhir going for one outside off and playing on, and Laxman hooking straight down long on’s throat.

That was after Sehwag had gloved his first ball to Matt Prior and Tendulkar had been caught at slip by his nemesis, Jimmy Anderson, both off the bowling of the in-form Stuart Broad. The finest batting line up in the world all back in the hutch for under 100. Funny old game.

England did well yesterday, but they didn’t have it all their own way. For the first hour, notwithstanding Sehwag’s departure, India were on top. It is a great quality England have developed that they are capable of winning a session even when their opponent is on top. Despite India’s good start they still went in for lunch 4 wickets down

The home side stuck to their task and managed to get wickets through patience and perseverance. They probed on a line just outside off stump and all too often the Indian batsmen couldn’t resist taking a swipe. When Tendulkar came in, Anderson returned to the bowling attack and the Little Master’s first stroke to him was an ugly flat batted swat that got nowhere near the ball – the Indian batsmen just don’t know how to play England’s bowlers.

MS Dhoni and Kumar showed more resolve, putting on a decent rear-guard stand to post some kind of total (yes, it could have been even worse then it was!) Dhoni in particular played some fantastic shots, bludgeoning the England attack for a while, but in the end their total is well short on what is actually a good pitch at this stage.

Starting today on 84-0, England will now look to bat all day today and most of tomorrow to put India out of the game. England made a habit in last years Ashes of scoring big and batting once, doubtless we will see the same plan employed here. It is therefore imperative that India’s bowling attack makes early inroads. Kumar has looked their best bowler so far this series, if he can get a couple early on, who knows?

One player who I really hope delivers if he gets the opportunity in this innings is Ravi Bopara. He’s had a lot of criticism since those 3 consecutive hundreds in the Caribbean 2 years ago, I hope that, if he gets a chance today (or tomorrow) he bats well and scores plenty, because he is a talent and he needs to start delivering at this level now.

If England win today as well, the ICC might as well issue their amended rankings at close of play tonight, because there will be no way back for India after that. They have to win today’s play; it’s as simple as that.

Tom Huelin for DieHard Cricket Fans
Follow Tom on Twitter @tomhue1

Virender Sehwag

Whenever Sehwag’s hard hitting starts,
team’s winning destination doesn’t remain far.

Whenever India loses Sehwag,
it always hits India really hard.

Be it T20, ODI or TEST, for him it doesn’t really matter,
when he is in form the fielders are anyways left chasing leather.

Hard hitting is his passion,
for the bowlers he is a tension.

Upper Cut is his favorite shot,
1 thing is certain that till the end of match he always fought.

Gokul Garg for DieHard Cricket Fans

England vs India: Halfway series review

It would be the understatement of understatements to say that the series has been full of action so far, but that doesn’t stop anyone from saying it either way.

Such competitive pitches… it could have been so much more than the one-sided whipping it has turned out to be. The first session at Lord’s is proof of that. And then, like Dhoni said, everything that could go wrong, did.

The tour began without Sehwag; Zaheer, Gambhir, Sachin, Yuvraj andHarbhajan filled up the sick room pretty quickly, igniting my suspicion that the physio gives them a complimentary paratha or something after each visit.

I reserve high praise for Praveen Kumar and Ishant Sharma, both of whom have bowled way too many overs than advisable. Ishant has put in 105.2 overs, still fewer than PK, who at 118.3, has bowled around twice as many overs as Harbhajan Singh. More praise, of course, for Dravid, who has scored more than twice as many runs as any other Indian batsman on this tour.

Sachin and Laxman have looked at ease without pushing on; Mukund has, as predicted, been a walking wicket – his initial struggle in the West Indies was a flashing neon sign indicating the same. Yuvraj and Raina have contributed ultimately inconsequential half-centuries. And to round up, Dhoni is having a horror series – he has done absolutely nothing right, in any department of the game. If Sachin and Warne get the fairytale scripts, Dhoni’s got this tour’s story from Wes Craven (Wiki it).

England, meanwhile, haven’t been perfect (but very close to it). Cook andStrauss haven’t got going, and Swann has been carted around in his half-fit state. They’ve been on the back foot one or two times, but they haven’t allowed themselves to be backed into a corner – they’ve counter-attacked with aplomb.Mr. Anderson, Broad Jr. and Bresnan have all got a five-for to their name.

India’s second practice game didn’t really help them in any way. Gambhir,Sehwag, Raina and Dhoni didn’t get the runs, Mukund (who isn’t expected to play the third Test) hit a quick hundred. Zaheer Khan, for yet unknown reasons, bowled only three overs. Mishra, the second spinner in the squad, was expensive again, just like in the first practice game. So, don’t expect any comebacks, Sehwag or no Sehwag. The two batsmen who can win a Test are the fit and in-form ones - Dravid, Sachin and Laxman. And Ojha must play.

Preferred XI: Sehwag, Gambhir, Dravid, Sachin, Laxman, Kohli, Dhoni, PK, Ishant, Ojha, Sreesanth.
Probable XI: Same, but with Raina and Mishra.

Rishabh Bablani for DieHard Cricket Fans