Friday, May 20, 2011

On The Martin Crowe Comeback (Seriously)

Cricket is like a Saharan trek without a water bottle these days. Its hard to find a thirst quencher, given that most of the cricketing news is drowned by the hot air of the IPL. It seems that television viewers and internet junkies alike are nearing the end of their patience for it, even I forgot to check out Cricinfo for half a day (horrors!). But, then something caught my eye, this headline:
“Crowe Announces Comeback at 48″.
Come again? Russell Crowe making a comeback to Neighbors is more believable. Admittedly he is starting at club cricket level, with aspirations to make it to first class cricket. Seems he is 392 runs short of 20,000 first class runs. Well if he somehow manages to knock off those runs against guys half his age, then good on him, miracles do happen. But even all this is not what inspired me to write this article, here is the real kicker. Says Mr Crowe:
“Hey! If Ganguly can do it, anyone can do it!”
The cricketing equivalent to The Fonz. © Cricinfo.com
Ah, the Crowe vs Ganguly debate once again. For those of you who aren’t clued in, Ganguly led the team to a horrible defeat at the hands of New Zealand (well, mainly dodgy pitches) in 2002/2003. They lost the seven match ODI series 5-2, and the test series 2-0. During that time, the merry band of NZ commentators, led by Crowe, were ripping into Ganguly, singling him out as brash, arrogant and a liability for the team.
Maybe he was cocky, fair game, but Crowe fails to realize that Ganguly’s worst patch as a batsman was those years as captain. But despite that it was his alliance with John Wright that really turned Indian cricket around. It was Ganguly who backed the Harbhajan’s and the Yuvraj’s and got them through their golden 2003 world cup run, among famous overseas test victories.
Ganguly as a batsman achieved far more than almost all New Zealand batsman. His ODI stats in particular show off a whopping 22 centuries.
Batting and fielding averages (Ganguly) in Tests and ODIs
MatInnsRunsHSAveSR10050
113188721223942.1751.251635
3113001136318341.0273.702272
Crowe, who is widely regarded as one of NZ’s best in history, has this record:
Batting and fielding averages (Crowe) in Tests and ODIs
MatInnsRunsHSAveSR10050
77131544429945.3644.651718
1431404704107*38.5572.63434
Roughly equal, Crowe a better test batsman, Ganguly a better ODI one. Belittling Ganguly is completely uncalled for, it was then and it still is now. I can even recall several occasions of him smashing the New Zealand bowlers around like it was a joke.
Then again Crowe goes on to call Geoff Howarth’s coaching ‘a joke’ and he apparently had issues with Lee Germon and John Wright over the years. In the New Zealand scale he can talk with a bit of authority. On the world scale he hardly measures up. A decent cricketer with a bucket load of excuses, the only legitimate one being a bad knee.
A comeback at 48. Who’s arrogant now.
Contributed By: Varun Prasad
Original Post: The Cricket Musings

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